The big 13

Thirteen years ago on Monday, May 3rd, at 8:50 in the evening, Maya Leigh Wing came into this world...a pink, wriggling bundle of absolute wonderfulness. In celebration of Maya and this momentous occasion, I put together some memories of all of her past birthdays. Here's a fun trip down memory lane....

Months before our beautiful girl was born, Steven and I picked out the name Maya. We both loved the way it sounded and knew it was right should we have a little girl. Leigh came from my grandmother, Mimi, who introduced me to chalks and pastels and the world of drawing. She always told me that had she been an artist with works of art to show or sell that she would have loved to have used the name Lola Leigh to sign her pieces. That stuck in my head and Steven and I thought the two names, Maya and Leigh, went beautifully together. 

Maya the day she came home from the hospital.

Before she even left our hospital room, we'd combined her names and were calling her "Mylee". The name suits her.

Maya was born at Littleton Hospital and our home was on Logan Street in the Washington Park area of Denver. We lived in the same house that Maya's Poppa grew up in.

Maya's 1st birthday

Washington Park was in fact the place we chose to celebrate Maya's first birthday. She attacked her cake with gusto, but the mess it left upset her greatly. She was not a fan of the frosting on her hands and knees.

The celebration at Wash Park was pretty fun though, even with the cake drama.

Blowing out the candle with Daddy at home. Happy first birthday, sweet girl!

The above picture is one of my all time favorites of Maya and her Daddy. Maya's actual birthday fell during the week and we celebrated it before her big party, just the three of us in the back yard.

Maya was about 18 months old in this picture. Big cup? No problem! She's got it handled.

Our girl had a big thing for shoes once she started crawling. Come to think about it, she still has a big thing for shoes...but she no longer wears them on her hands as she motors around. She didn't care whose shoes they were...just as long as they were big enough to put her little hands in, she liked them and crawled around all over the place.

Mylee had Daddy's number from the very beginning. She's a Daddy's girl, all the way. Daddy's pretty fond of his daughter, too.

Maya's 2nd birthday

Maya was a fan of Winnie the Pooh, and of 101 Dalmations. So much so that when it came time to celebrate her second birthday, she couldn't decide which one she liked the most so we used both as the theme for her party. She got this red car that year and she liked it so much that she refused to get out of it to blow out her candles. Daddy and Uncle Boo just lifted her up, car and all, and solved that little dilemma.

Balloons are so cool! 

One day, I called for Maya. I think I was going to call her "Peanut" but I must have been thinking "Pooh" and it came out "Poonut". The name stuck. Steven still calls her that from time to time. (I wouldn't suggest anyone else trying it, though. Only her dad can get away with that.)

Shortly after her second birthday, we moved to Castle Rock, Colorado. We called it the Gigi house because it was on Gigi Street.

Maya's fashion sense was very much her own, even at the age of two.

Halloween, 2001

Maya loved ladybugs and decided she was going to be one for Halloween. I call Maya "Mylee Bug" a lot. It's even the name I have listed for her in my email directory. This is where it all started. If you're wondering...Maya isn't called Maya very often. :)

Maya's 3rd birthday

By the time Maya was three, she was really thinking "Monkio" was cool. (That's Pinocchio to you and me.)

Cruising in the Poonut-mobile

Our neighborhood streets were busy with Maya behind the wheel.

The infamous Candy Cane dress

When Maya was three and a half, her little brother was born and GG made them matching candy cane outfits to wear to go and visit Santa. This was Maya's favorite dress...and wore it long past Christmas time. This was taken in the summer. No outfit is complete without a pair of plastic, feather lined Barbie heels. Tres chic.

Maya's 4th birthday

A few months before Mylee's fourth birthday, she began taking dance classes. Maya was all about ballet and for her fourth birthday, she had a ballerina party.

GG embroidered this dress for Maya with her fancy new sewing machine.

Maya proved to be a little ham bone during her first recital. She and her class performed a dance called Balloon Ballet and when it was over, the other little girls filed off stage...except Maya, who remained in the spotlight waving to the audience. Her teacher, Miss Ashley, had to come and take her by the hand and lead her off. She had a blast. It was the beginning of many, many more performances for her.

Mylee's first dance recital. 

She really liked ladybugs, but hated all other insects.
She had a great fear of them for a long time.

Haceta Head Lighthouse in Oregon

In front of the Gigi house in Castle Rock.

Maya at 5

Maya's Gramma and Poppa sent her flowers on her fifth birthday. Notice the Ariel tattoo on her left cheek. By the time she was five, dance was still a huge deal. 'Mernamaids' were also pretty awesome.

She had a beach themed birthday party that year.

Maya and her best friend, Emily, decided to join Centennial Soccer together when they were five. It was pretty much all about hanging out with friends, wearing the cool purple jerseys, (Maya didn't like the white ones nearly as much,) and making hair bands with the team colors. Hey...she was five. :) They were the Dolphins and their giggly group was led by Coach Jimmy.

Big six year old.

Birthday number six was a Little Mermaid celebration.

Little fish girl

Gramma and Poppa surprised Maya with a princess bicycle. She was stunned.

Dinner at Three Margaritas.

Mylee and Joey Dog.

Maya and Dad on the Dragon Coaster at Lakeside. Here's where it all began...

Birthday number seven was the last one Maya celebrated in Castle Rock. W.I.T.C.H. was a favorite then, an animated series about five girls with magical powers. It was all about girl power and Maya thought those fiesty "witch fairies" as she called them rocked.

Going for rides in the Jeep is pretty fun.

For Halloween, Maya dressed as one of the W.I.T.C.H. girls. She was Taranee and she had the gift of fire.

Maya's 8th birthday

For Mylee's eighth birthday, both sides of her family went and played at Casa Bonita. We postponed the party with her friends until the beginning of June so she could have a pool party. We'd moved to a condo in Littleton the summer before, and we had an awesome pool. This was a Pochahontas party.

She had a great time...

...but we lost track of the sunscreen. Yowch.

For those of you familiar with Harry Potter...you know about "he who must not be named", right? Well, we have something like that in our family, too. It's called, "the accident that must not be talked about". In August of Maya's 8th year, her grandparents took her and Scott to the high school in Idaho Springs to ride bikes. I don't like to think about it...so I won't describe the accident. It was awful. It was scary. We could have lost our daughter. 

Not that she looks frightened here...thank goodness what could have been tragic turned out to be something Mylee walked away from.

When it was said and done, she came out of it with a very banged up knee but nothing broken. She also managed to do it all the day after her Nutcracker try outs.

Okay...enough of that.

Oh, she earned herself a part in the ballet.

Miss Maya, the Nutcracker Mouse.

Maya had two birthday parties when she turned nine. She stuck with a mermaid theme again this year and celebrated once with her family...

...and again with her friends. She just ate some pizza here. I think it was delicious!

She got her ears pierced for her birthday, too. This was number one. Now she has three in each ear. She wants other things pierced but that will just have to wait.

Later that summer, Maya and Scott both joined a swim team. They became Stingrays.

The little girl on the right is Diana. She swam for a different team, but Maya was happy to get to hang out with her. She was also a dancing friend and a fellow mouse from the Nutcracker.

Rafting on the Animas River

Speaking of the Nutcracker... 

Maya succeeded in becoming a mouse for the second time when she was nine.

A few months before she turned ten, we moved to North Carolina. Emily, who had been her best friend since before the girls were three, had shown up for Maya's Pinocchio party and hadn't missed a single birthday afterward. Emily's birthday is the day after Maya's. (We met Emily's parents in lamaze class.) To our surprise, Emily's mom, Deb flew the two of them out for a weekend and the girls got to spend big number ten together as well.

Maya's 10th birthday

We took them to Kure Beach and had a great time together.

Maya at Pine Lake

Klouser the amazing rodent.

In July, Maya took part in a Sunfish sailing camp. 

Maya's 11th birthday

Scripps National Spelling Bee allowed homeschoolers to compete the year Maya was 11. It was the first time ever in the entire 70 years of the competition. Maya showed them by winning the local bee held by Cary Homeschoolers. She rocks. Our neighbors thought so, too, and bought her a balloon and a candy bar to celebrate the occasion.

We tagged along with Steven when he went to a training class in Hanover, Maryland. While he was in school, the kids and I found the metro, hopped on and hung out in Washington, D.C.

It was really, really cold and everyone got sick but me. Maya came down with bronchitis and a double ear infection.

That part was not so fun.

In February, Maya went to the regional bee held on the campus of NC State. She competed against 81 other kids for over four hours...

...and came in 13th place overall. She's an awesome speller!

In March, she competed at the BC States swim meet. Maya's an excellent swimmer. Her freestyle is a very beautiful thing.

Maya's 12th birthday

We celebrated Mylee's 12th birthday on Carolina Beach. Steven was in Stuttgart, Germany, but he called to wish her a happy birthday as we were packing up to head home.

Before we hit the beach that day, we also visited the Fort Fisher Aquarium.

At the end of June. Steven took us to Carowinds...an amusement park half in North Carolina, half in South Carolina. Maya got her coaster on.

Maya with a close family friend, Trevor. He was a great coaster buddy.

We got to spend Thanksgiving in Colorado with the Wings, and visited with our Harmelink family, too.

Then we packed up, got on a plane and spent Christmas in Germany.

Heathrow Airport in London

In our hotel in Otterberg...although we spent Christmas riding around in Heidelberg.

Hohenecken Castle, February, 2012

Heidelberg in March, 2012

The Mosel Valley

Rothenberg ob der Tauber

Mylee's still got a fashion sense that's all her own...

...and she grows more wonderful every single day.

Number 13.

There is so much here that I wasn't able to include...like when Maya and I began homeschooling right after she turned four, many trips we've taken, tons of family events, fun times with friends, the umpteen bazillion dance performances, piano recitals, choir concerts, swim meets and all the fish and other assorted animals we've called pets...I couldn't possibly sum up all that has taken place in Maya's full 13 years in one post.

We love this child. Our children are our lives...they are what make our lives worth living. We have been so blessed and we look at both Maya and Scott every day and feel gratitude that we have them by our sides.

Maya is all sorts of things...she's serious, sometimes moody...she's laugh out loud funny and so incredibly smart. She's sarcastic and witty, sweet and unbelievably thoughtful. She's beautiful and caring and a million other things, too. These last thirteen years have been beyond amazing...I can't wait to see what the next thirteen will bring.

Happy 13th, Mylee Bug!