Maya at 2.5 Years

Maya is now two and a half years old. Wow!

No doctor visit this time around, but here are the stats (as far as we can tell):

Weight: 30lbs (65th percentile).
Height: 34.75 inches (25th percentile).
Teeth: 18 are showing. Lots of drooling as the last molars make their way down.

Maya interacts with us fully now. It's fun to find ourselves having full conversations. She'll answer questions like "How are you?" "What did you do today?" "How old are you?" and "Where do you live?" Her responses to "What are you doing?" are always entertaining as it usually is EXACTLY what she's doing at that moment. "I'm standing, I'm talking." She talks about everything all the time.

Her imagination has exploded. She understands the terms "pretend" and "real" and she has fun pretending to be different people, or animals, or trees, or cars, whatever. She will make up invisible friends sometimes and has fun coming up with little scenarios. We frequently pretend to go to the zoo or the Academy of Sciences. She also likes to play doctor with her new doctor kit. She's also started making jokes. Her favorite joke is deliberately saying the wrong name for Mommy or Daddy and laughing…good one, Maya.

She also has much better recall. She remembers anything we say so we have to be careful to really be able to come through on what we promise, even if it's days later. It's strange to drive down a street that we haven't been down for weeks and have her say, "Where's the kids kicking the ball?" She's referring to the last time we were on that street and kids were kicking a ball.

She's very interested in other children. She's getting more daring these days and will walk up to other kids and try to converse with them. "Hi!" "Can I play with you?" "Want this?" (Offers a toy) She likes to try to play with older kids that frequently ignore her.

She very into stories and characters. We have storybooks about most of the Pixar movies and she's memorized all the characters' names. She is particularly fond of "Cars" characters. She loves all the Mother Goose rhymes. She really seems to be relating to the stories and imagining the places. It's very fun to see her excitement about imaginary worlds.

She still loves drawing and painting. She's started to get the hang of coloring books and coloring in certain parts.

We've been continuing to go to Charity's music classes and she really loves them. She will actually sing along to her songs now and really remembers the movements for different songs. She's also started liking the drama of some classical music and soundtracks. She loves the "Superman" theme song, especially after Daddy showed her where the cymbals bang together and then flew her around the house. She lives in the iPod age in that she expects any song she wants to be available at any time. The sad part is… usually she can get what she wants (thanks iTunes).

Maya's also good at finding ways to entertain herself these days. It's nice to have her wander off and occupy herself for a little while. She makes up some activity involving her shopping cart, dolls, blocks, puzzles, cars, other random objects, and, more than likely, her favorite toy, the cash register. She gets busy and seems to know how to find the fun in everything. She really knows how to live. It's a good lesson for all of us grown-ups.

On the physical side, Maya finally mastered the art of jumping. She's climbing, dancing, and experimenting as much as possible. We rarely use the stroller these days unless we are taking a really long walk across the city. It's nice to be able to walk around so easily with her (unless she doesn't want to go where the grown-ups are going). Her fine motor skills seems to be progressing really well in that she can open and close jars, open and close zippers, eat pretty respectably with a spoon and fork, she pours things without spilling, etc.

Maya is pretty typical for her age when it comes to eating. She's picky about different things on different days. Some meals are easy and some meals aren't. Her most reliable favorites are haven't changed much since the last post. They include mushrooms, olives, black beans, french fries, mac and cheese, ice cream (now prefers chocolate over vanilla), edamame, rice with soy sauce, and anything crunchy. She's started really getting into soups, but she still doesn't really like the whole sandwich thing which can be tedious at lunchtime. We're all eating together much more frequently and she really like trying bites of other peoples food.

We're getting a little closer to potty training. Maya seems to be getting more comfortable (finally) with the concept that all people have to poop and pee. Hopefully, her anxiety level will stay low and we will be able to potty train her in the next 6 months or so.

Predictably, we are still fans of the Maya. She's a keeper.