Maia-isms

The truth is - I lost one camera over the summer and the other one wasn't working... so I have few pictures of Maia, (or Matthew) for July and August. At the end of August, I got the one camera working (sort of) so I have some pictures from the end of summer - but they aren't the best. Sometimes they are just with my cell phone - and those tend to be blurry for me. In any case - this gives you a glimpse at Maia this summer and now that I have a working camera and a working router, I should be all set. (Famous last words.)

Maia enjoys playing the piano. Recently, she has taken her stuffed animal 'stack' toy (like the plastic ring kind) and taken the top three rings (this is piglet, eeyore and tigger)... She stacks them on the piano bench, hikes it up there, and then plays. She has very good balance, so the first time I was a little nervous she might fall as she climbed on the bench, and then scaled Mount Pooh. I really don't worry about that anymore, at least not on the piano bench.

Matthew has these boots for scouting/camping, etc. Maia LOVES to wears other people's shoes, including these! As you can see, they go up to her knees... but they are rather light weight, so she was able to walk in them... sort of!

Did I tell you Maia can read?? These two pictures are from Matthew's birthday celebration. She took one of his new hats and starting reading one of her books - I swear, she is a GENIUS!

Now on to what I like to call Maia-isms. Sometimes when Maia does something we say it was just 'so Maia'. She makes us laugh and it really quite funny. Let's see what I can remember! :)

Just today Maia came up to me and said ... ooooo ooooo, aahhh, aahhh... and then she said, MONKEY. I didn't know she could do that. A few times today, she was just walking around saying, ooooo oooooo, aahhh, aahhh. Made me smile.

Recently, she has gotten in to Dora the Explorer and Diego. The way she asks to watch it is so cute. I wahch Dorwah. I wahch Dego. All the while nodding as if to convince me so I won't shake my head no. :)

Now she also likes the movie Finding Nemo. I wahch Nemo. Fishies!

When we are leaving the house and I grab my purse, she says, "My purse". She doesn't ask it like a question, but what she wants is her purse to take with us. Sometimes I know where it is, and sometimes I don't. I try to just leave it in the car now so we have it and if she ever wants it in the house, then I know where to find it! Once we get to the car, she also wants her Gasses. Her sunglasses. Word to the wiser-than-I. Don't buy kids sun glasses at the dollar store (actually, 4 pair for a dollar....) they fall apart when you look at them. Really. I bought some Kids safe glasses at Target and she hasn't broken them yet. I am quite confident she COULD, but she is learning to be a bit more gentle these days and so far they've survived a few months of Maia.

We call Matthew "Chew". Additionally, his middle name is Ryan. Nickname - Chewchi Ryan. Maia now goes around calling him Chewchi Ryan but it sounds more like Chewchi Whyan.


She also wonders where he is when he is gone. Where'd Chew go, she'll ask? Now, what I find so cute about this is... does anyone know the movie Top Gun? When they are lost in a bogie fight and Tom Cruise asks Where'd he go, where'd he go? And Goose says, Where'd WHO go??

Maia says, Where'd CHEW go JUST like Goose says in that scene - I love it! It cracks me up!


She would live on Fruit Snacks if I would let her. Right now, she has Dora Fruit Snacks. She says Fruit snack like this: BOOT SNACK. Dorwah boot snack, while nodding her head to try to convince me again...


She can HOP now. Before it was one footed and sort of like a weird skip. Now both feet leave the ground at the same time. She's JUMPED off things for months... but actual hopping has just occurred. Neat!

She loves to 'help. She says, I helper. Of course what this really means is she 'helps' UNFOLD the laundry and hand it to me, and take it out of drawers, and throw things in the trash can that are NOT trash... There are times she actually does help - but more often than not right now, it's something that really isn't helpful, but it's cute nonetheless. :)


She realizes now when it's getting dark. She'll say, dahk Mommy. It's dahk. Jammies. Night night. Like, she's telling me, it's dark now, get me dressed and put me to bed! And when I ask if that's what she wants, she'll run for her room for her jammies! She's in for a shock when it starts getting dark at school before I ever even pick her up after work!


