Maia, the comedian

She's always been a comic. She likes to make faces and to make people laugh. She makes herself laugh, too.

Just after she turned two, I took Maia and my mom to a McDonald's. Maia wrinkled up her face around her nose, and that made my mom laugh because it looked so funny. For the next 15 minutes, Maia played with my mom that way, making her laugh again and again with her wrinkled up nose. My mom called it her "funny nose face."

At about the same time, we discovered that Maia could mimic a kung fu fighter. She'd tense up all her muscles, and grimace, and make herself shake just like the kung fu fighters when they're righteously outraged in those old Run Run Shaw films. Everyone would laugh. "Do kung fu, Maia," we'd ask, and she'd do it and repeat it for as long as we wanted to laugh.

I hope she keeps that. Kind of a Lucille Ball, Elle DeGeneres talent for comedy.

This is a pic from about the time of the visit to Micky D's--October, 2004. I had been taking pics of her, and she wrinkled up her face at me.