Saturday, June 02, 2007


Vocab Update:

Maya's newest words are shoe, hat, more, down.

She seems to be working on cheese, balloon, and bird.

Maya is also signing for "more," but she tends to overuse the sign, even when she does not, in fact, want more of something (so far as we can determine). She did, however, frantically sign "More! More! More!" after tasting some of my chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream today. She kept signing it until she'd consumed about a third of the ice cream, in fact. It was funny.

Maya's first swim class was today. We all enjoyed it very much, even though one of the babies ralphed in the pool and forced the instructor to end class early. I felt bad for the kid's dad, whom I noticed silently hustling the kid out of there as everyone else was slowly getting out of the water looking miffed, like, "Huh? What happened? Someone pooped? What?" Oh well. I think babies have been turning their assorted bodily fluids loose in public pools since public pools have existed. No biggie. (But thank goodness it wasn't MY kid!)

A funny thing that is not unusual around here: This morning we three went out to breakfast. Maya was angelic and fun and sweet and charming, as she'd just woken up an hour before and was greeting her day with enthusiasm and joy. While we were eating, the elderly couple that had been sitting next to us left, and on their way out the woman dropped by our table to compliment us on Maya's good behavior. Later that day, we had a quick lunch at Rubio's, shortly after Maya had woken abruptly from a too-short nap and was thirsty, tired, cranky, and generally out of sorts. In the restaurant, she melted down on two occasions, and her wailing echoed throughout the place as Seth and I cringed. It actually wasn't, like, the most mortifying thing ever or anything---Maya IS one year old, after all---but certainly no one swung by to tell us what an utterly well-behaved little rugrat she was. And that's OK, because we don't need her to be in a good mood all the time, and Maya is only human, not a Perfect Little Girl Robot. It just strikes me kind funny that she is perceived differently by the general public depending on where she is in her day and to what extent she's had it, so to speak.

One thing that's consistent, though: People think she's awfully cute. How's this for proof? Last night, at dinner at a pizza place, Maya so thoroughly charmed the teenaged girl taking our order that I received a second pizza slice totally free of charge. "Don't worry about it," whispered the girl, sliding the pizza my way, then bestowing a huge shiny grin on Maya. Then, today (at Rubio's), I ordered a milk for Maya and the same thing happened! "Here it is, don't worry about it," said the guy taking our order, slipping a half-pint of milk onto our tray. And sure enough, no milk appeared on our receipt. I mean, I wish I had half the power over other people that Maya has! That two-toothed, pink-lipped smile of hers can do anything!

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