Maia Mi

As you can imagine, we are now way behind in Maia Mi blog land. It's been one thing after another, not least Maia herself just changing almost daily - we couldn't keep up!

So, "Tantrums" was where I left you. Ha ha. We are so used to those now. She doesn't thump her head on the floor anymore (must have learnt about that one) but she can still pull some corkers. They're fewer and further between though and tend to explode around a time of change and intense growing pains, so you kind of know when you need to stand back and let her vent.

Maia is now two years and four months old. And, in her own words, she's now a "Big Girl" and certainly knows her own mind, and everything EVERYTHING is 'do self'.

She's also (amazingly quickly) gone from being a baby in nappies to independent young lady on the potty. Just about a month ago she was refusing to use the potty at home - or, when she deemed it ok to, we would wait for half an hour for, er, absolutely NOTHING to appear. That's all fine though - we weren't worried - we just made it into a 'let's have a go' game. She got practise at nursery too - where she did pee pees on the toilet, here and there. But once we were in Sweden and I gave her the PINGU PANTS and said, here, would you like these or nappies, it was all over for soggy nappies and smelly bins. Yup. And pretty much dry, aside from the odd leak here and there. Including car journeys, naps and nearly most of the nights since then (which unfortunately means I need to wake up at whatever hour of the night she needs to do a wee - but it's a small sacrifice at this stage).

Just to watch her confidence grow as she mastered this particularly grown up activity is amazing.

Beyond that, her verbal reasoning is just developing so fast - she is very particular and likes to say whole full sentences with descriptions about colours and sizes - which means you do have to wait a while before the sentence comes. But then it comes in a sweet "Maia went on the big, ummmm, red slide, ummmm, in the park!"

She's also superblond, sticks her legs up in the air "I'm doing ballet", still hasn't quite mastered jumping (she takes off but lands on straight legs - ouch) and extremely loveable with us as well as her toys. Just the other day she picked up her baby doll and gently stroked her head and gave her a big smacker on the lips. awwwwwww.

There's so much I could tell - but for now, at least I've broken the ice...

Oh dear. Maia has certainly hit the 'tantrum' stage. We've had some corkers. It can be quite scary actually as she does start to get violent and try to hurt herself - by hitting her head on the floor and so on. Anything can trigger it, so for now we're trying to work out just what sets it off etc. Just putting her coat on when it's time to go out and play can set it off. Or telling her it's time to say bye-bye to the telly cos it's bath time (and I give her plenty of warnings). Or the other morning was horrible, as I lost my temper because she wouldn't sit at the table & eat her usual readybrek - and we were running late. In the end we somehow managed to get upstairs and clean teeth (without breakfast) and on the way down she decided actually some readybrek would be rather nice come to think of it and had five mouthfuls before i plopped her in the pram and managed - somehow - to get the train!

Must cover Xmas in here soon huh! - but in the meantime, a little heads up on Maia's latest 'thing' - role play. She'll take on the role of mummy when she puts bamse to sleep in the pram. Or she'll read her dolls a story. Or she'll put on a nappy on the baby. Or she'll play ring-a-ring-a-roses with a couple of dolls, holding their hands and making sure they form a circle. It's really cute.

She's also become a bit of a kleptomaniac. I mean, she always was a good one for stashing something away in her hand & you'd never know she'd taken the pen/toy from wherever until way later. But now she's into stashing things into her vest/pyjamas/babygro. Which can be hilarious. Like the time she stashed her megablocks and walked around like a robot with her legs all chunky with bricks. Or when we came home from nursery, had dinner, played, went up to have a bath and - as I undressed her - about 20 rings, of different sizes & textures - curtain rail type rings - tumbled out - how long she'd been walking around with those stashed in her vest I have no idea! As granny would say, "What a pickle!".

Maia has recently become obsessed with a few concepts. First it was 'night' - as she'd never really experienced it before, but now it's dark when she leaves nursery and she just couldn't get over it. "natt ute' (night outside) she'd say when we left the nursery. Again, once we were in the car. And again when we got home "Natt Ute Ogsaa" (night outside too!). like it was amazing it was night everywhere we went. We went outside in the garden and had a look the 'night' and the stars. We had to look again from the bathroom window and again from her bedroom. This went on for about two weeks!!!

