I realized the last post didn’t have enough good shots of Maia or her smile, plus our camera is on the fritz so the good ones weren’t even ours…here are a few more.

Maia is sure fun and sure challenging these days, definitely exerting her independence…but at least that’s normal…supposedly.

Today she went with Luke and I to the midwife and I got flu shots as Luke taught her “Oh, shot!” which came out like you-know-what.  Now she’s repeating it over and over.  We were laughing hard while staring at each other with huge eyes 5 minutes earlier when for no reason she threw a book on the ground, yelled NO and tantrumed on the ground.  Ah, parenthood.

Here are some good ones from the last couple months.

Her two favorite activities: naked time and reading. Besides screaming, a current favorite for all…NOT!

I often find her here, in the nook in her closet.

Halloween: Maia was a flamenco dancer.  She decided that day she hated cameras so this was a miracle shot.

She was going to be a dog but refused the hat so we used the flamenco hand-me-down.  Here I snuck it on her as she looked at a pic of her favorite springers (Love you, Rob, Leslie, Juan, and Deuce).

We’re both growing!

I’m not that good at this blog thing, am I?

Here are a few summer highlights:

At the cabin at Shaver Lake with lots of friends, including Baby Libby, and a fall out the front door on her face

Riding Daddy’s scooter with her best buds, Luke and Dylan, after a swim at One Mile

Camping at Lake Siskyou–see Mount Shasta? (yes, she did just eat sand, but when not swimming, the dirt was caked all over!)

Some new favorite toys: the baby and the stroller…and the curtains.

Peekaboo!

And popsicles! (Actually, she preferred her kale chips first…weird, eh?)

And I just had to show you my fig fruit leather, too

Plus, Maia had lots of naked time at Mimi and Papa’s (I’ll save those pics for when she brings her first boyfriend home).

Now I’m going to enjoy another full night’s sleep since come January we’ll be back to the zombie life with Reid baby #2! I’m tired just thinking about it!

No, we’re renting.  But we moved to a cool new place a block away. Meanwhile, (and of equal importance), Luke graduated from the Master’s Program, two good friends got married, I finished my job (for good, got laid off), and Maia is just doing more and more cute things. Oh, and I was uncreative in gifting for four events honoring Luke in 3 weeks: grad, b-day, anniversary, Father’s Day…not fair!

Here I was trying to get some packing done, so I let Maia play with oat groats and trash the kitchen:

Christine got married!

Graduate with distinction, Master’s in Kinesiology (did I spell that right?)

Party in the new backyard:

Some new toys: pool…

This time she got in before I could get a suit on her…who cares?! (In new backyard)

Admiring her dancing reflection

Sandbox…

Sprinklers!

A new dancing rug (OK, that’s more for me…thanks Ma and Pa)

(Sorry about the neckache…my mom hasn’t figured out to keep camera straight either.)

And just some other cute ones Luke got while borrowing our friends’ good camera to take some shots on the Sac river for an anniversary outing.

The kissing face:

Pelicans and herons on the river. We love where we live!

Maia is busy busy these days. The title suggests adult-like activities

She’s currently very into wearing beads. She wakes up, finds them, and puts them on…and could wear them all day if I didn’t insist on taking them off for outings or we didn’t get tangled up while diaper changing.

Maia is talking lots. She says lots of B words like ball, bubbles, balloon, book, bath, brush, banana, bunnies (as in the Annie’s cheese kind), beads, Beth (yes, that came before Mama), and “Lambie” is simply “Bee.”  Also Thank you and yes, and a current favorite is ice, as in what she is holding below in order to make it through another hard teething afternoon and a lip owie from scraping it on a rock (she was trying to use it to break her fall…).  And notice the beads again.

Another new word is E-I-E-I-O, so we went to the petting zoo today.

Maia’s also feeding herself, not just goats:

Almost forgot…she’s completely obsessed with the song and music video on Putumayo Kids called No More Monkeys Jumping on the bed. We havent’ yet got good footage of her waving her finger and doing the jumping sign and hitting her head, etc. which is surprising because we even wake up to her doing it in our face, waiting for us to starting singing the song!  She is so fun!!

And that last bonk was on the chair Luke didn’t want me to get because “it’s too hard and dangerous for a baby.” “Luke, are we going to put bumpers on the walls and table legs too?” Maybe now we are.

Maia turned 1 last week! Here are some photos from the little party we had.

Wow, 2 posts in one week. I couldn’t resist showing you Maia with her new toy: learning to walk with the pusher/car thing.

She can put stuff in the little trunk, too.

When she’s REALLY practicing walking, she goes back and forth between me and Luke or Suzie and then gets a huge hug and kiss with each arrival. She’s at about four steps now!

The girl loved her beans and tofu. Check out the progression:

Ticked she has no beans, even though there is sweet apple on the tray. No thanks.

Ah, there’s the beans. Thanks, Mom.

And tofu, she almost chokes eating it so fast.  Still no apples.

Here’s Maia’s new buddy, Libby MacGibbon:

And two fun videos, playing with Mimi and playing fetch with herself in Fresno last weekend.

She discovered the stairs there last weekend and now back at home she is trying to duplicate all the fun on one stepstool…

Oh, and one more, cute dress, cute smile.  Yay Maia!

Maia is approaching her 1st birthday and she’s got lots of skills to prove it.

Soccer: she loves to play with balls (in fact “ball” may be her third word, after “uh-oh” and “meow” which may not totally count anyway…are they in the dictionary?). She somehow figured out the black and white one is for kicking! Luke has been bragging to the soccer coaches at work.

This next video I cut up because it was mostly Luke playing…

We are taking swim lessons and she is learning to go under! Notice the mini flippers?

Climbing is fun, even when we are exhausted.

Learning Spanish…actually Maia just loves to spread these flash cards all over the house.  (I found two grammatical errors in the set!)

And of course standing and wanting to walk all the time! Our backs hurt. I had three videos of walking (with help) but one was naked and two were sideways (Luke hasn’t figured out videotaping apparently, it’s not like a camera…).  So here’s just an evening  shot with some standing, dancing, and uh-oh.  She is at her wildest right before bed!