autumn blooms

Many of our bonsais seem happy wintering indoors. The Grewia keeps putting out blooms and the Barbados cherry still has its juicy looking cherry.

 

 

Parisian couture

My friend Rachel, who lives in Paris, knit this sweater for Maya before she was born (Maya, that is. Rachel was born much earlier). This year Maya is big enough to wear it and she LOVES it. It is, in fact, the only clothing that she plays with. She has found out she can see through it to her belly if she holds it just right.

 

 

Before school in the morning

 

When Daddy walks me to school.

Maya's 1st Halloween

 

 

Maya spent her 1st Halloween celebrating her best friend Alice's first birthday! There was black bean lasagna for dinner, followed by angel food cake, and lots of clapping.

Clairvoyance

One of the things that happen after having a child is clairvoyance. Here is what happened this morning. After we got up and I was making coffee while Maya was sitting on the floor looking at me make noise with tea spoon and cups I made a little song. I guess I was replaying in my head one of the interviewers asking Sara Palin why she does not hunt moose and she said that Caribou are much easier and that she van bring her kids to the hunt. So the song that came out was (to the tune of "little bunny foo foo")
Maya-Maya-boo
Looks like Caribou
Does not look like Moose
Likes to set things loose
And a few minutes later she spilled a full cup of coffee all over the rug and herself :)

Maya styles her hair

 

Maya likes to eat pears.

 

She also likes to use them like crayons on her hair.

 

 

Just a little extra styling,

and it's perfect! Don't touch a thing.

the missing pictures

I apologize for the lack of posts and pics in the last month+. To rectify the situation, there are some pics below including "Maya about to make a funny sound", "Maya in a box", "Maya with various winter clothing". Thanks for checking this blog!

 

 

 

 

cruisin

In less than a week Maya has gone from wobbly monopod stand to a firm bipedal cruising strategy. She can now cruise the length of the couch and return via the coffee table. She has also added clapping to her repertoire and she's too busy processing all this at night to actually sleep. She recently explained to me that finger foods like cubed cooked carrots, cheerios, and peas, are the new black, whereas pureed food is passe. It's so hard to keep up!

 

 

Spoon ninja

Maya has started to practice the ninja art of spoon numchuks, but so far she is only a threat to pureed carrots.

 

Our tiny teether has traded her astonished expression for a more pensive one, with her tongue conveniently positioned to be able to feel her ever-changing gumscape.

 

Zubchik

Maya is almost 8 months old and this morning, like finding an Easter egg, I felt a tiny, pokey corner of one tiny, sharp tooth. Maya likes to feel it a lot with her finger,but doesn't like the pain it causes her at night.

 

Babushka and Dedushka

Maya has been learning Russian, learning how to make vareniki, and learning how to bounce on the couch. She has also taught her grandparents to sing songs over and over and over again.

 

 

 

Maya the technophile

Maya likes to send instant messages to Daddy at work.





"OMG UR2silly, Daddy!"

Summer daze

Maya went swimming with her friend Alice in the kiddie pool today and gave us a great excuse to catch up on picture taking.

dinner of champions

We could tell Maya had been practicing. She ate her first serving of rice cereal like a champ.

chomping

We decided to start Maya on "solid" food (rice mush). We think she saw it coming, though, because she started doing this, a few hours before mealtime.

sitting with style

In addition to babbling in two syllables, Maya can sit on her own now, for a few minutes at a time before slowly toppling over. She is also showing interest in being mobile but only for really important things like the laptop, her favorite book and (sadly) the remote control.

While she is most often still astonished, she has added 'perplexed' to her facial expression repertoire, seen above, with a variation seen below.

First egg caught on film

To respond to the popular demand voiced by a miriad of tiny people inside our heads we decided to post the video of the bluebird laying the first egg. For those of you who don't have four and a half minutes and way too much ADHD to even last a minute here is a quick synopsis:
Chapter 1 - sitting.
Chapter 2 - being fed by a spouse.
Chapter 3 - heaving.
Chapter 4 - pushing.
Chapter 5 - is it out yet?
Chapter 6 - egg bowling.
Chapter 7 - sitting.

faces

Maya loves faces. She loves her Mirror Me! book that has a cartoon animal on one page making a face, and a mirror on the facing page. She looks at the baby in the mirror, and smiles, and then I tilt the book so she can see a Mama in the mirror, and she smiles.

But as much as Maya loves faces, she has been pretty much concentrating her own face into one main look-- astonished. Sometimes she deviates from astonished to practice happy, and occasionally, upset. But mostly she's astonished. Recently our friends came to visit and practiced some of these facial expressions with Maya.