Asserting her Independence

Last weekend (prior to the Labor Day beach outing), Ray and I spent our first night away from Maia.  I brought Maia over to my sister's house on Saturday afternoon.  She is going through a minor separation anxiety phase right now (some days are worse than others), and so we stayed at Kath's together for a while, with her clinging to me tightly, intrigued as she was with her cousins and Aunt Kathleen.  Once she warmed up, she was ready for lunch and didn't even care that I was leaving. 

She did pretty well, outside of waking up a little too early (4 am).  Ray and I did alright too... we managed not to talk about her the entire evening, but I think we both had her on our minds a lot.

Over the last few weeks, Maia has been adding so many words to her vocabulary.  It seems like there is a new one every day:

• Doggie (dah-dee)
• Froggie (lah-dee)
• Duckie (duh-tee)
• More (maahtt)
• what cows say (mah!)
• Book (butt)
• Hello (ah-wah) 
• Eye (ai!)
• Cracker (cwa-ka)
• Maia (mah-dah)
• Light (bah-tee)
• Cheese (sheez)

... just to name a few...and our favorite, No (nuh! or a-nuh!). That one comes complete with the head shake and seems to be used a lot at meal times.  My kid who used to eat just about everything (except maybe meat) is turning down most things, just as I've decided I don't want to make her special meals anymore.

It's really interesting to see her taking more control over her world.  She is now putting objects in to things (put your toy in the box!), and on things (put the book on the shelf!).  Each of these little successes are met with lots of "yays!" and clapping on our part - hers too, really.  So for this brief little period of time, where she really wants to please us, we're trying to take advantage of it to help her develop good habits... Right? Right? Yeah... This too shall pass!