Catching up with Maia

I send emails to myself about Maia. Just to keep a record in case I'm not able to put it in the blog. Blogging has been hard lately because of work. I've missed a lot of things that I wish I had put in. So I'm going to catch up on seven of those emails. The first six are in this post. The pic above is of Maia on August 15th, just before kindergarten. She had been on a half day schedule for two weeks. I think this was her first regular day of kindergarten.

June 21, 2007

Kristina had picked up Maia from the preschool and me from work, and we were riding home.

Maia's had lost her two lower incisors some days before, and Kristina said that the new teeth were coming in.

"You can show Daddy," she said.

"And Mommy, when the doctor fix my ear, I can show everybody, too."

July 8, 2007

We were at the breakfast table talking, Maia and I. Maia was still in preschool.

"Are you one of the tallest in your class."

"Yes. But Rustin and Ryan are taller than me."

"Then they must be very tall."

"Do you like being tall?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because then people can’t see my ear." She tugged her little ear.

"Your little ear?"

"Why?"

"Cause," she said.

"Cause you don’t want them to see it?"

"Is the doctor going to fix my ear?" she said, changing the subject.

"Well, we are going to go see if he can. We will have to get on a plane and go to California. And we will ask him if he can fix it."

"But you know what? Even if he can’t, you’re still a beautiful little girl. And you’re still Maia."

These are pictures from a July 4th barbecue at the beach with some friends.









July 10, 2007

Maia, Kristina and I were in the family room.

"This is a big house for four people," Maia said.

"Did you hear somebody say that or did you think of that?"

"I thought of that in my head," she said, pointing to her head.

August 10, 2007

We were taking a walk down the street in front of our house. We live at the top of a hill. There's nothing above us (at least, for a couple of miles), but there are lots of houses and dogs below us, and even some children. Kahala and his brother and sister, for example.

We had been having birthdays--Maia's on the 15th, Kristina's on the 17th, and mine coming up on the 27th.

"We adopted you three years ago, Sweetness. Do you know what 'adopted' means?"

She shook her head.

"It means you have two mothers and two fathers. You have the father and mother who gave birth to you. And now you have Mommy and me."

She thought about this, but she didn't ask any questions, and I decided to let it be.

This is a picture of the street we were walking on.



The rest of the photos are from a trip to Ala Moana to buy shoes on August 11th and an outing we took to Waikiki on August 12th.












August 30, 2007

"Your first mom named you, Fatima."

I was pushing her on the swings in the backyard.

"Maia's Playground," we call it.

"Fatima?"

"Yes."

"Did we go to the beach, then?"

"I don’t know, Maia. I wasn’t there then."

"In Kazakhstan?"

"Yes."

"You didn’t know me, then?"

"No."

She thought about this for a while. And then she heard something in the house and wanted to go inside.

September 4, 2007

We had been at a family dinner at a restaurant. We generally go for a walk towards the end of it because we're the first to finish, and Maia likes to go on walks in new places. We were watching an ambulance come out of a building. The driver waved at us as it pulled onto the street.

"When I fix my ear, I will go in an ambulance. And Mommy and Daddy and Popo can’t see me."

"Why can’t we see you, Sweetie?"

"When I fix my ear, I will go in an ambulance," she repeated. "And Mommy and Daddy and Popo can’t see me."

"Okay, Sweetie."

I thought about how much this meant to her. "Maia, you know when they fix you ear, they won’t be able to make it perfect. Okay?

"Okay," she said, in her, I’ll go along voice.

"We’ll just have to make do, okay? Like we do with your hair. And like the Little Lady does."

I was referring to the show about Little People in a Big World. She likes the mother in that show, who has a certain determination to make her way regardless.

This is from another family dinner about a week and a half later--Kristina's brother-in-law and niece with Maia. Maia is still enthralled by "Big Girls."



John, Sunday, September 30, 2007

A rough day

After dinner, Maia came up to the bedroom, looking for me. She knew I had been angry with her.

We had taken her to the Kaiser urgent care clinic after Kristina picked me up from work. She has had a rash, and it had gotten worse. It looked like it was spreading over her arms and cheeks.

She was difficult at the clinic. She will get into this mood where she makes noise and acts out just to be acting out. Kristina had been cross with her and so had I. Dinner was tense. It took forever to get her to sit down.

"Come," I said to her, patting the bed. I was lying on it with my laptop in my lap. I wasn't mad at her anymore.

She climbed on. She had two little tins--plastic containers, really--of something sweet and sour.

"I can't," she said, trying to open it.

I opened it for her. She was pointing at something, and I realized it was the remote for the television.

She turned it on.

She held out a candy to me, and I opened my mouth, and she popped it in.

"Thank you, Sweetie."

Something about the way she was sitting made her tilt over, and I laughed. She continued on to the floor.

I expected her to come back up, but she didn't. "What's wrong, Sweetie?" I asked her.

"You laughed at me," she said.

"I wasn't laughing at you, Sweetie," I said joining her on the floor. "It was funny," I said. "You laugh at Daddy when he does something funny."

"Did somebody laugh at you at school today? Was that what happened??

But she wouldn't answer.

"It's school," I said later to Kristina. Maia was asleep.

"Well, I don't know what to do about it," she said.

"Neither do I," I said.

John, Tuesday, September 4, 2007