Our October was weirdly busy, especially for us. We spent the first few days of the month vacationing in Miami. I came back to jury duty (luckily, I wasn’t selected). We went to Dallas the next weekend to celebrate cousin AP’s 5th birthday. Then Maya was sick for a little while. And finally, we were to the point where we needed to get her around some pumpkins and into a Halloween costume.

Maya at the pumpkin patch – 23 months old

Last weekend we went to the same pumpkin patch we went to last year. Possibly my mood was a little soured by the fact that it was 90 degrees outside, but it just wasn’t as pleasant as last year. There weren’t many pumpkins (possibly due to how late in October we were going) and the placement and arrangements just weren’t as photogenic. Also, Maya has gotten downright ornery about having her photo taken. She really just has no interest at this point.

Daddy is a trooper

What Maya did love was taking beanbags out of the wooden beanbag game and dropping them back in again, over and over again, possibly forever. She also had fun feeding the goats, though she didn’t understand why she couldn’t climb the fence and get in the pen with them. There was also a giant tubular slide that she and Sean slid down several times. Apparently it was very fast and he was worried that Maya would be scared, but the moment they landed at the bottom she was grinning and asking for more.  And as if all that wasn’t enough, they had blow-up bouncy horse things that Maya rode with Sean, which of course she enjoyed.

In the end, we did manage to wrangle Maya in and amongst the pumpkins and trick her into looking happy for a few quick frames while Sean snapped photos.

I never claimed to be Martha Stewart

We haven’t really done too many crafty type things with Maya yet. She’s finger painted plenty. She colors a little bit with crayons and has an undying love of sticking stickers. For Halloween, I did a little looking into crafts that a not-quite-2-year-old could manage and happened upon some little pumpkins that were made by sticking tissue paper to contact paper. Maya tired after maybe four or five minutes so I wound up doing most of it, but regardless, they were cute and she seemed to enjoy the bit that she did. Anna of course was responsible for the remainder of the decorations on our door.

Kitty cat jack-o-lantern

The jack-o-lantern was a full house affair. Anna and Maya drew the design, I gutted and carved the pumpkin, and Sean installed and lit the candle while I corralled the grabby toddler.

Maya the Octopus

Choosing Maya’s halloween costume was a little difficult for us. We wanted it to be something she’d be interested in, but most of her interests are so fleeting it’s tough to really choose. She’s still enamored with tigers and roars frequently, but we did that last year. Finally, we settled on dressing her as an octopus.

See, I’m Oddipuddy

For those that don’t know, Maya’s security toy is a little stuffed octopus. Around eight or nine months old, when separation anxiety was making bedtime particularly heart-wrenching, we noticed that Maya the crawler was dragging her toy octopus around with her. Once we saw the attachment and started letting her sleep with it, she went back to calmly working herself to sleep. Her cousin AP named him Oddipuddy a while back and the name has stuck.

I did toy with the idea of making her an octopus costume, but I didn’t like what I’d have to give up to have time to do that, so we hunted one up on Amazon. Believe it or not, we had several to choose from, so we were able to select a costume whose colors roughly matched her little Oddipuddy.

On our way to the block party

We were lucky that it cooled off enough for her to wear her warm costume. We didn’t trick or treat yet this year, but that didn’t mean there were no festivities. The morning of Halloween, nanny Anna took Maya to a little kid party, which by all accounts she thoroughly enjoyed. That evening we walked our little octopus down the street to a block party where she nibbled on all kinds of goodies and got to play in a bouncy house. Much to her delight, she even got to wear her costume to her music class on Saturday morning.

All-in-all we had an eventful but relatively successful October. Now we’re on to manage Maya’s birthday, Thanksgiving, and the Christmas season all (hopefully) before kid 2 shows up in January!

Maya had her first haircut on July 6th. Nearly four months later, here are some pictures of it! In real time, I’m about 27 weeks pregnant, Maya is nearly 2 years old, Sean is busy contending with both of us, and we all seem to run out of energy before photos get edited and blog posts get written.

First Haircut!

Part of the trouble is that we now have a fairly unwilling subject. In July, Maya was just too busy to hold still. Now she actively runs the other way when she sees Sean coming with the camera.

First haircut!

At any rate, Maya’s wispy little hair was starting to pester her eyes, so we decided a trim was in order. We weren’t sure how the busy, stranger-averse toddler would do, so for her first haircut, we asked our friend Darla to cut it. The mood was relaxed and Darla was very quick with the scissors and before long, Maya could see past her bangs.

 

Poor Sean. He really got the shaft this year. We basically didn’t celebrate Fathers Day. I was in the early stages of pregnancy (read: nauseated and stupid tired), Maya had been sick, and we were planning a big summer trip to visit family in Missouri and Tennessee. As wrong as it is, Dad wound up getting lost in the shuffle.

