Maia Month #22 Battle Report

Maia is 1 year and 10 months old today. The picture above was actually taken 3 days ago -- she's still visiting the Gillis family in Oklahoma City and between Daylight Savings Time and time zones, Rebecca apparently flew into the future on her jet plane.

This past month has been great from a child-care perspective. Although Maia is much less likely to play on her own these days, she's very amenable to whatever sort of activity we think up as long as we're nearby. Activities have included "playing with measuring cups and water in the sink", "filling a bucket with dirt", and "acting as a Chaos Monkey while we work on 1000 piece puzzles". Puzzles, the Berenstain Bears, and baths are her recent favourite activities -- she will immediately drop whatever she's doing to engage in either.

Maia is saying a lot of things now, not all intelligible. Her default setting is two-word phrases that she says over and over until we finally understand them and recite them back. She is adept at making unexpected connections between things in her books and things she did several days ago. With the weather so nice, she gets outside at least twice a day. I regularly take her to Claude Moore Park or Lake Anne in the evenings while Rebecca is at work and Rebecca takes her to "forest school" on Fridays at Algonkian Park, where she can hang out with other toddlers splashing in mud puddles.

The cutest thing she does at the moment is her approach for showing excitement. When she sees something amazing like a new playground or a flock of geese, she'll hold her fists up near her mouth and point with both hands.

P.S. Maia gained two new friends last month: Welcome Gideon (child #6 of the Ahlbin clan) and Tobias (child #1 of the Jackson family)!