Max's Birthday Celebration

We kept it pretty low-key for Max's birthday celebration.  James made pancakes (Max's favorite) for breakfast, then we went to church where we also happened to have a catered lunch. We came home and let the boys take their naps and then we let Max open presents and we ate a yummy dinner of macaroni and cheese and peas (another favorite of the birthday boy).  Of course then we followed all that with the birthday cake, the most important part in my opinion.

It was a great day, though it became apparent when we got home from church that Max was coming down with something.  He began running a fever before his nap, and I assumed he just had a little cold since he also had a slight runny nose.  It became apparent after a few days, though, that he actually had hand, foot and mouth disease.  He broke out in a rash around his mouth and on his bottom and a little on his hands, and Jesse also got it. Thankfully the rashes didn't really seem to phase them, but they both seemed pretty miserable during the 24-hour period when they had fevers, especially Jesse.  Anyway, he was not quite himself on his birthday, but I think he still enjoyed himself nonetheless.

Jesse was excited to help Max open his presents:

After digging into that cake, he needed a bath.  Jesse gave him a bath mat and bubble bath for his birthday so that they could more easily enjoy taking baths together (actually, I was going to buy this stuff anyway and thought Jesse could just give it to him as a present).  Max gets pretty hyper and splashy in the bathtub so it had been hard to give him a bath previously, as he would just go sliding all over the tub.  Now he can stay and play some.  As you can see here, he was not initially happy about the bath, but he warmed up to it.  I think he was just a little cranky because of the fever.

Watching a movie before bedtime:

Max- One Year

This post will pick up after Max's 10-month mark and catch us up to the present :)

Sleeping

Max continues to sleep well, though he has had some episodes of not sleeping well over the past several months, either due to teething, illnesses or who knows what.  His "ideal" bedtime is 7 PM now, but he can stretch it later for sure.  He typically wakes around 6 AM, but it's not unusual for it to be 30 minutes sooner or later (often Jesse wakes up around 5:30 and this makes Max wake up, too...we're working on this one).  He takes two really good naps.  Up until recently they continued to be about 2 hours each, but now they seem to be shortening a bit.

Eating

Somewhere around 11 months Max dropped down to only nursing about 3 times per day (first thing in the morning, before his afternoon nap and at bedtime), but there are days here and there where it is more and that is fine.  He eats a cup of yogurt for his breakfast, which I give him right before his morning nap, but he also gets a little bit to eat while we eat (like some cheerios or some pancake if that's what we're having) first thing in the morning.  He is a good lunch eater, too, but dinner is hit or miss, depending on what I fix.  He has gotten more picky than he was a month or so ago.  His favorites right now seem to be grapes, yogurt, pizza, anything Italian (lasagna, ravioli, spaghetti) and tacos (he loves the taco meat and beans).

Milestones

I think he started pulling up on furniture between 10 and 10.5 months and a week or two later he was cruising around.  Last week he grabbed our giraffe riding toy and just started walking all over the room with it quite confidently, so maybe walking isn't terribly far off.  He has seemed interested in trying to walk to me a few times but hasn't actually tried it yet.  I am pretty sure that he is not going to crawl; he really just prefers to scoot around on his bottom everywhere and he has gotten quite good at it.  It doesn't hinder him at all.  Whenever he gets up on all fours from a sitting or lying position, he immediately goes straight to his bottom and begins scooting.  He looks like a little monkey.

He does lots of babbling and does this really cute thing where he changes his intonation and sounds like he's asking us questions.  He says "mama", "dada", "dete" (Jesse) and has said some other words but not super consistently ("water", "door", "ball", "bye bye", "hi" and "turtle").

Temperament

I think we may have another strong-willed one.  He gets very mad when we take things away from him or redirect him away from something he shouldn't be playing with.  I don't remember Jesse getting upset when other kids took things from him at this age, but boy does Max hate it when Jesse takes toys from him.  The upside is that he is learning to defend himself at a much younger age and he doesn't just sit there and take it.

