Maya: 5 Years! Mountains to Sea! Walking, Talking and Signing!

Have you figured out what the title to this blog post means yet? Well, I'm sure the last part is pretty easy to figure out but we'll get to that a little bit later. But first let me tell you what the first two parts are all about...

5 Years!

On July 19th Mom and Dad celebrated their 5 year anniversary! Do you want to know what they got each other? They gave each other a very special gift, one that everyone should give their loved ones after 5 years of being happily married. They gave each other a break! Yes, that's right, they took a break from each other. The only bad part is they had to choose who took care of me! Of course Mom won that battle and took me to the beach while Dad went to the mountains of Tennessee to go fishing. We had a great time but we're all wishing we were still in the mountains or back at sea. The best part of the weekend is Dad bringing home some trout for a special anniversary dinner!

Mountains!

I left Raleigh at 6am and headed for the Tellico River just south of the Great Smoky Mountains on the NC/TN border. It took around 7 hours to get there mainly due to the slow moving and often treacherous one-lane forest service roads. I met 15 of my friends up there for a long weekend of fishing and camping and to celebrate a good friend's marriage in two weeks. Not only did we catch a lot of fish but we saw some great wildlife. We saw a timber rattlesnake that was the size of my lower leg, 10 wild hogs, a black rat snake, raccoons and a black bear. We ate lots of fish and were smart enough to discard the fish heads in the river by our campsite so we could attract mountain lobsters. We hit the river by the campsite around midnight and caught enough mountain lobster to have for dessert!

If it weren't for the long drive I'd be up there every weekend. The mountains of east Tennessee are some of the most beautiful in the entire US. If you have never been then you need to go. And if you're looking for someone to go with you then just give us a call!

Sea:

Since Mom is asleep right now I'll leave this part for her to return to in another post tomorrow night.

Walking, Talking and Signing:

I took my first steps over the weekend, starting signing again and added a few new words to my growing bank of baby garble.

Walking - I have started testing my feet trying to mimic what I see everyone else on this planet doing but I can't seem to muster up the courage to get moving. I sway back and forth trying to talk myself into just doing it, but knowing that I am going to fall flat on my face makes it a little hard. I busted pretty hard tonight but I kept trying. Nothing more that 2 steps but remember, baby steps first! I'll be a terror on 2 feet in no time!

Talking/Signing - I have been adding a few words each week to my growing vocabulary and when I know them, adding a sign to the words. Most of you will remember that I took a sign language class a while back and the only sign I ever mastered was the milk sign. You have to make sure you know the important ones first before going on to master more. In the past, I would only sign if you signed it to me first. Now I am signing if you just say the word. Below is a list of my words to date and which ones I can sign.

Words
Booby
Mimi (My Snake)
Momma
Daddy
Cup
Bubbles
Abi
Brad
Teddy (My Stuffed Bear)

Signs
Fan
Milk/Boobie
More
Eat
Change Diaper
Bath Time
Hear
Home

If you just say the word Booby, Hear, Eat and More I'll show you the sign. If you say give me a hug or give me a kiss, well I can do that too...but only if I like you!

Below are some pictures of Dad's weekend. More to come tomorrow from our trip to the beach!

Enjoy!