Easy as ABC

Hey everybody!  We've been busy around these parts lately being crafty!  In order to preserve my personal sanity, I was looking for something that might lend a bit of structure to our otherwise unstructured days, and since little bit will not be heading off to school this year (although we are considering a part time daycare situation to give her some social outlet-thoughts and advice welcome), we need something new at home.  I've started choosing a letter (and sometimes a number and color if I am really on the ball) for each week.  It's not something that I have to plan for.  It's something I can do on the fly, and then just enjoy coming up with/finding stuff online to do that relates somehow to that letter.  We've started out the last two weeks by sitting down and just sketching out things that start with our letter of the week, then Maya colors them and circles all of the letters she can find that are that week's letters (sorry, i didn't take a pic of this part).  She also traces the capital and lowercase versions of the letter.  Then I just come up with some activities that go with the letter that we can do that week.  I find that just this little bit of structure challenges my brain and I am MUCH more creative than I would have been with no structure!  I've also used video segments from Sesame Street (on YouTube) (you can find both number and letter specific videos that are very short and are often from the episodes we watched as kids!).  Here are some of the things we've done as a result of our Letter of the week activity.  We're also trying to learn the phoenetic sound with each letter, but we're not pushing it--just trying to keep things FUN because I think that's the best way for her to learn, and before long, she will have to be in a much too serious learning environment anyway :( . . .

The letter C

Crazy colorful cookies:  a batch of sugar cookies divided into four balls, each colored a different color with food coloring, rolled into snakes (she loved that part), then rolled together (think of making clay beads--it's just like that!) and pressed/twisted/braided together--whatever!  Then you just cut them off and let little bit put them on the pan (and squash several of them).

Who wouldn't want this little face helping them in the kitchen?!  Okay, I confess, sometimes I don't want quite so much help, but I'm trying to learn to enjoy having a shadow because (and yes I am SOOOO tired of hearing it), it will be over so soon and then I will miss it. . . I know.  I know. 

Then we made some Colorful Cards:

I saw an activity on Pinterest using chalk pastels, which I just happened to have (thank you Katie F!).  You shave off bits of the pastels into a shallow amount of water, then just lay your paper right on top of the water, and it makes all kinds of cool designs.  Between each paper we would just pick a few more colors to add to the mix.

We mounted our papers on some folded paper to make cards.  SO easy and she loved dipping the paper into the water and seeing what colors we created.  My only advice would be shave LOTS of the pastel into the water for a more dramatic result, we went easy and the resulting shades were pretty light. 

Now Blogger won't let me post any more pictures so we'll talk about the letter W next time!

First Finger Painting

Awesome family members sent us some non-toxic, washable finger paints recently, and a friend sent some throw-away plastic smocks, so Maya and I had a crafty morning.  Right after she got started I had the thought that we should use a canvas to capture Maya's first attempt at painting forever.  I'm so glad we did--it turned out GREAT!

 getting warmed up . . .

 This is messy!

Can I paint the other side?

A new color!

How does this stuff taste?

Ew, it feels squishy!

Clean up is FUN!

Water, water, WATER!

I forgot to take a picture of the final product, but she's clearly a little artist in the making :).  She also sang the entire time she painted.  FUN!

What's in a Word?

Less than a month ago, I was starting to worry about Maya's language development.  She was still barely speaking, and I was concerned that the two-language environment might be kind of skitzing out her poor little noggin'.  I had heard or read somewhere that kids who learn two language at once hit their language milestones more slowly.  On April 22nd I made a list of all of the words that she could say:

1. mama
2. dada
3. Laura (a friend's name)
4. shoes
5. no
6. baby
7. amen
8. ooooh
9. night-night

Now, less than a month later, she's got all of these new words:

1. toes
2. bird
3. book
4. please
5. peas
6. cheese
7. banana
8. Hannah (A friend's name)
9. stroller
10. water
11. Isla (Another friend's name)
12. stairs
13. row (as in row, row, row your boat--her favorite song)
14. nose
15. yah
16. bow

Plus all the words I'm sure I'm forgetting, or can't understand. . . Silly me, I was worried about her not speaking much--hah!  Now she's repeating all kinds of words that we say to her.  The day before yesterday, she said her first Arabic word--woo hoo!  She said, "tai" which means, "come", then today I'm pretty sure she added water ("mai") and let's go ("yalla") to her vocabulary.  Now that I've stopped worrying about her ability to speak, anybody know what to do about her being pigeon-toed and dragging her feet when she walks? :) 

Walking and Talking

Maya has (finally) taken off this week.  She is officially walking!!  Our internet at home is too slow to be able to upload video, and I've been sick most of the week and didn't feel up to venturing out somewhere in search of faster internet, so you'll just have to imagine how cute she is walking all around.  At first, she would really only walk if she was too busy carrying something to realize that she was walking.  But now, she seems to prefer her new method of mobility over crawling (and she still really likes to carry stuff around).

