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October 31, 2008

Halloween 2008

Remember this picture from last year's Halloween?

IMG_2382

Well, we thought we'd save a few bucks and get a second use from her costume. It just barely fit, but it fit well enough to get a second use.

Halloween 2008

Maya had her basket and was ready to roll, that's our door behind her and our pumpkin (she did not enjoy reaching in to pull out the insides at all!)

Halloween 2008

Growing up, I always though it would be great to trick or treat in an apartment complex because you could knock on that many more doors. We live in a giant complex (2500 apartments!) and they passed out pieces of paper with pumpkins on them to tape to your door if you want trick-or-treaters, well we walked for an hour and looked at probably 500 doors and guess how many had pumpkins: 5. We got to knock on 5 lousy doors, I think we need to move.

It was very disappointing because Maya loved ringing the doorbells and was very good about grabbing handfuls of candy from the trays. We spent most of our time walking around looking for the pumpkins on the doors though.

We got a total of 5 trick-or-treaters at our door, which is crazy for the amount of kids in the complex.

Here's us in a lonely hallway

Halloween 2008

And here's Maya after a long night of trick or treating, carrying her pumpkin loaded down with candy

Halloween 2008


October 30, 2008

17 Months

Maya turned 17 months old today and continues to grow by leaps and bounds. She continues to be an extremely happy and easy going kid who fusses very little.

Maya - 17 Months

She is learning and saying new things every day. She will try to repeat just about everything we say (we better start being careful!). She will ask for things like milk (which she calls "Moooo" because she has a glass with a cow on it and we always make a moo sound when we give it to her.

She continues to be book crazy and and we can just mention a book and she runs to get it, I've seen her search for several minutes through her pile of books (we really need to get a bookshelf!) until she finds the one she is looking for.

She also loves music, she knows songs from just the first couple notes which just amazes me. The second she hears the first notes of itsy bitsy spider, she immediately starts the motions. She does the same with row row row your boat and about 5 or 6 others. We play the music through the tv, so she often brings me the remote and points at the tv to ask for music.

Maya - 17 Months

She can now point to her ears and mouth and nose and eyes when asked.

Her Elmo phase seems to have run its course as she no longer insists on carrying him everywhere, he'll occasionally tag along but most of the time he lies forgotten in her room.

Maya - 17 Months

She is doing better at night now and will sleep through the night about half the time. When she wakes up in the morning she yells "Mama, Mama!" instead of crying which is a good thing. She also now can open her door and freaked us out the other day when she woke up came out of her room and into ours without a word.

Maya - 17 Months

Making Friends

Maya and Susan hit the park almost every day and often twice a day. Maya loves being outside and at the mere mention of shoes she starts running for the door.

Lately she's been coming out of her shyness faze and now says hi and bye to everyone we see.

She's also starting to play more with other kids, especially kids she sees often at the park.

Here is Maya making googly eyes at Oliver, who unfortunately just moved away.

Maya - 10/26/08

Two of the kids Maya sees often is Cassie and Jada. They are helping Maya learn to share (still a work in progress)

Maya - 10/26/08

Maya - 10/26/08

October 28, 2008

A Busy Weekend

The weather has been particularly nice so last weekend we were out and about.

On Saturday we visited Kelly Park in San Jose. Maya enjoyed running around the wide open space. She's getting pretty good at kicking the ball around.

Maya - 10/26/08

Maya - 10/26/08

We then walked around the Japanese Friendship Garden and Maya had fun feeding the fish.

Maya - 10/26/08

On Sunday we decided to give the Oakland Zoo another try and we're happy to report that Maya had a lot more fun than last time. She was still more interested in the other kids than the animals but for the most part she enjoyed looking at the animals and even petted some goats.

Maya - 10/26/08

Maya - 10/26/08

Maya - 10/26/08

October 19, 2008

Just a couple new pics

We didn't do anything of note this weekend (though Maya did have her very first play date with some friends she met at the park) so here's a few recent pics.

Maya ate a whole plum by herself! She usually doesn't like holding fruit that is kind of slimy but she had no trouble digging into this plum and gnawed it down to the pit.

Maya - 10-19-08

Maya - 10-19-08

Of course, she still likes her cake!

Maya - 10-19-08

We were walking around downtown San Jose the other day and discovered that there are some fountains that kids can run around in. We had looked all summer for something like this after seeing some in Boulder Colorado but couldn't find any. Can't wait 'til it warms up.

Pumpkin Patch 2008

Our apartment complex has some really nice amenities, one of which is what we call "The Big Room". I think its supposed to be for dance or yoga classes but we use it run around in.

Maya - 10-19-08

Maya - 10-19-08

October 12, 2008

Punkin' Head II

Maya is now old enough that she's repeating holidays and activities.

This year we re-visited the Pumpkin Patch in San Jose. She was a little more aware this year and could at least run around. But in the end she wasn't too excited about it and mostly ignored the pumpkins and just ran around the empty parts of the field.

Pumpkin Patch 2008

It's interesting to compare this years pictures to last years.

Pumpkin Patch 2008

Pumpkin Patch 2008

Pumpkin Patch 2008

Elmo didn't have such a great day though.

Pumpkin Patch 2008

Pumpkin Patch 2008

October 5, 2008

Luwombo!

We didn't do have much going on this weekend so we decided to try our hand at making my favorite traditional Ugandan dish: Luwombo.

Luwombo is basically stew that is steamed in banana leaves for a few hours. There are many varieties but the most common is chicken and beef with peanut sauce.

For the chicken, you place some chicken and a whole bunch of veggies in the banana leaf (and usually some beef stock granules, in uganda you would use mchuzi).

luwombo

For the beef and peanut luwombo, you grind the peanuts and add a little water to make a paste then steam it along with the beef. In Uganda this would go over a charcoal stove so you get a good smoky flavor but our apartment complex does not allow charcoal grills so I smoked the meat for an hour over very low temperature to get at least some flavor.

We were happy with the results but found that we didn't grind the peanuts fine enough.

luwombo

We needed some good starchy sides so we also steamed Cassava (also called yucca root here). These came out perfectly and are basically like a dry potato.

luwombo

We can't get the right plantains here for matoke (and believe me, we have tried every variety of plantains we could find). So instead we found some nice ripe ones at the new Mexican supermarket that just opened. They came out nice and sweet and a were good complement to all the other food.

luwombo

And we can't have a feast with out chapati! What is called chapati in uganda is really paratha which is very flaky (almost like a flat croissant). Our favorite Indian market stopped carrying the brand we like but luckily I stumbled upon some at the local Chinese market when I went to buy banana leaves.

luwombo

All in all we were quite proud of ourselves (and quite full when were were done)

luwombo

October 2, 2008

16 Months

Maya turned 16 months a few days ago.

She's continuing to grow like crazy and talking up a storm, though its still mostly gibberish. She understands quite a lot now and is beginning to follow directions. You can tell her to go get a book and she'll get it, you can even tell her specific ones, "get 'baa baa black sheep'", and she'll usually get the right one.

She loves being outside and is always happy to go for a walk or to the park. She's getting pretty fast and falls down a lot less than she used to.

She is still very shy around strangers and won't look at other adults in the face. But as soon as the turn around, she's waving "bye-bye" to them like they were best friends.

She is crazy about lights and points every light out to us. She can now say "light" very clearly and whenever she see's one, especially if it just turned on, she exclaims "Light!".

Maya - 09-28-09

Maya - 09-28-09