Adventures with Maia

An update on Clarissa:  She’s home from the icu!!  It got bad enough that it was a fight for her life (her larynx was permanently damaged when she was born which has led to all kinds of eating and breathing problems and made her being sick much worse).  Her parents had a big scare, but everything’s ok.  Thank You, God!

And since I’m in a rambling mood again, guess what Maia did while my friend Krystyna was watching her?  She found a pen and wrote alllllll over our tan couch.  I mean all over it.  Krystyna was probably out on the balcony having a smoke (she’s newly saved but hasn’t felt the Holy Spirit leading her to give that up yet. .  Apparently Maia asked Krystyna not to tell me about it and Krystyna agreed and covered it up with pillows.  Great.  Maybe we should think about a new caregiver until various Biblical truths sink in.  Meanwhile, any advice on how to get pen out?  Keep in mind it’s a lot of pen.  Luckily the couch cushion covers are removable and washable (our couches are from Ikea and I highly recommend them for families with children).  

Maia has always been…let’s say.. a difficult child.  I first realized it when she was about 4 months old and I understood that she was actually throwing an angry fit.  We’ve had lots and lots of those since then.  And combined with her frightening temper, she’s also always getting into something.  Like when she was 18 months old and during a five-minute phone conversation (literally five minutes) she managed to climb from the toilet to the sink to the bathroom cabinet in order to drink some of Ben’s aftershave (not much luckily since it probably didn’t taste as good as she thought it would);  from there she went to the kitchen where she climbed and found the black shoe polish (the fluid kind) and poured it all over the floor;  when the floor was sufficiently black, she got into Mikaela’s craft drawer and used the glue sticks to draw a mural on the living room floor.  When I got off the phone she was content as she could be, happily hiccupping aftershave.  And she hasn’t outgrown these shenanigans either.  Just last month she climbed up on the kitchen counter and got the window cleaner (a super-size bottle).  No, she didn’t drink it – thankfully she’s past that stage now.  But she did empty the almost full bottle all over the kitchen floor.  The floor was pretty dirty; she probably thought she was helping me out.  The problem is that Maia is a climber.  There is no such thing as putting things away high enough.   And we’ve been continually shocked by her mischievous prowess because of the contrast with our older daughter.  Mikaela wouldn’t dream of climbing on anything – she’s very cautious.  It’s great now that Maia is old enough to play on the playground with Kaela because Maia really challenges Mikaela to do things like slides and monkey bars that she wouldn’t normally try.

On the other hand, Maia can be so sweet.  Like when she climbed in bed with me at 5 this morning and hugged me and patted my face and told me that she ‘really love me.’  And now that she’s able to communicate better (she talks really well now!) she’s much less frustrated and better behaved.  And even when she’s being naughty, she’s about the cutest kid you’ve ever seen – all that curly brown hair, and her big blue eyes.  Like when she told me last night, “Mama, Maia not bein naughty anymore.  I not put the paper in the dvd now.”  Which meant that although she had just crammed pieces of paper into the dvd player and shut it, she was turning over a new leaf and wasn’t going to try that again.   See, isn’t that cute? 

How about you guys?  Anybody have adventures like we have with Maia?