"LOVE"

The name Maya means "Love" here. Everyone who is a native hears her name and lets us know that. They are very approving. She has a new middle and last name now. Her old last name was O.NE. (not ONE, but O.NE.) The O stands for OCCED which is the acronym spelling of the orphanage where she was at and NE stands for NEPAL. Very simple. Her new full name is Maya Grace Baker. We all know what Grace means. It means "Grace"! Love - Grace......what a cool name. We didn't know that Maya stood for love here when we picked Grace as a middle name for her making it even better.

Well, miss Maya Grace had a full day yesterday. We went to an ancient Nepali palace in a district of Kathmandu that we had not been to yet. We want to get plenty of pictures of different places to share with Maya later on. This place was amazing. It was very well preserved and was the size of a village. There was a lot of hand carved wood and hand chiseled stone. There was even an old public bathing place there that was still in use! We got pictures and video of as much as we could as well as some souvenirs purchased from some of the street vendors. Maya doesn't understand the significance of these places now, but someday I hope that she will appreciate the pictures and knowing that we took interest in these things. She is however quite tolerant and mostly happy to be out in public places.

Yesterday she went out into the courtyard area with Staci and enjoyed her time out there for the first time. She had been out several times before crying and screaming and the like. This time she took in the pond, the flowers, and the grass - she loves the grass. She has never seen much grass and enjoyed the way it felt under her feet. When they came back in, Maya was quick to get my attention and point back outside. She wanted to go back out and for me to go with them, so we ventured out into the courtyard again. I found two vacant chairs on top of a knoll type hill leading up to the edge of a small brook laced with all kinds of flowers. I sat in one of the chairs and Staci and Maya sat in the grass. I picked a clover for Maya and started something. She began picking grass for me, for Staci, and for herself. She was perfect happy picking the grass until she found the flowers! Why settle for grass when you could have lovely textured, colorful, soft flowers in your hands. Of course we didn't let her pick the flowers. The ground was uneven where we were and I doubt that she had ever been on uneven ground before because she struggled to keep her balance and couldn't quite figure out why. This made Staci and nervous wreck because as you get closer to the flowers, there is about a 4 foot drop down to the little brook that runs through the courtyard and into the pond. The only thing to break her fall would have been the flowers. Miss Maya is ALL GIRL! How could she not be drawn to the beauty of the flowers? Staci looked away for a fraction of a second and Maya pounced on the opportunity. She came up with a fist full of yellow flowers full of pride and delight. Like a sweet sweet girl, she eagerly gave the flowers, one each, to Staci and me. We needed to find Maya a new short term interest, but she rarely wants to participate in something that WE came up with. However, if SHE comes up with the idea, it is off to the races. So, we kind of put the second chair, the empty chair into her immediate vision. Hook, line and sinker! She bit. She began climbing around on the chair with wreckless abandon. She is a climber and is fearless of the heights to which she climbs. These were not low chairs either. They were built tall so that people could put their feet on the resting bar built into the front legs of the chairs. They were built a lot like lifeguard chairs only much shorter. It was not long and she figured out how to climb up into the seat of the chair. Staci, nervous again with this newfound equally dangerous activity helped Maya out of the seat and tickled her when she got to the bottom. Maya liked this and considered it to be a kind of game. Maya was quickly back up into the seat part of the chair, but this time was standing, not sitting. Staci turned toward her and without warning, Maya bailed off of the chair kind of like an experienced bungee jumper might jump from their perch! Maya sailed through the air toward Staci and Staci caught her, WHEW! That jump had caught my attention too! That has to be the ALLSTATE GOOD HANDS PLAY OF THE DAY! Staci and I just looked at each other with.....that look - part shock, part horror, part thankfulness, and part disbelief. Good thing she is tough! I doubt that we can catch her every time. Maybe we will look for a baby bicycle helmet and some bubble wrap and duct tape. So, if you see her dressed like that, it isn't because daddy dressed her!

Since we are caught in he middle of a national holiday here in Nepal, we are going to take advantage of the empty streets (no traffic) and the docile environment and we are going to take a trip. We are going to see Everest! We will travel today, stay the night at a bed and breakfast there and then come back tomorrow. You can't see the mountains from where we are. They are not only mostly hidden by foothills the size of the Rockies, it is very very smoggy and polluted here. On some clear days, we can only see the very tops of the great Himalayas crowning the peaks of the foothills off in the distance. So, we are going up there to see them up close and personal. What if Maya asks what the top of the world is all about? What are we going to tell her - yes, we were there and we got to see it from the airplane as we were coming in! We won't be close enough to touch it, but we will be close enough to see its might, and far enough to escape the smog in the valley. We won't be high enough to not be able to breath, but will be high enough to need the one set of winter cloths each of us packed. We are packing now and will be gone about 24 hours total. I will write of our experience when we get back. Until then, you are in our thoughts and prayers.