Monday, May 23, 2011

Maya's 9th month

During Maya's 9th month (late March to mid April), she's been doing really great. After the last several months of mastering her crawling skills and her ability to stand while holding things, now she's working on standing freely and walking. Our latest game is to see who (Christina or I) can get Maya to stand on her own (unassisted) the longest. I initially set the record with 5 second, then before Christina could break that, I got Maya to stand for 11 second. Shortly after, Christina got Maya to stand for 15 seconds. That record lasted for almost the entire month, but finally I got Maya to stand for 18 seconds.

Aside from the standing, Maya has also taken her first stumble steps. They were little more than moving her foot forward while on her way to quickly falling over, but it's a start

Maya is now up to having 4 teeth. After her bottom 2 teeth came in a several months ago, this month her 2 top teeth came in (top left first, then top right). And speaking of teeth, Maya's now getting to use them a bit more on some real food, like baked potatoes and avocado. However, she's learned to use her teeth for more than just chewing. One time when I was feeding her, I started hearing an odd noise. Quickly I figured out the noise was her grinding her teeth (see video below). The other thing she's doing with them is excessive biting. Apparently she has no reservations about biting the hands that feeds her.

We went through a period of about a week where she woke up in the middle of the night almost every night. Before that week, it was very rare for her to do so. However, after about a week, her nighttime waking disappeared and she returned to her regular routine of sleeping through the night.

Maya's become really excited about bath time and playing with her toys. We now often find her wandering into the bathroom on her own to try and play with her bath toys, which we leave sitting on the side of the tub.

Maya's been getting a lot more vocal lately, making lots of various noises. Sometimes this will just be in the form of her babbling on and on and on. Other times, you will notice that she's getting good at making sounds that start to resemble actual words (see the talking while eating video below).

Maya is also picking up new tricks quickly. We have a couple of those little touch sensitive lamps (where you tap the metal base to turn it on/off). Christina demonstrated how to touch it to turn it on and off. Since then, Maya often goes over to the lamp and touches it over and over again. Next, she learned that if she presses the buttons on my clock radio, she can turn on the radio and get music. She's done this many times. The downside to this is she sometime hits the buttons that adjust the time, and one day I found myself waking up about 10 minutes too early because of it (though I guess better early than late). Now I need to check my clock carefully every night before I go to bed.

Finally, the stranger anxiety Maya's been displaying the last couple months has been going away, and she's been happy and friendly to almost everyone, and pretty much never cries around someone new anymore.

Once again, here are a few of the best photos from this month, but you can see more in the gallery at http://www.pbase.com/ldkronos/maya_9months











Maya playing in her bathtub (8.5 months old)





Maya eating puffies with Keinan (8.5 months old)





Maya grinding her teeth (8.5 months old)

About 27 seconds into the video, you'll hear Maya grinding her teeth together (don't get it mixed up with the banging sound just a few seconds earlier).





Maya dancing while Mommy sings (8.5 months old)

Maya like to rock back and forth to music and singing.





Maya getting her teeth brushed (8.5 months old)





Maya eating (8.5 months old)





Maya in front window - hits herself and cries (8.5 months old)

When I come home from work, Maya often greets me happily at the front window. This time, however, she got a little too excited while holding a toy.





Maya eats avacados and sounds like she talks (8.5 months old)

While eating avacados for the first time, at about 45 seconds into this video, Maya says something that sounds like "I like it", and then when I asked her if she likes it, she says something that sounds like "Yeah I do".





Maya playing with her spoon (8.5 months old)





Maya climbing on laundry basket to get DVD (9 months old)

For a while now, Maya has been pulling DVDs off of the shelf every chance she get. Sometimes we wouldn't feel like putting them back over and over again, so we'd try to block the shelf off. However, this attempt at using a laundry basket didn't turn out to be the best idea.