And one of my all time favorites... we have a pretty standard 'night night' routine. One of the last steps of this routine is me singing Jesus Loves Me to her after we pray. We've sung this since Kazakhstan - so it's really a nightly thing. If she really doesn't want to go to bed... a newer phenomenon... and I start singing Jesus Loves Me, she'll rather violently shake her head while saying... No Jesus, No Jesus.


She has also done this once or twice when I sing it in the daytime - and she thinks it means night night time. (Even though I explain it's not bedtime...) Once or twice she has flat out refused to let me sing it, mid-day, for fear of bedtime.

Update from earlier. :) Last but not least... I just wanted to say - my earlier post today may not have been exactly what I wanted it to be. If I sounded ultra mad, I really wasn't. I hate wasting money on something so silly, but it's really just a day in the life. Life happens, which is why there's never enough money, the house is never clean enough, I never have enough time, my best laid plans may never happen, or take much longer to happen than I anticipate.

Here's an example - I left for the grocery store to buy balloons, etc. for Matthew's birthday. I left Maia home with Matthew, my brother and my dad. No problem. Grocery store - 2 miles away. I realize at some point early in the short trip to the store that my cart was vibrating. I check my phone. 3 missed calls from home. I assume they want me to get some chips or soda or something we hadn't talked about - so I got to the front of the store for reception and called home. Matthew starts off... "OK, I had to call poison control... but she's OK." What??? She had gotten hold of a Silicone Packet, torn it open and eaten it/some before Matthew could get to her. (You know the drill.. Maia put that down! So, she moves faster and popsit in her mouth all the faster.) Matthew had been on the computer in the same room as Maia, and I have no idea where my brother and father were - but it only takes 2 seconds with Maia... she is FAST.

All this to say, today was no different. Just another day in the life of Matthew, Kristen and Maia!! Something new and exciting all the time. I don't like silly mistakes, and I hate money spent like that, but otherwise, it was no big deal. Live and learn - and I think, Matthew now knows what can and can't go in a toilet. LOL.

And lastly, I said Matthew started high school - but didn't mention how well it has gone. I am pleasantly surprised at how great the first week has gone - even the getting up wasn't as hard (YET!) as I thought it would be. Homework is always interesting - but we'll get through that too!

Enjoy football season everyone! GOod fall weather!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Wow - it's been a while. Let's try to catch up! We had a great summer - and now fall is in full swing!

Maia and Matthew went to visit my parents last time I blogged, and although I missed them terribly, that week went so quickly. Then August flew by. That's when we went on our vacation for a week to visit my parents all together. It was awesome to have a week off from work. It took me about 3 full days to really, truly relax. But, when I did - I DID. It was great! Matthew and I even went out one night while my parents watched Maia and we had an awesome dinner at our favorite retaurant and a close game of Putt-Putt. It was a great time. It was the first time I've had any kind of tan in years (but compared to Maia's DARK tan, I look like Elmer's glue.) Anyhow - it was a good time had by all and I'm glad we had the opportunity for a whole week to unwind. I needed it!

August also brought Matthew's birthday... now he's 14. Geez, I must be OLD. Here he is at age 12....

Age 13.....

Age 14...

I love to see the changes... it's obvious at age 12... but between 13 and 14 the changes are less obvious. I can tell though by looking at the endo of his sleeve compared with the piano... I know the angle is slightly different, and the shirt is different, but it gives an idea. The obvious change is his desire to let his hair grow at this point rather than keeping it buzzed.

As always, I take a first day of school picture. That was at 6:30. It literally was a pitch black picture, so I re-took it that night when I realized it didn't work out that morning. Here is my boy, on the first day of high school, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 09.

I can not believe he has started high school. Our whole schedule has changed... my alarm now goes off at 4:45 a.m.. Matthew has to leave the house to catch the bus at 6:30 a.m. I figure I might as well be ready too so all I have left to do is get Maia ready to roll after Matthew has left. So far, so good. But we're only 4 days in...