Watching fish from the pier

Sean and I were somehow both completely convinced that Fathers Day was on June 22nd. I couldn’t tell you where either of us got this idea, but it was there nonetheless. From June 13th through June 21st, we were traveling to Missouri and Tennessee to see our families. I had half-planned, half-daydreamed that on that following Sunday, Maya and I would make Sean some dessert and we’d have a nice dinner together somewhere, and it would all work out fine. We still owe him that dessert.

Daddy’s not letting Maya fall in the pond

It dawned on us that something was off when we traveled that first day. I was wrangling Maya and Sean was hauling the car seat through various escalators at the airport and a very nice man stepped aside to let us stay together. In doing so, he also wished Sean a happy Fathers Day. We didn’t think a great deal of it till we got to Missouri and there was again mention of the holiday. It seemed strange that everyone was so early, so one of us (probably Sean) looked it up. Yup, sure enough, we were a week off.

Something’s funny over there

Luckily, Dad and Carol have a nice pond on their property and there’s a little pier built out into it. We tried to use that as the backdrop for Fathers Day photos. Maya was a little out of sorts from all the traveling and our scheduling was a off. The sun was at an unfriendly angle, and I am not the most adept photographer. I think we still managed a few good photos of Maya and Daddy.

D’awwww

Now’s a good time to mention that “Dada” was Maya’s first word and to this day continues to be one of her favorites. We let her put herself to sleep at night and often that means she’ll lay in her crib for several minutes talking to herself. Nearly always at some point we’ll hear something like, “Da? Da? Dada? Dadadadadada … Da-deeeeee …” It’s hilarious. I try not to take it personally.

We’re interrupting the catch-up posts because we’re too excited to wait. Sean and I are very happy to announce that we are having another kid! My due date is the 29th of January, but of course Maya was born a month early, so we’ll see.

Maya’s checking off her list

Because of our age, we had some extra testing done. From some of those test results, we already know the baby’s gender. Maya’s going to have a little brother.

So far, this pregnancy feels a lot like the last one. I’m mostly past the first trimester nausea and intense fatigue. My body is obviously no longer my own. It neither looks nor behaves as I expect. At least this time, I have the comfort of knowing that it all goes back to normal eventually.

Excited to be a big sister!

Since Maya was born so early, we’re handling things a little differently this time around. Here in a few weeks, we’ll start weekly progesterone shots to try and stave off preterm labor. Odds are good that I’ll have to put up with gestational diabetes again (the increased progesterone will increase my risk). There’s some other testing later on that we’ll deal with when the time comes. In short, we’ll do what we can and see what happens.

Mothers Day came and went a couple months ago. At this point, the details of the day are little hazy. I’m sure Sean tried to let me sleep in, and I’m guessing I wasn’t able to. I’d bet he tried to do a few extra things around the house so I wouldn’t feel like I had to.

Mothers Day 2014

We did get cleaned up and headed out to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden to take photos amongst the greenery and art. It was a hot day, so Maya’s cheeks turned rosy pretty quickly, and we all had a bit of a “dewy” look to us.

Mothers Day 2014

Anyone who has spent time playing with her will not be surprised by this, but Maya’s sole interest at Umlauf was the rocks along the outdoor paths. There were people there with dogs, a variety of accessible sculptures, and lots of other kids running around, but she had eyes only for gravel. One little boy even tried to show her the tiny turtle he had found. No interest.

How much longer do I have to do this?

She also had no interest in standing still for photos. Any shots that Sean managed to capture were a testament to *his* patience, not Maya’s.

2014 Stepping Stone

Sean and Maya also made me another stepping stone. They went to the craft store together and shopped for beads. These were all apparently of Maya’s choosing. I think they did well. We all agree though that next year we’re going to need a larger mold for the concrete. Maya’s feet barely fit as it is.

We’ve been really terrible about keeping up this site lately. We have too many great photos to share to skip to the present date though, so there will be a few catch-up posts over the next little bit to get us back to semi-realtime.

Maya Hunting for Eggs

Last Easter, Maya really couldn’t do much but be propped up and posed with some of the goodies her grandparents sent her. This year since she’s mobile and likes to be outside, we set up a very small egg hunt for her in our front yard.

Three things, two hands

If any of you have watched her play in the yard the past few months, you know that Maya often suffers from the “three things, two hands” problem. She’ll have a rock in one hand and a stick in the other and come across a very tempting acorn (or a leaf or a dead bug or another rock). You can clearly see the indecision on her face. The solution is to put one thing down and pick the new thing up and decide if it’s better. If not, she swaps back. If so, she moves on to the next decision point.

So went the Easter egg hunt.

Chocolate!

Maya was very excited about all the brightly colored eggs in the yard and went barreling after them right away. After getting one in each hand, she just kept finding new eggs and exchanging them for the ones she already had. She could have hunted the eggs indefinitely. I tried to convince her to put them in her basket, but that wasn’t something she was really interested in doing.

Inspecting the haul

The game got even more complex once we showed her there were things inside the eggs. Soon we had candy and opened eggs scattered all over the yard. Luckily, once she realized that what was inside the wrapper was chocolate, the hunting slowed down and she settled in to see how much candy we were going to let her get by with eating.