He is also an explorer, just like his big brother, and gets into EVERYTHING.  The two things he is after most right now are our toilet and our shoes.  If I leave the bathroom door open and Max sees it, he is in there faster than I can come after him.  Today he left the living room while I was reading Jesse a book and I thought I could finish it up quickly and go grab him before he got into anything, but he had already found the (open) toilet and was apparently playing in the water, judging by his wet hands and the wet toilet seat (ugh!!!).

He had a bout with stranger anxiety around 8 or 9 months and still has it to a degree, but he does much better in the church nursery now.  He is less outgoing than Jesse seemed at this age.  He doesn't wave at random strangers on the street or warm up as quickly around new people, but once he feels comfortable he is just as sociable as Jesse was.  He seems to be more of a Daddy's boy than a Mama's boy (opposite of Jesse at this age), but it may be pretty even at this point.

We have to make sure to leave the door to our hall closet closed, especially the side where we keep shoes. It is Max's goal in life right now to eat these shoes.  He managed to catch me at a weak moment one day, though, and I just let him play to his heart's content.

He also loves getting into the pots and pans when given the opportunity.  On this particular day I ran to get the camera because he had actually gotten himself inside the cabinet and was playing happily there, but by the time I got back he had gotten back onto the floor.  Still cute, though.

When the door is closed on the shoe side of the hall closet, Max just manages to find the other side (the toy side) open and he gets to the shoes that way.  Sneaky little dude.

Max: 7-10 months

This update covers Max's life from 7 months to 10 months.  I neglected the month-by-month updates so I tried to consolidate it here.

Night Sleep

He is a great sleeper at night.  His sleep didn't seem to be affected by teething, but while in Arkansas he did have several bottom teeth coming in and had some rough nights where he woke a number of times and couldn't get himself back to sleep easily.  He typically goes to bed between 6 and 7 and wakes around 6 in the morning.  He puts himself to sleep pretty well.  He might fuss for 5-10 minutes, but it rarely escalates enough that I need to go in to calm him down.

Naps

At 8 months I "forced" him to cut one of his three naps.  He had been taking an early morning nap (around 8 or sometimes even earlier...basically 2 hours after waking), a late morning nap and a mid-afternoon nap.  The first week or so it was difficult to stretch him to 8:30 or 9:00 for his first nap, but now it is no problem at all.  His naps got much longer when we did this and it's not unusual for both his morning and afternoon naps to last 2 hours or even more. If his afternoon nap is particularly long, he might not fall asleep until closer to 8:00 at night.

Eating

At nearly 10 months Max is still nursing 4-5 times per day.  A few weeks ago he seemed somewhat disinterested in nursing, but I think that was mainly due to him being distracted by Jesse.  When I am intentional to have Jesse involved in some activity or watching tv, Max nurses much better/more efficiently.  He is also eating 3 solid meals a day and likes most everything we have given him.  Around 9 months we started moving away from the pureed baby food and just giving him bits of whatever we eat.  He handles this much better than Jesse did and is quite good at picking up the food on his tray.  He eats yogurt once/day, usually some baby oatmeal once each day, and then some of our food.  His favorites are cheese, avocado, banana, watermelon, cantaloupe, yogurt, applesauce, cheerios and baby Mum Mums.  He is also pretty good at drinking water from his sippy cup.

Milestones

Max began waving around 7.5 months.  He began clapping on the day we drove from Chicago to Arkansas, right before 9 months. He is very proud of this skill and as soon as he hears the word "yay" he begins clapping.

He also surprised us by signing "more" when he needs more food on his tray.  I did use this sign a number of times, but wasn't very consistent and didn't think he would actually pick it up, but he did.  He is so cute when he does it, and it is usually coupled with loud squealing (he loves his food).

He also began doing a lot more babbling around the 8-9 month mark, saying things like "mama", "dada", "baba", "nana", etc.  We think he may actually mean "mama" and "dada" when he says them, and he says something that sounds an awful lot like Jesse ("dete").

