Maya's first steps

Maya turned 10 months old this past weekend and with it she also decided that it might be time to start walking. On Thursday afternoon I was on the phone with my bff Lorrie and we were chatting away as we often do. Maya was standing and happily playing with one of her toys when out of the blue, she turns towards me and takes about 5 steps over to me. I started yelling "oh my gosh, oh my gosh" and Lorrie, very startled, says emphatically "are you okay, do you have to go?". So I told her about Maya's first foray into the world of walkers and we had a good laugh about it. I then, of course, had to call daddy to tell him about it. We knew that it was only a matter of time before she started walking but I just never seem to be prepared for her milestones. My baby girl is growing up and although I am so excited to watch her grow, with each day my little baby is slowly fading away. Happy and sad at the same time.

Since Thursday, Maya has taken more solo steps but she still seems to prefer crawling for now. She will walk if coaxed by Jay or I or if she is standing against something (furniture or a large toy) and can see something just a few steps away she'll walk to it but hasn't yet ventured out into an open area. Here is a video we took on the weekend of her walking towards me. We were pretty excited as it was the farthest she had walked yet.

On Saturday we went for dinner to Carrie and Jeremy's house. They are friends of ours who also live in Evanston and have a daughter, Grace, who is only a few months older than Maya. Carrie and I get together every week and have a playdate with the girls. It's a great opportunity for Maya to play with another child her age regularly. They don't play too much together yet as they are more interested in taking toys from each other rather than sharing or playing independantly rather than together but it's still fun to watch them. Their personalities are so different. Grace is a very cautious little girl. Everything she does is careful and seems almost planned out so as to avoid any potential falls or pain. She is so sweet and petite and quiet and is a very calming toddler to be around. Maya, on the other hand, is completely the opposite. She is interested in exploring everything and is willing to risk bumps and bruises for it and has the scars to prove it. She is rather loud and expressive and much more high maintenance. Perhaps, some would argue, like her mommy? Carrie and I often laugh as we watch Maya crawling all over Gracie, taking her toys, patting her head and sometimes knocking her over. Or else she is practically sitting on top of her just to be close to her. It is, of course, all done in love but poor Gracie doesn't quite get it. Carrie says that Maya will be the one coming up with schemes for them and Gracie will be the one trying to talk her out of it and convince her of the consequences. I totally agree! Regardless, I think they will grow up to be good friends.

Carrie and I met at University in B.C. over 10 years ago, we were in the same dorm, and just recently reunited through facebook. It's funny because we hadn't talked in years and had no idea where the other was living but I had posted some landscaping pictures of our backyard on facebook. Carrie wrote me a note asking if we lived in Evanston because she recognized our backyard from walking her dog along the path behind our house. We have a chain link fence that backs out onto a green space. So to add to the concidence, not only did we live only blocks away from each other, we were also both pregnant due to give birth within months of each other. So our friendship was rekindled and after we both had girls we found ourselves relating to the same things and had the same parenting styles and our husbands got along famously and the rest is history. Needless to say, it has been great getting to know their family and we are so thankful to have them as part of our life.

The rest of the weekend continued to be great. Jason let me sleep in on Sunday morning and relax most of the day which was wonderful. We had daylight savings on Saturday night and we all seemed extra sleepy on Sunday but Jay was more than happy to have some one on one time with his little girl. He takes every opportunity to do things with her including meal times. Maya and I have gotten very good at keeping the meal times fairly clean (at least until she starts feeding herself) but when daddy does it, this is what happens. He had to take a picture to show me. I laughed pretty good at this one.

Maya loves to be wherever we are these days so when I'm in the kitchen cooking or doing dishes, she is right at my side pulling on my pant legs or opening cupboard doors. So we've shown her the tupperware drawer and so far she's really enjoying it and will usually play there for however long I'm in the kitchen. The other day I looked over and she was practically all the way inside the cupboard with just her little bottom sticking out. It was so cute and I ran to grab the camera but by the time I got back she was out again. Here are the pictures I did get.

We took Maya swimming again on Sunday afternoon and had such fun. She just loves to splash so we let her crawl around in the kiddie pool and splash to her heart's content and then when Jay & I were getting too cold to sit in the pool that only came half way up our thighs (sitting down) we then took her to the deep pool where there was more splashing and we practiced floating her on her back and blowing bubbles and kicking and then finished off in the hot tub. Maya was content to just sit on the edge and dip her feet into the very warm water. Overall we had a really great weekend.