Maia Battle Report: Year 2 Month 1

Maia is still alive!

She enjoys wearing dresses and dancing for delicious foods like mac and cheese or pancakes. She has started embracing pretending games, and will utilize each tool in her animal clinic toy set appropriately ("Maia works at animal clinic. Mommy works at people clinic"). One day, we must have spent 20 minutes pretending to be asleep in bed then waking up.

While packing for our trip to Pennsylvania, she pulled Rebecca's rolling suitcase and said "Just like bunny", in reference to a cartoon of a bunny pulling a suitcase for a vacation, a card that had been out of sight for at least 3 weeks. She also knows all sorts of trivia ("Amber is a calico", "Daddy drives fast", and "Daddy farts") and remains a puzzle whiz.

Her attention span is getting longer and the occasional tantrum can be much fiercer, but they never last very long before she moves on from disappointment. She doesn't like brushing her teeth, but we've gotten her more into the habit by reminding her that Dr. Bearson of the Berenstain Bears universe would want her to.

We went to the mall for the first time in 3 months last week when it was too hot to move. The only difference from before is that she insisted on walking everywhere instead of sitting in the stroller. She loves the mall now solely because we get 1 Popeyes buttermilk biscuit, which she eats in its entirety.

She still has not had any dedicated screen time, and is bored by most of the harmless shows we might put on in the background. On Monday nights, we let her stay up to watch the first couple athletes on American Ninja Warrior, but she's really more interested when they fall off ("Splash!").

Coming up in the fall, she'll spend a couple hours per week in a "Twos" class at the community center. Rebecca will use that extra time to take some naps and I will do some continuing education in making ponytails.