Maya's Travels

Dear Mai,

I remember when you were probably about 8 months old. Maybe younger. Mommy was worried you weren't talking enough. Until you are 2 years old I think we'll always worry and be extra cautious about stuff that could be related to your Thyroid issue.

Fast forward 8 months. You are a talking machine.

Before we left for Ohio a few weeks back, we thought you probably had about a 20 word vocabulary. On the drive back to Granville from Toledo Momma and I talked about how it seemed like your vocabulary just exploded! So what did we do? We tried to document the words. Give us a break ok. It is a boring drive from Toledo to Granville. This was a good way to kill sometime.

I think we stopped at 36 words! These are words that we think you say on a regular basis and know what they mean. To be honest, we are probably cutting your short on 36. I'll see if I can remember all of them at the end of this post.

One of the cutest things you learned in Ohio was to say "CHEEEESE" whenever we want to take a picture. In fact, anytime you see a phone / camera pointed your direction you say "CHEEESE" and get this awesome photo face going.

Another awesome thing is you can say "Ohio!" It comes out more like "HIYO" but we know what you mean. On the way back to Toledo from Dearborn you must have said "HIYO!" 3,958 times. Suprisingly enough I don't think I was "cuted" out yet.

When we got back to Granville you said "HIYO!" over and over for Grandma too. Grandma was impressed and impressed with your vocabulary in general. She said something to the effect of "next up Maya, you need to learn to string two words together." Within 2 hours you were saying "YEA! HIYO!" I'm a little worried I'm going to have two girls asking me to move back east now. Mean Daddy is making Team Castañeda stay in Seattle for now.

You are just a parrot these days! I thought we had some time before that happened. We should probably start watching our mouths at this point. It's probably a lost cause though. Mamma and Dada curse worse than a drunk sailor when we drive. Maybe we should just teach "there's a time and a place for everything" type stuff instead.

But the part I'm most impressed with is your comprehension. You might have a close to 40 word vocabulary that you speak but you understand way, way, way more than that. We can give you commands like take this sock to Mommy or put your blocks in their basket, or put the cup in the drawer or put the shirt in the basket and you do it! You do them all! Exactly like we want you to! It's pretty amazing. Sometimes I don't even understand how you can possibly understand so much. I think "Who taught you that?"

We had a final walk through on our house this afternoon. Your room is already painted kid style. We have been trying to decide if we are going to repaint it or what to something more your / our style. You walked in the room, started looking at the animals on the wall and pointed to the giraffe and said "Graffe." WHAT? We have never heard you even attempt to say that before? We always point to giraffes in your books when we read them to you and say "That is a giraffe" but you've never repeated that word. It was pretty cool Mai.

And even more than your vocabulary you can point to your (or someone else's) eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, head, hair. You can do a few animal sounds like Lion, Snake, Monkey, Dog, Cat, Duck, Pig, Cow and Elephant. At this rate we'll be starting matrix addition and Japanese next month.

You're also starting to give hugs and kisses good bye. You'r definitely selective on who gets what but you get the idea. I think this is one of my favorite things even though I'm consistently on the "no" list for these activities.

We're having a blast Mai. Once you start stringing phrases and sentences together I'm going to start teaching you some movie quotes. How cool would it be to have a baby say "I'll be back" as she puts on some shades? Very cool. The answer is very cool Mai.

Ok, let's try to list the vocabulary:

Eat
More (pronounced "Mo")
Please (pronounced "Pease")
No (By far, your favorite and most repeated obnoxious little word)
Yes
Stuck
Dog
Duck
Cat
Mommy
Dada
Grandma (pronounced "G'ma")
Walk
Coat (pronounced "Dote")
Shoes
Hat
Hi
Bye
Uh Oh
Sock
Ohio
Yuck
Down
Milk
Baba
Cracker
Block
Music (pronounced "Mukic")
Teeth
Cheese
That
There
Book
Keys
Dot
Torrential (ok she doesn't really say this. I was just trying to see if you were paying attention)
Rock
Giraffe (new word!)
Paper (pronounced "p'per")
Pee Pee
Poo Poo
Goose
Diaper (pronounced "diyapper")

43! And I'm probably missing some!

Love you to pieces Mai Tai!

Daddy

Dear Maya,

I think we can officially call April 10, 2013 as your first day "walking." Just under 13 months. On that day you took your first 5 - 7 steps solo without holding on to anything. Up until then we could get you to take one step or two if we were lucky but no more than that. After that you would tumble to the ground and kick it to your comfortable hyper-speed crawl.

I came home from work that Wednesday and you took like 5 steps to me . Then 7 back to Mommy. Then crawled the rest of the night. For the rest of the week that is pretty much how it went.

The following weekend is when you started to really get your walking feet down but as Mommy but it: "She's not real good at it."

You probably already understand this but you're going to need some tough skin to hang with this family.

You're still pretty cautious with it but walking is definitely your preferred method of travel these days.

The other day you started into a sprint. You fell but got right back up and were at it again. To paraphrase Rocky Balboa, That's how winnings done Mai. It's about getting back up and moving forward.