Walking & Talking

Walking:

Maya's got a mind of her own.  She knows what she wants, and now that she can steer her little stroller (which she's able to maneuver better than the more medical looking baby walker), she's able to go after it, too.

(I could upload 700 pictures like this.  I'm so excited that she suddenly is motivated to move vertically that I can't help but giggle and take a million pictures when we're out and she's (almost) walking!)

Sometimes she wants to wander around the basketball courts:

If I sit like that, I can scoot myself along on the stroller . . . I feel like a big kid .  I wanted to throw my arms up and go "Whhhheeeee!"  

But things got a little dicey  when she found a flight of stairs that she really wanted to go down.  Really, really wanted to go down.

We tried to explain that stroller + stairs = trouble, but she wasn't interested in listening.  Luckily, she's 2 and easily distractable, so the tears didn't last long at all :)

Talking:

We were on our way to Trader Joe's the other day and Maya was babbling up a storm---she loves to chatter in the car (maybe because we're not focusing on her and she's trying to join in with our conversations?).  Anyway, most people---even her speech therapists---don't get to hear Maya "talk" often . . . she really seems silent to most people.  She's always watching and listening, but she doesn't use her voice much . . . so we're happy to let you all hear her "talk".

I'm not sure what happened with the cell phone video recording thing, but somehow the sound is on a delay---you see her mouth move, but the sound doesn't come for a few seconds.  It makes more sense if you click the "play" button and then just listen, instead of watching.

Clearly, her expressive language (able to use her voice to express herself) isn't so great.  But her receptive language (her understanding of us) is actually very good.  You can see a little taste of that here, as Dave talks to her about her cow.

Speaking of cows, guess what we saw when we got to Trader Joe's: