A month away from her 1st birthday and we are definitely in toddler territory. Maya now walks (and runs!) everywhere, talks constantly to herself and us and to any available object that can act as a telephone, screams if she doesn’t get something she wants immediately and shouts “nahnahnah!” if I try and make her do something she doesn’t want to do.

She is doing new things every day and copying us lots which can be hilarious sometimes – made was doing tai chi style exercises the other day and maya started doing deep breathing. She can now clap, point, brush her hair, turn on the tv and change the channel, change the songs on made’s mp3 player speaker thingy and go “shhh” with her finger to her lips. She tries to put on her own shoes and also our shoes, has favourite songs that she dances to and has taken to running and hitting us with various objects  while shouting “rah!” (which i really should start to discourage but it’s so amusing!).

She’s talking constantly although most of the words don’t mean much to us i’m sure they do to her as she will insistently say the same thing while pointing and then scream if we don’t get what she wants. Her understanding is increasing a lot, particular in indonesian. She understands “give food to the bird” and she will give me something she’s holding if I ask for it. No new words as such this month although she does go “ehoh” when she pretends to talk on the phone. She also likes singing to herself.

Sweeping and throwing/kicking balls are still favourites, along with putting things in containers. she loves putting the lid on her sippy cup, putting it in the cup holder on her high chair and putting blocks in the box of her shape sorter (although she hasn’t quite figured out the idea and prefers to take the lid off so she can put them straight in the box rather than through the hole).

She never crawls anymore, walking everywhere and has found some new fun exercises like putting her hands in the air and spinning round in circles until she falls over and doing a sort of forward roll. she still loves pushing her wooden truck but will now drive it full speed into the wall and continue pushing until the back goes up in the air and she falls over sideways, spilling all the blocks out.

Finally managed to cut out all her daytime feeds so she’s only breastfeeding before bedtime and a couple of times in the night now and on formula with a bit of cows’s milk during the day. next step is to cut out either the bedtime or night time feeds which isn’t going to be easy! She’s quite an independent sleeper anyway and rarely feeds to sleep – she rolls away from me when she’s had enough! but think it’s going to be hard to get her to sleep without feeding her altogether. She can drink through a straw now too.

Thankfully her napping seems to be back on track with one morning and one afternoon nap although the last week or so, one of those naps has become very short but she’s probably just needing less sleep during the day now. We get her to sleep in the pushchair which is cheating a bit but works well enough.

This month we took her to the zoo for the first time, which she loved – going “OOH!” at all the animals and walking round pushing her buggy. We also took her swimming for the first time which she was not so impressed with and clung to me like a limpet! Although she did enjoy the free cake and drink.

Looking forward to the joint first birthday party with Iris next month although not really planned anything yet. We’ll probably just have food over at the wooden house or out somewhere as i don’t know enough people here to invite for a big party! there will definitely be personalised cake and presents cos i already bought them but not sure which I’m going to give for her birthday and which I’m going to save for xmas yet. I also just ordered a bunch of new books so will see if i can hold on on giving them to her for another month.