Then, just recently I was reading her usual favourite books when she started realising the girl had hurt herself and she just kept wanting to read this one page where the girl fell over. And in the other book this boy and girl fell down a hill (jack and jill) and hurt themselves too. And she just asks to look at these pages now when we have the bedtime story. I have to tell her over and over again what happens. And last night she got obsessed with the Snail in the picture book that is just about to get trodden on. His face is all 'oh no' so now she just says 'snegle ååå neiii!' again and again - we had to read it upstairs this morning and again for breakfast. She'll talk about the 'jente falle ned' (girl fall down) all the way in the car on the way home too. really strange!

Maia swallowed a 5p coin on Saturday night. I know, I know what you're thinking, what was she doing with a 5p piece? and there's no excuse because I was with her. But she often plays with coins and likes to put them in and out of containers. Usually I only let her play with really enormous ones (like the old 50p pieces and some foreign large coins) but she'd found this one in the bathroom....and she was finished with her bath and fiddling with it. Next thing I was changing her nappy and I didn't realise she had it in her hand and suddenly it dropped into her throat. She choked and I hurriedly swung her round to do a heimlich maneouvre, when she suddenly stopped choking and looked at me most surprised. She'd swallowed it!

She seemed totally fine after that and it was only when I phoned NHS Direct once she was in bed that I discovered it could still be really dangerous and still be lodged in her throat & get back up to her windpipe! I slept next to her on a mattress really nervously and woke at her every breath. She was fine though. So now we're hoping it's come out the other end or will soon. But we'll probably have to go to the hospital to have her xrayed or metal detected (!) if we don't see any signs of it as it could be stuck somewhere, in her appendix or somewhere!

Just so glad she seems ok & that she didn't actually choke. My mum told me that a 2 year old girl she' known had died from choking on a coin. From now on I'm not letting Maia near anything small, it's really woken me up to the danger... even if she doesn't put things in her mouth on purpose, it can always be accidental....

Well, it seems to be milestone after milestone these days. On Wednesday 17th October Maia put together her first three word sentence. She was commenting on how Pappa had changed seats on the train and said, quite clearly, "Pappa sitter der" - Daddy sitting there!

And today she was in the car and got a bit grumpy all of a sudden. Usually I have to try work out what's wrong by looking round. But today I heard a bit of grumpy 'Nei nei!' and then "Lambo falle ned!" - her little cuddly toy we call 'lambo' (some strange fat bottomed creature Granny Gugs picked up in Sainsburys of all places - it's ace!) had fallen down!

Fantastic stuff.

Nursery also commented that her grasp of concepts and connections is coming on really well. Yesterday she picked up a blanket but instead of saying 'blanket' which is easy, she said 'Sleeping' and then went over to the doll and put the doll to sleep. She knew that the blanket was for sleeping in and therefore there was no need to call it blanket. She'd made the required connection.

Amazing to see all this before our very eyes!

"GO MAIA, GO MAIA, GO MAIA!" Nope, that wasn't ME shouting encouragement, it was Maia herself (!!!), 15 minutes after her nervous entry into the swimming pool at Woolwich, a huge waterpark of a swimming pool, with slides and huge replica crocodiles and tortoises. She went from being a clingy baby who wouldn't get into the water, to walking along the shallow end of the big pool with water at shoulder height, mouth in a big 'ooooh', and a "go maia go maia" every now and then in ecstatic excitement. She also went from being held down the slide gently, to jetting herself off and landing SPLASH under the water, when I'd catch her and bring her back up! I haven't laughed so much in ages, she was just so incredibly beside herself once she'd got over her initial fears and realised it was actually quite fun, this big place full of water.

Of course, Maia went swimming as a babe-in-arms, and a glimmer of memory did seem to still be there, as she loved being held horizontally and skimmed across the water 'swim' style, as I used to do with her when she was 7 months old. But this was her first proper visit since January 2007, so I don't think she could really remember that she used to go for a weekly swim once upon a time.

Unfortunately, Maia was poorly and vomited a couple of times after we came home - she probably swallowed just a bit too much chlorine going down those slides... she also seems to have caught a cold. Feel like the worst and best mother in one, she really did love the swimming pool (she's still going round saying "svømme basseng, svømmebasseng" in elation, while i feel so bad that she (possibly) got ill from it.

Just wish I could share my mind's eye camera pix with the world - it really was a sight to behold.