Maia’s been puttin’ on the charm lately.

It’s ridiculous how cute she can be.  When she wakes up from a nap, whoever goes to bring her out becomes her security blanket.  She clings to that person, and seeing the other parent becomes an occasion for shyness.  So Chris will be holding her, bring her out to see me, and she’ll keep her head tilted way down, looking up at me through her lashes until I say, “Hi, Maia!”  Then she turns her head and buries it into his chest to hide her smile, half turning to look back at me, then nuzzling against him again.  So I keep speaking to her, and finally she leans away from his chest, holding her arms out for me.  Amazing.

She did the same thing for our CPR instructor, staring at him while he taught us and then totally burying her face against me, with a dimpled smile, when he looked at her.  But then she kept returning her attention to him.

She’s taken to making a gurgling, purring sound, too. When she’s happy and not talking, she starts to purr, gazing at us expectantly.  Have you ever heard a grown man try to purr at his daughter?  AWESOME.  Of course, I’m great at purring, so Maia and I will sit there and “converse” with one another like kitty cats.  It’s probably one of the coolest things ever, and somewhere, my 16 year old self is like GROWN UP TATIANA, YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME.

She laughs a lot, over things that make no sense to me.  Chris said earlier, as he stood in front of our newly-installed air conditioner (a whole other story!), “it’s cold, BRRRRR!”  Maia, sitting on the bed with me, started laughing and laughing.  So he said “BRRRRR!” again and she laughed again.  It’s just silly, and awesome, that such a thing amuses her so much.

Sometimes I lie on my back and pull her onto my chest, and she snuggles into my neck, just relaxing and cuddling with me.  It’s so precious, and so right, that I find myself wondering how I ever though I was “living” when she wasn’t a part of my world.  I know that’s kinda stupid.  I just can’t believe how  fulfilled and happy I am to have her with us.

Then there’s stuff like this:

MAIA YOU ARE KILLING ME.  The red-rimmed eyes, because you just got done crying over the fact that you ate all of your watermelon.  The little fingers used to soothe yourself.  The upside down bear.  I mean really, snuggling with a stuffed animal? Aren’t you too young to do something that freakin’ cute?!

I dunno.  I mean, she’s always been amazing, but right now she’s almost unbearably wonderful.  Sure, there are the temper tantrums over not being allowed to eat an entire watermelon, and the separation anxiety that results in us being attached to one another for almost all of her waking hours (I gave her the watermelon to distract her from me…) but whatever, once she’s asleep I miss her, I long to hold her close and bury my face in her sweaty little curls (her head gets so hot when she’s tired) and kiss her big chubby cheeks.