Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Status report: Maia, month 15

So Miss Maia the Mischievous is fifteen months old. She had her checkup yesterday, and was pronounced fit and healthy and linguistically advanced. She's at 75th percentile for weight and 90th for height. She's starting to talk, walking competently, understanding a lot...so funny and so happy and so capable.


Her vocabulary stands at...well, let's see. Mama, Dada, more, milk ("mohhhh"), bath ("BA!"), bye-bye ("ba-ba"), cheese ("tzchse"), shoes ("tzchsu"), star ("da"), moon ("moo"). Yes, she also learned "moon" before she learned, say, "cow." (Though she can tell you what a cow says: "Boo.") What can I say? We like science more than farming. She says "down," but more often "downdown," especially when we're talking about going downstairs, and plenty of "yahyah" and "nanana." And, just barely, the sweetest hesitant "baby" you ever heard.

She can point to various body parts, and likes to touch our noses and hear the different sounds they make, and investigate what new people's noses sound like. (Be warned if you come to our house.)  She's gotten quite good at manipulating small objects--she often hands hairs or detritus to me to dispose of, though she'll also put things in the garbage if asked. She's taken to putting raspberries and olives and anything else that will fit over her fingers as she eats them.


She's still majorly into putting things into her mouth, which is to be expected but is annoying since Chloë's into toys with small parts. Nursing is getting more troublesome, partly because she seems to be using her teeth a bit when latching on (though not so much I can call it a bite) and partly because now that she's mastered shaking and nodding her head, she likes to do it all the time, including when she's got a mouthful of R.I.N.D.S. I want to try weaning her, but it's so hard to say no when every day I come home from work to her squealing "Mama! Mama!" and toddling toward me as fast as her legs will take her, and as soon as I pick her up demanding, "Mohhhh!" with a finger stuck into the R.I.N.D.S. "You want juice?" I asked her this evening. "Cheese?" She just looked stridently at me until I behaved. She'll make a great mom one day.

She and Chloë (or, as she prefers to be known these days, Sarah) still get along very well together. They play together, sort of, and enjoy being in the new sandbox together and poking around in the garden (though Maia tends to stand in the path and block Chloë and me in until I maneuver around to bodily move her). She's still stealing Chloë's sippies, but she'll give them back when asked, and if Chloë says something like "I want to try Maia's popsicle" she'll be right there, offering her popsicle by trying to stick it down Chloë's throat. Chloë just grins and accepts it.


She has to be coaxed or distracted into diaper changes, but the coaxing can include having her get the wipe, or doing her new favorite RollerCoasterMommy move, hoisting her up so her legs are around my neck and then letting her fall backwards until she's horizontal and I catch her in my arms (well) before she hits the ground. She likes being naked, and continues to love her baths. She keeps trying to climb in while I'm still getting the water going. Afterwards, she struggles to be put down while I struggle to dry her, and then I call "Naked baby alert!" and she toddles out to find her daddy while I finish with Chloë.

 She's become quite the ham lately. The other day we harvested some food from the garden, including a monster zucchini that I have yet to turn into zucchini bread. When I wasn't looking, she grabbed it and started gnawing at it. When I went for the camera, she did this:


She's still waking up in the night, more recently a couple of times a night, which I've got to train myself to train her out of. Ugh. I suspect weaning will help.

She gets picky about the funniest things--she won't accept broken crackers, for instance, though half a cookie is perfectly fine. When we brush her teeth, she then wants the toothbrush so she can try herself, but she must be on the floor for it, not in my arms. Chloë wanted to play dress-up once with swim diapers (among other things), and now she picks them up and puts them on one leg and toddles around with a blue blob stuck to her leg all around the house. She's such a funny girl. She thinks we're funny, too. She laughs a lot. Her baby laugh is one of the best sounds this house will ever hear.

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