Moments of Brilliance

Every so often little Miss. Maya Hennessey has a brilliant moment of shining toddlerhood to make us proud. Three instances in particular stick out in my mind:

1) We were home and Maya was up to her usual tricks and antics, sharing her cookie with the dog, pulling ornaments off the tree, throwing her things on the floor and exclaiming 'uh oh' as if she had nothing to do with it and so forth. One throw too many and her daddy responded by saying 'bad baby', not an uncommon phrase around here and joking of course. Maya responded by sticking out her tongue and blowing a raspberry at her dad. Too funny!

2) We were sitting at the Thanksgiving table, it was about 6:30pm and little Maya had had a long day by that point and was tired and acting up. I put her on my lap and jokingly asked her a question I frequently do, "Maya, who's the boss? Maya? or Mommy?". Would you believe that she took the opportunity to say her name for the first TIME!!!! "Maya!" she exclaimed and we all burst out laughing. Perfectly on cue.

and my personal favorite....

3) One of Maya's favorite phrases is 'bad boy' (pronounced 'baa bo') which was originally aimed at Bailey (our dog). She says it a lot. We were in the Supermarket not too long ago, Maya in her stroller when she reached over to a nearby shopping cart where a little boy was sitting in the child seat, his mother nearby perusing the aisle. She touched a few items in the cart before I scooted her away and the little boy noticed and said to his mommy, "Mommy, I think that baby is trying to steal our stuff."  His mother ignored him, muttering something like "I highly doubt that" and kept shopping. Feeling the need to defend his shopping cart (Maya did try to reach into the cart afterall) started saying "bad baby! bad baby!", somewhat to his mother's embarrassment. While she tried to address his supposed inappropriate behavior, our little munchkin piped up - and you guessed it!! Whirled a 'BAA BO!' his way. Our feisty tike made us proud and we couldn't contain our laughter.

As they say - timing is everything.

Macy's Winter Wonderland

We decided to brave the crowds on Saturday and take Maya to see Santa at Macy's. We went to Bloomingdale's last year when she was only about 2 months old and took a Santa picture- little oblivious thing that she was thought nothing of the strangely dressed man in a chair. The Bloomie's Santa is quietly sitting on the 9th floor amidst the children's clothes on a fancy chair on a little red stage with an elf or two hanging around and a photographer. Nothing like the Macy's Santa. For Macy's Santa we stood on line for a little over an hour, weaving in and out of all the back offices and human resources departments to finally end up where we got on the line.  We then entered a well done train, with cars that vibrate. You walk through them and get dropped off in Santa land, aka North Pole. There were fancy train sets, and lots of Christmas trees, a giant talking tree, ice skating bears, and a singing bear chorus. It was like Disney Land amusement attraction - pretty fun and worth the wait. We finally got to Santa and we tried to prep Maya as best we could anticipating a potential problem - but to no avail. Sure enough I sat her on Santa's lap and moved away so we could get a shot and she proceeded to scream. And kept screaming. Finally I sat down next to her and Santa to get the shot. We didn't end up buying the picture, we may try Bloomie's quiet boring Santa if we want a picture - less stress. It took us about 25 minutes just to exit the building the crowds were sooooooo bad and we got home exhausted. We hosted a fun holiday brunch on Sunday and got to see some friends we don't usually see and are now staring down the last full week of work of the year. Looking forward to Christmas in Wellesley.

The Grinch who stole the ornament

We took off last Tuesday for a wonderfully relaxing Thanksgiving break in East Hampton. We went to the movies (first time in months,) the duck pond (a huge hit with the munchkin), and took a much needed break.  Sunday we loaded up the car to the brim (inevitable with two dogs and a kid plus some black Friday shopping), complete with tree on top like the Griswalds on Christmas vacation and headed home. We weren't sure if we could pull off the tree this year, too much opportunity for destruction, but we decided to give it a try since we are not home for Christmas every year and therefore don't always get a tree. So far the resident toddler has been behaving and leaving the tree alone. Well for the most part - she does pull off some of the ornaments occasionally, but then being her father's daughter that she is she tries to put them back - nice and tidy.