10 things Daddy adores about his Maya
The way she reacts to my voice. If she’s crying or fussy, she’ll calm down and stare directly at me if I sing to her and rock her gently. (This lasts a few minutes at least, after which the crying returns.)
The chirping. We call her our little bird. I think the chirping is some variation of a hiccup, but I’m not sure. It’s delightful in any case (except at 2 in the morning, when it keeps me from falling asleep).
The other sound effects. There’s something she does that sounds like an extended throat-clearing noise that Rebecca calls her gremlin sound; it’s scary and cute at the same time. There’s her stuttering medium-volume crying, which makes you want to run and hug her and do anything she wants (if you could just figure out what that is). And then there’s the gentle snoring, once she’s sated.
The facial expressions. I already posted photos of some of the faces she makes. There’s also a cringing face, a sneering face, a lip-smacking face, an attentive face, and a pained face.
The moves. She kicks like a champ; it makes diaper changing an adventure. There’s also what we call the “Exorcist” move, because - like the possessed girl in the movie - she tries to vigorously turn her head past the 90-degree mark to either side for unknown reasons. It’s especially entertaining when she does this during a feeding, and actually turns away from the bottle (and then gets angry that she can’t find the milk source anymore).
The way she’ll try to hold the bottle up during a feeding, or try to grab my thumb that’s holding the bottle (her hands are so small - or my thumb is so fat - that she can’t grasp all the way around it yet). Oh, and how she loves to eat (we’re a family - and I’m including Lola here - that lives to eat, so she’s already fitting right in).
Her favourite sleeping pose, which involves her head being to one side; both hands curled up in fists; one arm across her chest, and the other under her head. And she’s an active dreamer like her Mommy and her canine sister; all you have to do is to look at the way she looks and acts while asleep to see that there’s a lot going on inside that head of hers.
She came with hangnails out of the womb. And a full head of hair that seems fancily styled. And a head that doesn’t look conical (for some reason, the possibility of that worried me).
How - because of her bowed legs - you can fold up her lower limbs compactly, tuck her head and arms in, and have yourself a rolled-up Maya ball to play with and kiss all over.
How completely her presence distracts me from all the things I stress about in life. Work, bills, chores… it all magically goes away for a while. All I can see is her.