Going back a little bit now - last weekend we went to Matthew's aunt and uncle's house (my sister-in-law) for Labor Day. It is actually the third time we went and visited in a month! They have a pool and we enjoyed keeping cool. Maia is a dare devil and loved jumping in and dunking under the water and seemed to get more and more excited each time we went. Here are pictures of Matthew, with Maia, and Matthew's brother, Evan, and Evan's Mom, Stephanie. You can see, Evan and Maia are a little more timid as Matthew and Stephanie are trying to coax them to jump off the raft here.... As the pictures progress - look at the JOY on their faces as they fall, jump, splash and dunk more and more each time. This went on for some time and it was awesome to watch and take pictures of it all!!

Winding down....

Here is a picture of the birthday boy - up close.

So, today, Maia was a big girl and went potty on the potty... When she was done, I realized the potty wasn't really flushing... so I asked Matthew is he had noticed that it wasn't 100%. He said, yeah, maybe.... So, he went and got the plunger and I started plunging. (This usually works wonders...) I started plunging - and it started overflowing. (Without details, I will just say, gross...) So, I plunged and plunged and plunged, and it kept spilling and spilling... *gross*. At this point, I wasn't happy and realized my Saturday would be spent waiting for a plumber and not having a fun girl day with Maia. Happy, I was not.

I was telling Matthew that next time he thought it might be backing up to tell me BEFORE anyone else used it so maybe the less in there, the better chance of fixing it myself. I told him I'd have to call a plumber and have it snaked out and he asked what that meant. I explained it to him and he said, Does the stuff go further IN or does the snake pull it back out?.... Knowing Matthew as I do, I KNEW RIGHT AWAY he wasn't worried about 'gross stuff' but something that had OBVIOUSLY gone down the toilet that wasn't SUPPOSED to. I said, "WHY? What went in there that wasn't supposed to??" He responded... "A plastic cup... " "A PLASTIC CUP????!?!?!??!" When I asked him why he didn't reach in and get it out before flushing, he said he didn't want to get dirty. I explained that since HE stayed 'clean'... the bathroom FLOOR, etc. was now NOT clean, and it was going to cost me a good bit of money to get it working.. not to mention time on a gorgeous fall day. He was apologetic, and I believe learned a lesson, but, Mamma was NOT happy. (BTW, $263.84....)

As it turned out... the plumber (who is featured in a post last November...) was able to get here in less than an hour. He said he's seen worse - an iPod, cell phones, and the worst DENTURES (that the woman insisted was her best set, and she wanted back... in fact, the snake didn't work, so they REMOVED HER TOILET and she bought a new toilet, etc. to save the dentures.) I won't say another word... but *gross*.

So, now, Mom, Dad and Matthew are in Baltimore until tomorrow... so after that morning, I needed to go do something FUN! What did we do with only and hour before nap time??? We went SHOE SHOPPING. Yup, Maia got some new fall shoes. Buying shoes always makes me feel better - and I just love these for her. I must say, I was tired of pink shoes, so she got these instead:

Her new sneakers... I love the BLUE for a change, but still girly looking...

And her boots - These have sneaker like treads so she can wear them to school and still go outside with them - but give her something other than athletic shoes to wear to school. Spending money, especially on shoes, always makes things better, at least a little bit!!

I wanted to post some pictures since it's been so long and catch up in general. I will post more soon - now that I have a new router that actually ALLOWS me to load pictures without crashing my internet. :) Maia will be up any minute though so I will have to do more soon. I'm sure I have some Maia stories to tell - she does something new and crazy almost every day. :)

In the past three days... Matthew has lost his cell phone, lost his house key, and flushed a plastic cup down the toilet, which resulted in money spent and messes made, as you are well aware.

I love my boy, but I'm glad he's gone with my parents until tomorrow night... :) Gives me a chance (and I mean, CHANCE) to calm down a little. :)

FYI - we did find the cell phone at least... he knows I'm not buying him a new one.