Another thing she started doing not long ago is this:

She's asking to be picked up.  She doesn't do this often, but each time that she does, it melts my heart!

She's also saying two words:  Mama and Dada.  We were quite excited when we realized that she also recognizes two expressions in Arabic: "blow kisses" and "Do you want water?"  Pretty exciting to watch your child respond so quickly and naturally to a language that has taken you years to even semi-grasp.  It's true what the research says--kids can learn language sooooo much faster if we expose them while they are young.  I'm so very grateful that Maya is going to grow up hearing many languages and knowing people from many cultures (even if she does turn out a little bit "weird" by American standards).

Personality

More and more of Maya's personality is coming out each day. 

 More and more of her teeth are coming out too.  Not quite as much fun . . .

 I think she learned this from Laura (who lives with us currently, whom she really likes).  At first, she would go around each morning, making this face, looking for Laura.  She's gotten so many laughs from people when she does this, that now she does it just because she likes it when people laugh at her (sound like her dad much?!). 

 "The Kissy Face" head on.

 How can this not make you smile?

 Her first braid--doesn't she look SOOOO BIG?!

New Camera

Well, I have an amazing new camera thanks to the deep generosity of family, and it's sooo fun! Having a baby has made me really long for a good camera to capture this sweet girl that is just constantly changing and growing. Earlier this week I was packing up Maya's clothes and found a sweet hand-me-down dress that I couldn't resist putting her into. So we had a little Christmas photo shoot.

11 Months Old

Can you believe it? This little squash is just one month from her first birthday! These pictures were taken around her 11 month birthday. We are gearing up for a super fun cupcake-themed birthday party for her on December 4th. I truly can't believe it was only a year ago when we were wondering when she would be born, what she would look like, etc. It seems like she has been a part of our family forever. What in the world did we do with all of the free time we had before we had a baby? And what did we do to entertain ourselves? She keeps us busy and keeps us laughing.

Maya has a few new tricks:

She says, "Mmmmhh" when you give her a bite of food.

She has learned how to clap!

When you ask her what a puppy says, she makes a little barking sound.

Last, but not least, If you click your tongue at her, she clicks back.

For Her Daddy

Maya's Daddy is in Mississippi and we are in Kansas. She is missing him. He is missing her. Today in the car she was riding in the back seat by herself. Out of nowhere I hear this little clicking noise I've never heard her say before. She went along for quite a while, and throughout the evening, each time we clicked at her, she would click back at us. I thought her daddy might enjoy seeing and hearing her newest trick. (and a little bit of her chatter, too)

Changes In Diet

doe eyes

Yep, that's a little grass in the corner of her mouth. And do you see that leaf in her hand? About 20 minutes later when Grammie was trying to feed her breakfast, Maya kept gagging and gagging. I had cut up some melon into TINY pieces and thought, surely she's not gagging on those itty bitty pieces of melon. She hardly ate any breakfast and as I came into the kitchen to get her down from the high chair she looked up at me and I saw something in her mouth. I fought the iron jaws of death and did a finger sweep. Yeah, you see that leaf in her hand? It was in her mouth all through breakfast! No wonder she was gagging! The thing was probably poking her in the throat! How did she keep it in there all that time?!

Thankfully, I caught her before she put this critter in her mouth (it was way bigger than it looks in this picture, if you can believe that!). Nasty. More eating grass, but isn't the lighting nice? This is what we do when Mommy wishes she were still sleeping--we do a sunrise photo shoot in the grass. The lighting is really amazing at this hour. . .

No way my kid can be this old already. No way. I'm in complete denial. She just looks sooooo grown up here it hurts! And these? Yes, they are shoes. This is the first time I have purchased shoes for Maya. She loves to walk all the time, and there are some places you'd just rather not have your sweet baby's skin touching, you know? We've been pretty laid back about barefooting it all the time, but we decided it's time. And since she's outgrown all the cute shoes she was given as a teeny baby, we went to WalMart and got these little sparkly ones. She likes looking at them, but not wearing them. Which I'm okay with. Because I am in denial that she is big enough to wear them anyway. I was feeling really sad about how big they look and how big she is, then to show scale, I laid them next to the bread (below) and then felt much better about the whole thing. I wonder how big my shoes would look next to a loaf of bread . . .

Maya With Her Grandpa

These two are buddies!

The Inchworm Crawl

Maya is officially Inchworm crawling! According to Nana, she started yesterday in the nursery, but today, we've seen her inching all over the living room. So far, she is most motivated to crawl to either an electric cord, a laptop, or a tower of stacking cups (which she demolishes each time). For weeks we've been encouraging her and trying to teach her to crawl. Now that she's crawling, we've realized, it's the end of the world as we know it. . .

Pink Hippo

This is a shameless photo shoot of my (adorable) child. I couldn't help it. It was one of those times when I could see the pictures in my head and I had to do a quick shoot (and someone with a decent camera was nearby so I had the chance to shoot them). Whenever she wears this bathing suit, for some reason, I always think of a pink hippo.