Wallflower

Maya's spring program was this week and she blew her performance at her Christmas program out of the water. Not that the bar was set very high, all she had to do was keep her finger out of her nose and she was golden.

At the finale, when all of kids are singing, Maya just stood up with her arms spread and was singing her heart out. I was so excited for her that I just started laughing. It's a wonderful feeling to see your shy little girl coming out of her shell.

Sugar Rush

It's that time again; when the grandparents arrive to take their poor, deprived grandchild out for some much needed fun. Granny and Papaw noticed that Maya was tragically deficient in refined sugars so a chocolate cake was immediately brought in for nourishment.

It didn't take long before they realized that Maya was in DIRE need of a new toy. She was swiftly taken to the nearest Build A Bear where she came up with the girliest stuffed animal in the world:

Yes, that is a pink unicorn with pink shooting stars, wearing pink cowgirl boots with pink skates strapped to them (pink bow not pictured). Sadly, they were out of pink leashes.

Spoiling grandchildren is hard work, but somebody has to do it. Granny and Papaw went back to Tennessee, leaving behind a little girl who had a thrilling weekend and is already begging for more.

*Note*

I am incredibly grateful that my child still remains unaware of the existence of Chucky Cheese.

Pigs Are Flying

Presenting the proud owners of a brand new 2010 Toyota Corolla:

And to think it only took 20 years.

Let's Skip The Training And Go Straight To Trained

Potty training has not been on our minds lately. We decided that with Maya in preschool, we would wait until the summer before going full force. Since Maya is shy and barely talks in school, I was afraid that she would not tell her teachers when she needed to go and thus ruining the process. This puts us in a difficult position since we plan on visiting family this summer and will be taking road trips that are ENDLESS. A ten hour car ride goes so much smoother when you don't have to deal with 57 bathroom breaks.

Gimpy

While outside playing, Maya fell and scraped her knee. She immediately told Jason that she fell but she never cried or seemed even the slightest bit upset. So he brought her inside, cleaned her up, and gave her a band-aid. As soon as she received her band-aid she walked away- limping. "Oh, I have a boo-boo, Mommy." This kid limped all around the house for as long as that band-aid was on her knee. The second it was removed she back to walking upright because, you know, she was healed.

Anticipation

Jason had the fun idea of pulling out Maya's paints and letting her decorate eggs like that instead of messing with the dye that never seems to turn out right. This worked great because Maya could do it all on her own with very little help on our part. But somewhere in the process she got it in her head that she was leaving the eggs for the Easter Bunny. She still understood that the bunny was going to visit and hide eggs but THESE eggs were for the Easter Bunny to take with him. I guess she thought it was the least she could do.

Hippity Hoppity

It just isn't a celebration of the life of Christ without a friendly home invasion.

Easter

If you wanted out-of-focus and gloomy looking pictures of Maya on Easter, then you've come to the right place. As per our usual Easter ritual, we were running late for church and I was trying to desperately take Maya's picture before we left. As it turns out these were the only pictures I was able to take of her in her Easter dress. The first picture was taken just as she was running towards me to see how the picture turned out and the second picture was taken just after yelling at her to SMILE ALREADY SO WE CAN GO TO CHURCH AND CELEBRATE THE SACRIFICE JESUS HAS MADE FOR US. Ahh, memories.

Let's Fly A Kite (Seriously This Time)

More windy days came along after that last one and we bought another kite, a better kite, a kite that doesn't inflate. The only bad thing about these kites is that they have the habit of nosediving in such a severe way that you worry about someone being impaled, but hey, that's all part of the fun, right? The kite ended up taking so many nose dives that it didn't live to see another day.

I ended up buying one with Tigger and Pooh on it since the selection was limited to cartoon characters. What ever happened to just a plain red kite? Or at least dragons? Dragons are supposed to fly, not honey obsessed bears and their hyper friends.

Peanut Butter

Fun Fact: Every night Jason devours a heaping spoonful of peanut butter.

There are some foods Maya was just destined to enjoy.

You're Getting Very Sleepy. . .

We've been facing some serious sleep issues with Maya lately. Basically, she doesn't want to go to sleep or stay asleep or let us leave her room so that she might have a chance at falling asleep. I feel stupid saying that we have tried to discuss this with her but, really, at this point she's too old to "cry it out" and too young to reason with but we had to try. Sometimes she does respond, saying that she knows it's time for bed and that she wants to be a good girl and go to sleep; then she wakes up crying at 2 a.m., refuses to go back to sleep and doesn't take a nap or anything until 8 that evening. That was an extreme case but she's been fighting sleep for the last few months.

Things have improved the last couple of nights *knock on wood, knock on wood* so I'm hoping that the 'sleep free' phase is over and this 33 month old is ready to consider sleeping through the night.

There must be a good reason for all of this, because I know that she comes from people who enjoy their sleep. Jason and I fantasize about sleeping in and I don't believe it's possible to nap for less than an hour. And we can't forget about Uncle Mo, when that boy falls asleep you don't know when you might see him next.

Why It's Never A Good Idea To Send Them To The Store Together

As soon as Maya enters the house:

"Don't get mad, Mommy, don't get mad."

"You don't get mad at Daddy."

"Chocolate secret."

Jason's last words to her were, "Don't tell your Mommy I let you have chocolate before dinner, or she'll get mad, this will be our secret."

This type of thing happens about every other week. It's cute that he keeps hoping this will be the week she learns to keep quiet.

St. Patty's Day

We were asked to bring in green grapes for her party at school as well as green plates and green napkins; I smell a theme. So when we were walking into school we noticed a little boy surrounded by his mom and grandma. I would guess that he was 4 and this poor kid was dressed up like the saddest leprechaun I have ever seen. They were seriously taking advantage of the fact that he was too young to know better or stand up for himself. Do leprechauns even wear bowties or sparkly vests? And he just stood there with a huge smile on his face saying, "I'm a leprechaun!" Yes you are, I hope you realize this is going to be in your senior yearbook.

Even though it is now April, I couldn't let the opportunity pass to show how cute Maya looked on St. Patrick's Day.

Let's Fly A Kite (Maybe)

There's something about this part of the country that seems to be able to avoid storms, and after living in Tennessee, where every spring you spend most of your evenings waiting out tornado warnings in the tub, we don't really mind. So when we had some rain come through and brought a windy day, we took advantage of it and bought a kite. The selection wasn't great but we noticed that there were kites that didn't require any sticks, instead you would blow them up like a balloon, filling just certain sections with air. Sounds like a cool idea, right? It is, until you try to fly it and realize it already has a hole in it.

Poor Maya, she looked so cute chasing this pathetic kite around. It was able to hold a little bit of air, about enough to give the same effect as running around in the wind with a sagging balloon. Maya still had a blast; since this was her first time with a kite she didn't know it could be any different.

Update

Well, it looks like I haven't posted since 1842. Sorry about that. Our desktop has some viruses or malware or something and apparently could blow up at any moment so I've been stuck with the laptop. Of course the laptop is clean but it has threatened me with violence if I attempt to put any more pictures on it, so please be patient as I try to clean up some space on the laptop and get the desktop straightened out. Here's hoping I'll be able to post again by next year.

I hate computers.