He began initiating games of peekaboo (covering his face up and then uncovering it), maybe around the 7 month mark.

He still does not crawl, but he scoots everywhere on his bottom.  He can pull up onto his knees, but not quite onto his feet yet (though James says he did it once), although he is working on it. He still hates tummy time and refuses to roll from his belly to his back, though he did do this for about a week or so around the 6 month mark, so I'm not sure why he doesn't do it anymore.  I try to have him do some tummy time everyday, and he is definitely getting stronger and is now lifting his entire belly off the floor, but he still doesn't get onto his hands and knees (though if we place him in this position he can easily maintain it).

Play

He loves to be wherever Jesse is.  When Jesse isn't around, Max is much harder to keep content (I'm just not as entertaining as Jesse).  When we go to the park, Max is very content to swing for long periods of time.  This is great because the other option is to put him on a blanket (but now he can scoot off of it, and before that he had figured out how to pull it so that he could get to the grass and wood chips underneath it) or set him on the ground and let him eat everything in sight.
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Max: 6 Months

Obviously I wrote this a long time ago, but here it is, finally published, for anyone who cares.

Here we are already at Max's Half-Birthday!  I have been quite terrible at updating the blog lately, but things have been busy and I keep telling myself that if I have time to work on the blog, I really should be working on our family photo books, which I am waaay behind on.  So, I guess this blog has turned into a monthly update page for Max, at least for the time being.  (And, just to justify it for myself, I do include the monthly updates in our yearly photo books, so it's helping me towards my goal of keeping up with the albums.)

Night Sleep: Max continues to sleep well at night, going down between 6 and 7 PM (usually closer to 6:00) and waking between 5 and 6:30 AM.  The last few weeks he has woken up to eat at 5:15 on the dot most days, but will often go back to sleep until 6 or 6:30 (or until Jesse wakes up and thus causes Max to wake, too).  If Max wakes to eat in the 5:00 hour, I always take him back to our room and put him in the pack and play to sleep to avoid disturbing Jesse.  Jesse could probably sleep through hours of crying in the middle of the night, but once 5 AM comes around, he is easily awoken.

Daytime Sleep: Max's napping has improved, but he still takes 3 naps per day, so he is probably just going to be a fairly short napper until he can consolidate his daytime sleep a little more.  I still notice that he gets very noticeably tired and cranky after being awake for 2 hours, but he can sometimes stretch it a tad longer. We are almost always home for his first nap of the day (usually around 8:00), but he often takes his middle nap "on the go", usually in the stroller or car seat as we come back home from whatever we're doing.

Eating: He still nurses every 2-3 hours during the day (at least I think...I don't really look at the clock very much). He definitely wants to eat more often than Jesse ever did. We introduced solids the week before he hit six months, and the experience has been polar opposite from our attempts to introduce Jesse to solids.  For one, he actually opened his mouth for the food. He also already eats much larger quantities of baby food than Jesse ever ate.  So far he has tried these foods (in this order): bananas, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, avocados, pears, peas and carrots. He doesn't seem too keen on avocado, but other than that he seems to love them all. I have also been giving him puffs to play around with on his tray, but Jesse ends up eating most of them (he calls it "cleaning up after Max").

Play: Max is rolling both ways and starting to seem interested in moving to get toys that are out of his reach. He still doesn't sit very well unsupported yet (just for 5-10 seconds, but usually not even that long). He loves to play with and eat his feet. Like Jesse, he really loves music.  He goes to music class with me and Jesse and seems to really enjoy the music and all the activity around him (but then he loses it by the time we are singing "The Goodbye Song" because he is ready for another nap). Bathtime is also a favorite, but I confess that it probably doesn't happen often enough.  I (and the bathroom floor) end up literally soaked afterwards because he does so much vigorous kicking.  Max is super smiley and just adores Jesse.  He gets the biggest grins and laughs watching Jesse do whatever it is that he is doing.

