Maya Rwenzori Haynes

Maya turned 25 months old yesterday. She seems to be growing exponentially at this point. She is now talking in full sentences and you can really see her trying to figure out the world. Her favorite words are "What's that?" and she will talk about events that happened weeks ago (and sometimes it takes us a while to figure out what she is talking about). She still talks about her birthday party (mostly about how she had to share the bubbles)

One of her favorite things now is to draw, she goes through lots of paper. She knows the names of colors but doesn't really know which color is which. When we ask her which color something is, she will name a color, but not the correct one.

Sadly, she is really afraid of the pool and refuses to go swimming this summer. It's been really hot lately and we head for the pool to BBQ but she refuses to go in.

She loves animals, on Father's Day we went to Ardenwood Historical Farm in Freemont which is a 100 year old farm set up for kids to see. They have goats and sheep and rabbits, all of which Maya enjoyed. She watched the sheep for what seemed like forever.

We had a nice picnic and ran around the farm.

Maya had a birthday party in Uganda, so rather than having another party here we decided just to have a small BBQ in the park near our apartment.

Maya had fun...she ate yummy fruit salad with her BFFs, Jada and Acacia

One of our friends brought a canopy so we had some shade

Our friend, Senthil brough his parents and Maya took to them immediately and even let them take her for a walk around the park.

Maya opened presents (we got her a Abbie Cadabby doll and shelves for her room)

and we had cake and home-made ice cream too.

We had a nice day and hung out for a few more hours while the kids played.

Last weekend was nice and warm so we decided to give a new park a try, we headed to Lakewood Park in Sunnyvale, chosen mainly because it has a water area for kids to run around in with lots of fountains that shoot up from the ground. It also has a nice children's play area.

Maya wouldn't go anywhere near the water but she did enjoy the playground.

We walked along the paths

Then I taught Maya how to play baseball.

I even taught her how to argue with the umpire

Maya and Susan spent most of May in Uganda where Maya got to visit lots of her relatives.

They took a very long plane ride but Maya had Sesame Street and The Wiggles on Susan's Ipod to help pass the time. She Did great but got sick on the first leg of the journey (luckily right before they landed).

They stayed at Susan's sister's house where Maya spent most of her days playing with her cousin Haythem.

Maya also enjoyed rocking her newest cousin

They have an chicken business so Maya got to play with lots of chickens (and rabbits).

Though there are drawbacks to having a two year old near your chicken business...

They ran around the neighborhood...

...and helped the housekeeper take out the trash...

She went with her Aunties on a trip to the beach

One of the new hotels had a really nice play area so Maya got in some swing and slide time

Maya got to visit her Great Grandma in "the village" (really just a bit outside of the city). Her great grandma is her only living direct ancestor so it was nice to be able to get a visit with her.

And they made sure to get a picture with Susan, Maya and Great Grandma all together

And as usual, she found lots of kids to play with

Maya had her two year birthday party while in Uganda and had lots of relatives over for the party.

They then returned on another long plane ride (about 30 hours door to door) and immediately slept for 14 hours straight. They are now almost over their jet lag.

Lots more pics here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlhaynes/sets/72157619282507991/

Maya turned two on Saturday. She and Susan are still in Uganda and are hoping to have a small party today, the cake has been ordered!

Maya has adjusted nicely to Uganda and loves going out to visit the chickens and playing with Haythem, her 20 month old nephew. Maya will hopefully go and visit her great grandma on Monday. They leave Uganda on Tuesday and arrive San Francisco on Wednesday.

Hopefully we'll have lots of good pictures to share soon.

Maya turned 23 months about a week ago, hard to believe less than a month until her 2nd birthday. Maya and her Mom are currently enjoying a trip to Uganda where Maya will celebrate her birthday. We will have another party here a few weeks after they get back.

She is starting to use longer sentences, she blurted out "I like honey" after having a little taste the other day. She is much more confident physically these days, she wants to walk up and down the stairs by herself and can easily climb up the "rock climbing" portion of the playground.

She now has lots of friends at the park and is very good about waiting her turn for the swing. She would swing all day if she could.

Her eating and sleeping is still not great. She has developed a cough at night when she lays down. She has her two year checkup as soon as she returns so hopefully we can figure out what is going on.

The weekend before they left, we hit the Oakland Zoo again. Every time Maya goes, she's a little more interested. She loved the elephants and giraffes.

and even tried to find the monkeys in the trees.

But what she really loved was the metal pigs.

Afterward we walked around Oakland a bit. We found a hotel named after Maya.

We've been having record high temperatures here so on Sunday we packed up and headed for the beach in San Francisco.

We went to Crissy Field which is right near the golden gate bridge. It was quite foggy and switched between hot and cold depending on the amount of Fog.

We had a visitor, who came to us from Colorado and is now on his way back home

After playing at the beach we walked around town where Maya went from parking meter to parking meter giving each one a hug.

We've been wanting to get Maya a riding toy for a bit and when one popped up on craigslist being sold by someone across the street from us, Susan pounced on it. We got a riding toy, a bike and a scooter for $20.00. Score!

Maya loves the riding toy and scoots around on it at the park.

The bike will have to wait awhile before she is able to use it. For now, Elmo gets to ride.

Maya really wants to use the scooter, but that will have to wait also. She hasn't quite worked out the logistics of making it go.

Maya had a delicious Easter Sunday...we got up late (for once) and went to see if the easter bunny had left anything...yep candy and a stuffed bunny!

Maya ate one of the chocolate covered marshmallow bunnies and declared "I Like!".

We were invited to some of Maya's friends house for easter lunch. We started with an easter egg hunt. Maya did very good, filling up her bag with found goodies.

We made sure to take some pictures in their Sunday's best.

We then colored eggs, Maya did pretty good, not making too much of a mess

Last week, Maya turned 22 months old...we're slowly creeping up to the big 2.0

Maya seems to have gone through a serous growth spurt, she has outgrown almost all her clothes, we keep being amazed that all of a sudden her coat is too small or that she needs new shoes.

She is now a non-stop talker and her vocabulary has grown exponentially. She still is balloon crazy and loves Elmo and the Wiggles. The weather is really nice again so she spends most of her days playing in the park where she is making more friends.

She surprised us the other day by putting her shoes on herself, on the right feet!

We went the other day to get her travel shots for her upcoming trip to Uganda. She got three shots and screamed at being held down but the shots didn't bother her too much and she calmed down quickly. We also have have some malaria pills that she needs to start taking a week before she leaves. Malaria is probably the biggest worry as its hard to tell when a kid is just fussy verses actually having malaria.

This last weekend we visited The Children's Fairyland in Oakland. It's an old school park perfect for very little kids. Everything looks like it was built in the 50's and its a little run down, but Maya had a great time.