Maia's Fifth Birthday Update
Maia’s 5th birthday update!
Maia is now five years old! Although she tells me she had so many parties that she’s 6 and a half now. She is so fun and adventurous. It’s a little nerve wracking when she gets going on the jungle gym or racing ahead to the playground, but it’s amazing too. She’s started flying down the sidewalk on her scooter and she tells me when I say she’s going too fast that she’s helping me get exercise. Thanks ;) She loves to snuggle and still adores elbows. I think she understands now that her elbow fixation is kind of different, but she declares proudly “I like elbows!”
I love the way she talks now. She is always certain. She uses the words “literally” and “a’ course!” all the time. Once, there was a plate left on the table and I called to Eric to ask him if it was his plate. She looked at it and shook her head and said “Daddy really IS a kid.” =) So funny. She loves to tell jokes, and she’s at the age where they usually don’t make sense but she has the best giggle you can’t help but laugh.
Some of her favorite things this year. She says her favorite toys are her Wonder Woman toys. She definitely LOVES dressing up. She has two wonder woman costumes, both of which she wears a lot. She also has a wonder woman shield, a purse, and now a car.
She loves playing with building toys. She says she wants to be a builder like Papa someday, and says she will build a museum with him. So I guess it’s not surprising that she loves to play with Legos. She has a bunch of DC Superhero Girls legos. And she really built them. She can put the pieces together and follow instructions so well! She also adores magformers. She and Donovan especially built huge magformer cities to hold stuffed animals or Skylander figures.
She reads really well! She read a ton of the 5 minute storybooks all by herself at night. It takes her forever to fall asleep and you can hear her little voice reading long into the night. Once, when she was trying to sleep in her brother’s room, I asked if she could read it in her head instead. She tried but then said “I need to read it in my mouth!” She covers her bed in books nearly every night. When we were in California, she found the book Matilda on the shelf in our room. We read the whole thing together and she LOVED it! We bought her another chapter book, Mr. Poppers Penguins, and have read several other longer books since.
Her favorite show is Wild Kratts. We discovered Zoboomafoo on Amazon Prime early in the year, so I got tickets for us to see the Kratt brother’s show in the summer. That led to their newer show, a cartoon called Wild Kratts. The brothers have suits that give them animal creature powers. Maia LOVES playing with her creature power suit and power disks.
Her favorite food is still blueberries followed closely by strawberries. After that she just starts listing all the fruit. I’ve always thought of her as a fruitarian =)
Maia loves school! She’s a sleepy girl in the mornings but she will hop out of bed and get dressed for school. She loves all the kids at school and seems to play with everyone. She talks about Mrs. Call a lot, and wants to buy her any penguins she sees.
At the beginning of the summer, Maia was just barely able to dog paddle but by the end of summer she could actually swim! It was so much fun! As with so many things she is very determined and sure she could swim so it was nice when she actually was managing to swim more than drown. Makes me less nervous about taking all the kids to the pool by myself.
Swimming lessons at Miller =)
Maia got to do an activity this fall! We signed her up for gymnastics. She loves gymnastics and she’s really strong. She spends the most time on the jungle gym in the play room, just clinging to it and hanging upside down and climbing, so gymnastics was a natural fit for her. She still loves to hang on to Eric’s arm and he calls her a Cling-on. The kids don’t actually get why this is funny, so I look forward to watching Star Trek with them some day so they get the joke.
I am so lucky to be Maia’s Mama! She’s so sweet and thoughtful and funny and silly. She’s really brave and determined too, it’s amazing watching her grow!
New Years with the Richards, our favorite New Years tradition! Maia always asks for Roxy’s when we visit them =)
Batgirl January 2018
February 2018 Learning to fight with swords at the Asian American Festival =)
February 2018
Maia wanted her room to be blue =)
Her pony collection =)
March 2018 at the botanical garden. She loves wearing her rain jacket and boots!
March 2018 egg hunt
April 2018 Egg Dyeing
April 2018 Legos and Wonder Woman =) Two favorites!
Sleepovers sometimes work now! =) They are so cute =)
May 2018
May 2018. The end of school picnic was so much fun! And I got to see Maia in her element, digging in the sandbox. Plus the adorable Wonder Woman outfit and a particularly fun hair day where I made a braided bun at her request. Great day!
June 2018
She can climb Vanaema and Far Far’s orange tree! I believe she was delivering dragon eggs to the nest.
She really loves penguins since we read Mr. Popper’s Penguins. She got Perry the Penguin from the zoo. =)
June 2018
Snow cones July 2018. Maia loves ice so this is a perfect treat for her =)
Garden of the Gods July 2018
She was so proud of herself for finally climbing to the top of this slide at the Cave of the Winds. It was NOT an easy task!
Hiking at Fantastico
Silly like her Daddy =)
August 2018 Back to School
September 2018
September 2018
September 2018
October 2018 Maia’s Superhero Birthday
October 2018
Maia loves dressing up! It’s hard to get a picture of her that’s not blurry though because she moves so fast!
Maia loves being BB8! To update the costume she wore at DZ’s birthday, she wanted BB8 to have tools! So I fixed her little cuffs to hold various tools. She loves tools!
Maia wants to learn to bake and cook! She offers to help in the kitchen more than anyone!
Star Sapphire December 2018
I finally caught this cute little lopsided smile on camera! I love it!
December 2018 Sleeping with all her Christmas goodies =)
New Years Eve 2018! Maia got a fancy new dress she picked herself at Target =)