Maya attacks the camera - part 1 (9 months old)





Maya attacks the camera - part 2 (9 months old)





Maya eating puffies (9 months old)





Maya standing (9 months old)

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Maya's 8th month

During Maya's 8th month (late Feb to mid March), she started to become a lot more active. After starting to crawl last month, she really mastered it this month, and has started to explore the whole house. Before, she confined herself to the living room at first, and then slowly explored the rest of the house. Now, she is so comfortable going from room to room that you can put her in one room and in 10 seconds she'll be 2 rooms away. When she really want's to be somewhere, she can get there almost as fast as you can. This month she really liked playing in her bedroom.

The previous month, Maya was pulling herself up and standing by other objects from time to time. By her 8th month, she was doing it all the time, everywhere she could get. Only now she wasn't just standing to stand, but she was doing it to get whatever she could reach on a table, bookshelf, the entertainment center, etc. First it started by grabbing video games off the entertainment center. Then it was grabbing remotes, papers, etc off of the end table. Later it was pulling as many dvds off the shelf as possible and making an absolute mess. As quickly as you could put them away, she'd pull just as many off. It didn't take long for us to give up on trying to keep the DVDs in alphabetical order.

Also, on the topic of standing, not only had Maya gotten good at pulling herself up and standing along object, but she's started to develop the balance and strength to hold herself up unsupported. In the week before she turned 8 months old, she started to stand up for 1 or 2 seconds on her own. You would have to stand her up and get her balanced just right, but she could do it.

Of course, as good as she became at standing and crawling, she also now had become a very good sitter. It's sort of funny that it really took her longer to master sitting than it did crawling or standing.

Maya started to eat her first real foods (as opposed to baby food) this month. The first one for her to tackle was bananas. We first just mashed up small pieces with our fingers and let her chew on it. Then we switched to mashing it up with a fork, mixing it with some rice or oatmeal, and making that an entire meal. She loved the flavor immediately, but she had a little trouble with the texture at first. However, by the second time she had it for a meal, she seemed to do alright with it.

Maya broke the 16 lbs mark this month, dropping her to just below the 25th percentile. Her height at the 8 month old mark was, for the third month in a row, 27 inches tall. We had to have over-measured in one of the previous months.

I installed a baby swing in the basement this month, and Maya really loves to swing in it. She's not freaked out by really big swinging motions either. It seems she loves the excitement of it (just like she loves when I toss her in the air and catch her).

In Maya's crib, we've given her a couple of toys to play with and snuggle with: her puppy dog Ikea (named after the store he came from), and her glow-seahorse (like a glow-worm). The glow-seahorse lights up and plays music when you squeeze the tummy. A few times, we've turned it on when putting her to be and let it soothe her to sleep. However, on one occasion, she turned it on by herself. I woke up early in the morning (maybe 5am...I don't recall for sure) and heard the seahorse playing. I went in there and she was snuggled up to it, staring at it, making a little bit of noise. She soon went back to sleep.

Finally, this month Maya developed a few new humorous traits. First, she often pants when she get excited. Second, she loves to play in and destroy paper. If you lay a stack of papers on the floor, she'll crawl over and make an absolute mess of it all.


Once again, here are a few of the best photos from this month, but you can see more in the gallery at http://www.pbase.com/ldkronos/maya_8months


Getting into the video games


Sleeping with Dolly


In her basement swing


Playing in her crib with her glow-seahorse


In the cat bed (where she doesn't belong)



Maya playing with papers (7 months old)





Maya walking with her dinosaur (7.5 months old)





Maya in her basement swing (7.5 months old)





Maya crawling to her bottle (7.5 months old)

Although I posted the army-crawling version of this in the 7 month blog, I thought I'd post the updated version with her really crawling.





Maya playing in her room (8 months old)

This video is a bit longer than the others I've previously posted. While it might not have the same sort of humorous moments the other videos do, this one captures the general idea of her playing in her room by herself and how she keeps herself entertained.