Size: Max's 6-month check-up is not scheduled until the end of the month in order to line it up with his 3-month post-op appointment, which means I don't know his stats.  According to our bathroom scale, he weighs in the vicinity of 22.5 pounds. He is wearing 12 month, 12-18 month and 18 month clothing.

Dr. Jesse

Jesse has two big passions these days: outer space and the human body (and in particular the digestive aspect of the human body).  He can often be found either drawing pictures of the solar system or the human body or pretending that he is traveling to space or on a journey through the human body (again, mostly through the digestive system...ha).

Last spring he got bored with all the play equipment at our downstairs park and so he began moving all the small toys and creating "human bodies" out of them; recently he has wanted to do the same thing in the tot lot.  I don't typically let him rearrange the toys in the tot lot for this purpose, but he got away with it the other day when I had to take a really important phone call and could not intervene (I had to give him some credit for his creativity, though, so I let him crawl through the entire system he had made...I think he was pretending to be food traveling through the digestive system).

Anyway, I thought some of his clever artwork was worth sharing. I have to say that these ideas are 100% his and not ours, especially those related to bodily functions.  I guess he truly is all boy.

Below is his first body to construct.  He asked me for paper, scissors, pipe cleaners and marker one day and this is what he came up with.  Then he asked for tape and taped it all together.  From top to bottom is the mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine and large intestine. The pipe cleaners are the blood vessels.

The next time he made a body he wanted to step it up a notch so that he could actually make the "food" (aka crumpled up pieces of paper) go through it.  He needed a bit more help executing this idea, but again, it was all his; I just helped him tape it together so it wouldn't completely fall apart.

In case you were wondering, this toy bin was the toilet (let me reiterate that these ideas were 100% his).  I might not ever understand boys...

Yesterday he wanted to make more human bodies.  Actually, I think he said he wanted to make something like 40 of them, but I forced him to stop at 4 because it takes up a considerable amount of paper to make these, and we have scraps of paper EVERYWHERE in our apartment right now.

I apologize for all the potty humor that is present on here today, but here Jesse is proudly holding up the bottom.  Simply take a whole sheet of paper and make a small rip in it and voila, you have a bottom (again, his idea).

Here are the body parts cut out and lying around in piles on our kitchen table.  Our kitchen table appears this way a lot these days; it does feel a bit strange to me, but I guess it's just in time for Halloween?

Here is the finished product, from top to bottom: teeth/gums/mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine and bottom.

4th Annual Apple Picking

After a long and somewhat unintended blogging hiatus, I am going to try to get things back up and running around here. Time sure seems limited these days and I'm not sure I'll ever quite figure out how to juggle all the things I'm supposed to be doing and all the things I want to be doing...things like finding time to exercise, read good books (for myself), volunteer my time at church, having quality family time, and so on.  It's just a busy season of life.  But, I do enjoy having this blog as a record of our family life, to look back on someday, and I know that our far-away family also enjoys seeing a bit of what's going on in our world.  I have quite a few posts that I wrote months ago (some as much as 7 months ago) and just never published. I will probably post them, but they will likely be without pictures.  So, stay tuned for those in the near future.

In the meantime, here are some pictures of our latest family outing to the County Line Orchard a couple weeks ago.  This was our 4th year to go.  It is definitely a family tradition now and something we look forward to doing together each fall.  Jesse and I have been learning a lot about apples over the past few weeks and so this was a fun "field trip".

Here is Jesse watching them make caramel apples. We didn't try any, but we did try some of their famous pumpkin and apple donuts.

My boys on the tractor and ready to go apple picking.

Jesse really got into the picking of the apples this year.

We ended up picking/purchasing over 9 pounds of apples (Gala, McIntosh and Jonathan).  When we got home we made a large batch of cinnamon applesauce, which turned out delicious!  We also made an apple coffee cake for our community group and the rest we enjoyed just by themselves.