Happy New Year

Quiz question: how old were you when you first stayed up for midnight on New Year's Eve? For Max, the answer will be at least one year old, as he was unable to make it this year. To tell you the truth, we didn't try too hard after seeing what happens to him once when we had him out way too late. Max ended up telling us that 10:30 was what he could handle, so after Holly and I and Max's Auntie KP played a few rounds of Set (which Holly now admits to unnecessarily hating for years after a heated game among math grad students at MJM's Vancouver apartment) and polished off a tray of baklava, Max fed himself to sleep and took Holly with him. I was left to have two games of Carcassonne with KP before midnight came around. After the fact, I heard rumours that one, maybe two of my friends actually made it to midnight. What's up with that? We're barely 30, people. We should be starring in TV shows about the banalities of thirtysomething life, except that there's nobody left to write the script. But I digress.

One totally wild thing did happen that morning, though. I have been known to read a lot of stuff in baby books, especially things regarding developmental milestones (probably just to convince myself that light babies can be just fine, too) and I was lamenting on New Year's Eve that I was a bit concerned about how Max might not ever figure out how to crawl because he never really wanted to be on his belly. One book in particular was suggesting that in his fourth month (as in now), he should be able to hold himself in that classic baby pose, on his front with his head craned up 90 degrees, scoping out the scene. I'd never even seen him lift his head up 1 degree on his belly (OK, maybe 4 degrees) so I was getting a little worked up over this. The morning of the 31st, when I finally dragged my sick self out of bed, I thought I'd give it another shot anyway. So I popped him on his belly and look at what happened:


Unbelievable. As if he just wanted to show me up. I was dumbstruck, flabbergasted and slack-jawed all at once. In retrospect, it's probably because we had never put him on his belly on a hard surface offering the proper resistance to pull this off, preferring beds and couches. Regardless, this really came out of nowhere and I was blown away. In a future post, I'll run down the list of developments for those of you who aren't familiar with them. It's kind of like reading ahead in a book, finding out what happens before it actually does. But I suppose on the flipside, it helps us train him to figure out how to do certain things to help him develop.

Anyway, all three of us hope all of our dedicated blog readers (you out there) had a great New Year's and that 2008 brings you all adventures as great as Max has been for us. Not that I wish you all become pregnant. You know what I mean.