Dearest Maia,
When someone asks me your age, I’m not sure I’ll answer in months anymore. You are now one and a half years old. Seriously. SERIOUSLY. It feels like you were never an infant, helpless and still and so endlessly needy; I don’t remember those days as anything other than a haze, as if I dreamed them and they never actually happened. It makes me miserable to think that these days might end up that way too. So I try to document everything.
I document you dancing to “Sweet Caroline”.
I document you eating toast in your daddy’s computer chair like a big girl.
I document you being a ninja…
… and sleeping in the car with your big, pouty lips.
You’re so helpful around the house. Everything we do, you also want to be a part of, whether it’s sweeping the floor (when we give you a little dustpan & brush of your own), cleaning in general (if you get a paper towel, you promptly begin swiping it over the nearest flat surface), or carrying out the garbage. In fact, let’s talk about that garbage thing a little more.
You see, Maia, this is the month you’ve decided that temper tantrums are a Fabulous Way To Make a Point (your father and I are disinclined to agree with you on this). You threw a tantrum for well over an hour one day because you wanted the door to the balcony closed when daddy wanted it open. And then you threw one for forty five minutes because — get this — you couldn’t lift the bag of garbage. Maia. MY PAPAYA. I always make two bags of garbage: one that’s full for me, one that’s a little less full and lighter for you, and we go stomping down the hallway together happily but no, not this day, THIS day, you wanted to carry both of those bags and damned if anything was gonna stop you. Of course, then something did stop you and it was very, very dramatic, it was cats sleeping with dogs dramatic, and all I could do was try not to laugh at how ridiculous you were being.
Speaking of dogs! You love ours. You think they’re the neatest things in the world and you love to love them. You’re “nice” to them, then you’ll go “Mmmmm,” the way you do when you want to be affectionate and lean down to hug them. Sometimes you try to pick them up, but that doesn’t go over to well. You’ll run around the house yelling “DAAH! DAAH!” and smacking your stomach or thighs when you want to find them. When you find them, Joss is “DAH!” and Buffy is “DAH-DEH!” You seriously kill us with the cute.
Something else cute? You like to do a stompy dance. In fact, we could say you just like to stomp and that would be pretty accurate. You’ve taken lately to doing this huge, wide-legged stomp that borders on a split, and tottering around the house that way until you fall on your butt. You also love Ke$ha’s “Take It Off”, and well, when we combine those two things, we get this:
There’s so much to say about you, Maia. But at the end of the day, when I think of you, I think of the most beautiful girl in the world, one with an inquisitive, almost intimidating sort of intelligence, who adores life and living and and everything about the world she inhabits.
Including chickens.
All our love,
Mama & Dada
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