I may be deluded, but it seemed like the crop of bluebonnets this year was especially lovely. Unlike much of the rest of the country, we’ve had a fair amount of really great weather already this year, so a couple weekends ago, we dressed Maya up and took her out for her annual bluebonnet photos.

Maya in the bluebonnets – 16 months old

We seem to actually be getting a bit of a spring in Austin this year. The weather has been pretty mild (except for that one brief bout of near-golf-ball-sized hail) and so far, we’ve only had a couple days that even got close to 90.

Maya in the bluebonnets – 16 months old

Maya has lately been working on her frown. Anna calls it stink-eye. Whatever you call it, Maya’s a master. Half the time, I don’t think she’s especially unhappy about anything; it’s just something new and interesting to do with her face. Suffice it to say, we’re probably lucky we got any photos of her looking even semi-happy.

No, I will not hold the bluebonnet while you take a photo.

Speaking of stink-eye, this is my very favorite photo in the whole set. I get a distinct “to hell with these flowers; I’m gonna go play in the dirt” vibe on this one.

Maya loves to be outside. She whiles away a lot of time picking up rocks and sticks and assorted lawn detritus and relocating them to other parts of the yard.

Maya planting flowers

I love to plant and grow things, but time has become a pretty precious commodity and that was one of the things that’s fallen by the wayside in recent years. Given Maya’s love of the outdoors (and dirt in general), we decided to buy a few plants that we could plant together and try to keep alive through the brutal summer months.

We’ve had some really nice weather lately. However, when we decided to undertake this project, it was a little cooler and awfully windy. That didn’t stop us though. We got some soil and old pots together and slowly but certainly, Maya helped me load ‘em up.

You can see in these photos that she moved the soil one tiny nugget at a time, and often she found it much more enjoyable to wander off with her soil nuggets. Maya also didn’t entirely understand why should couldn’t just grab a handful of plant-life and yank. (Some plants were maimed, but so far all have survived.)

The garden!

Most of the rest of the yard still looks like a weedy hell of shameful neglect, but Maya’s little garden looks pretty good.

(And yes, some of you will notice that we got our grabby toddler a cactus. Frankly, I think it’s the perfect plant for her: it can protect itself and it thrives on neglect.)

I know last time we posted, we shared that Maya wasn’t interested in walking. Since then, her attitude has changed. She walks everywhere now, and even tries to run. We let her get into as much trouble as we can while still avoiding brain injury. Her little shins and knees are looking pretty rough at this point.

Maya is 15 months old today. She does a lot of really wonderful things that I’m happy to talk about. The first question people ask though is inevitably, “Is she walking yet?” The answer is no, but that doesn’t keep her from getting around in style.
Her Lolli and Pop got her a YBike Pewi for Christmas. Maya was a little wobbly at first but in a few short weeks had mastered walking, running, turning, backing up, and skidding to a stop by lightly dragging her feet. She’s to the point now where she can get on and off the YBike by herself too, which is interesting to watch because it has castors instead of fixed wheels, so it rolls very freely and in any direction.

It’s so much fun to watch her ride that thing. She can run all over the house, often for 20-30 minutes at a time. We don’t generally let her play with her toys while she’s on it, so she’ll ride back to her room, hop off her bike and play with her books for a while. Then she’ll hop back on, cruise around for a while, eventually stopping in her play room to work on her toys. Sometimes she even trucks it into the kitchen to her high chair and pats her chest to say “please”. I think she’s really enjoying her new degree of independence.

Wind chimes!

We take the YBike outside to play too. Maya is especially fond of riding it in the back yard (where we barely *have* a yard) so she can occasionally walk over and ding the wind chimes. She’s endlessly obsessed with leaves and sticks, so there are lots of stops to examine those things as well.

Leaves!

Since Maya had gotten so strong on the YBike, nanny Anna tried her out on the little alligator push toy that she had received as a hand-me-down from friends of ours. Where it would get away from her before, she’s mastered it now. It’s a little too heavy for her to turn on her own, but in a straight line, she’s solid, clacking down the hall, often at speed. Sometimes she even whips out a combination move: riding her YBike while pushing her alligators.

The alligators clack – you can hear her coming

When she’s not on her bike or walking her alligators, her little sponge-brain is working things out. She knows several signs (please, thank you, book, ball), can point to many of her body parts when asked about them (including her butt – HA!), pick a specific book or toy out of a pile on request, and gently pet the cats (each of whom she knows by name). She relates the photos on the wall to real people and relates the pictures in books to real objects. She has even recently been putting things away a little bit instead of working to remove every toy from every bin everywhere in the house. She is free with her affection and has a fantastic sense of humor.

No, Maya isn’t walking yet, but she learns so many things so quickly that we’re not worried. She’ll do it once she decides she wants to.

Happy holidays!!!!

Maya’s xmas 2013 composite