Jumperoo

It's amazing what an industry this baby plaything market is. You end up with so many plastic megawhatsitdoozits that your little one plays in for a couple of months and then that's it. ebay ho! Unless you have a second. And a third. However, for the amount of free-handedness you score from plopping babes in these doohickeys for a few minutes (or, shame, an hour) makes them totally worth their weight in gold.

For us, it all started with Gymini. Max loved his first playmat, but eventually could roll himself right out the sides. We put it away, as he couldn't really guide himself back onto the mat, but now that he's crawling, maybe it will resurface...


Then, there was Bumbo. Less an entertainment device than something to make little ones stay put, it was great to be able to pop it on the counter and do dishes or prepare food while Max chewed on a spoon or whatever. Plus, unlike any of his other accoutrements, Bumbo was nice and portable. One day, however, Max was in Bumbo on the counter and then he was out of Bumbo and almost in the sink. Whoops. Goodbye Bumbo.




Then, there was Exersaucer. One of the products in the Evenflo family - this thing was made for people who love playing Ikea Builder Person. Many, many pieces. However, hours and hours of fun. Last week, we cranked it up to its final height adjustment so Max has precious little time left in his Exersaucer. To date, though, this has been the one piece of equipment in which Max has been most strandable. Plus, it's easy to move from room to room.


And finally, we come to Jumperoo. Recently, friends of ours donated a Jolly Jumper-type contraption to the cause, but we don't really have any suitable doorways on the main floor of our house. So Holly started scouring the pages of store flyers and found Jumperoo on sale. It's essentially a stand-alone, moveable Jolly Jumper. The first couple of times Max got in, he didn't really know what to do. But now, he understands that if he pushes off and then tucks his legs up, he can get a good ride out of it. Plus, he's figured out how to time his leg pulses to jump a bunch. What a guy!


All this to say, I'm not sure if there will be another contraption after we run out of height adjustments on Jumperoo. But then again, by that point, will we really need one? All of these things are just to keep kids occupied until they can really motor about on their own, right? Heck, the other night, Max decided to have a little crawl from our living room to our dining room table. Sure, it took him 5-10 minutes, but he did it. We were somewhat amazed and somehow terrified that our lackadaisical attitude toward babyproofing might just bite us in da buttocks.

PS Apologies for the lack of blogging. Let's just say that if there hasn't been an entry in a while, things are probably a bit crazy over here. We've got a few ideas in the hopper and will get them blogged as time allows.

The first father-son activity

So before I go any further, I would like to confirm the presence of a tooth in Max's mouth. It's the front bottom right one and it's just up past the gum. Ever since it broke through, Max has gone back to sleeping well (yay).

Saturday morning, Max and I shared our first organized father-son activity. Well, it wasn't intended just for fathers and sons, but for parents and their babies. A few weeks ago I had signed Max up for parent and tot swimming time at the local pool (a nice 15 minute walk away) and the first class was Saturday. As it turns out, I think that because it's "physical activity", most dads think this is the perfect thing to do with their babies and still look relatively manly. So of the 10 pairs in my group, 9 of the parents were male. Just maybe though, this is moms' opportunity to kick the kid out of the house (and tell him to take the baby) to enjoy a nice, quiet, relaxing weekend day by herself. Either way, lots of dads. And, uh, as for those dads wanting to do something manly with their babies...it turns out that there's a ceiling to the amount of manliness exhibitable while singing Alice the Camel and Five Monkeys. Suckers.

It was nice doing something with other babies too. Max is the only baby I've spent time around in the last long while, so I'm not really aware of the different shapes and sizes babies come in. The babies in my class are all in about a 6-month age band. Some are a lot larger than Max and a lot had way bigger eyes...but a couple were also of the petite variety. A couple of the babies cried most of the time while some were giggling and splashing a lot. Others were ambivalent.

So, how did Max fare? The first few minutes went well, swooshing him back and forth in the water and helping him do jumps in off the side of the pool. However, he started rubbing his eyes shortly thereafter (boy, was he tired!) which accomplished little more than the introduction of chlorinated water into his eyes. Which made him cry and drink some water. Which made him cry. So pretty much once he realized how tired he still was, everything kind of went downhill. Even the part where I plopped him in a perfect crawling position on a flutterboard (images of dogs at the Westminster having their briskets checked came to mind) in order to whip him around the pool as if wakeboarding behind a motorboat. Man, who wouldn't love that?? I don't think I had the opportunity to sort out whether he enjoyed the whole thing or not. Hopefully, next time he won't be so zonked that he falls asleep before even leaving the pool building (although it was a beautiful day so we enjoyed a walk through the neighbourhood).

So back to that crawling position on the flutterboard. This was particularly funny to me because the only time we've ever been able to set him up in a nice all-fours was when his Auntie L did it once and then he chose to simultaneous lift his right hand and left leg and crash down to the ground. So he is certainly not a crawler...although the extreme friction on the flutterboard allowed him to hold the crawl pose longer than normal. Cool.

If I were to try to describe Max's mobility, it would be kind of like an army crawl: arms go forward, hands grab ground and drag body without help of legs. Repeat. I've taken a video to show you what it looks like. He takes a little while to get going but stick with the video. It's worth it:

Chiclets?

Max was really cranky this past weekend. Wrapped up a cranky, sleepless week with a cranky sleepless weekend. Not a lot got done...well, fine, we tackled our taxes and a three-and-a-half-year-old stack of photos, but there wasn't a lot of getting out of pyjamas. Finally, on Monday, Holly figured out why. It seems that Max has a little blister on his lower gums that looks suspiciously like the future site of tooth #1. And when he sucks on fingers now, there's the slightest impression of hard-surface-on-fingernail contact... The crankiness. The screaming wake-ups. The ear pulling. The three months of chewing on stuff and drooling. I think we can cancel that call to Columbo.

Max has really gone to town chewing on stuff the past couple of days, but he mostly enjoys frozen washcloths and doorstops. His baby spoons are getting a real workout too. I'm hoping that his teething process goes quickly and painlessly. Somehow, I feel that Holly (justifiably) only wishes for one of these two things.

In any case, we'll keep you posted and will no doubt be snapping pictures of the first physical evidence.

Bella

It is a sad, sad day at Casa Stardom. Earlier tonight through many, many tears, we made the difficult decision to put down Bella.

Before Max made his debut last September, Bella was the baby of the house. She was the older of our two cats but her tiny size and kitten-like looks made her look much younger than her twelve years. She was also super spry and could jump on any high surface with ease.

In the words of our friend Kerry, Bella was a "lover cat". She absolutely loved people and loved attention from everyone. She could convert non-cat people into cat lovers. Seriously. We had people over who never wanted a cat and wanted a cat after spending an evening with her.

Bella was chock-full of personality. She loved her Zoom Groom grooming tool and would go absolutely crazy for a good grooming. She loved to drink out of running taps and glasses of water, much to John's dismay. She went crazy for Swiss Chalet chicken. She once ate injera, the unleavened Ethiopian bread. She liked to drape herself over couch arms like a rag doll. She had the biggest and most beautiful eyes. She let Max pet her. She loved long hair. She always wanted to be as high as possible so she would sit on one sheet of paper on a big piece of floor because she was technically higher up that way. She loved to sleep under the covers with us in the dead of winter. She loved to sleep in confined spaces like dresser drawers and laundry hampers. Recently, she had taken to perching between the shower curtain and liner and playing while we were in the shower.

Unfortunately, Bella also had way more than her fair share of health problems. A few years ago, she had a full mouth tooth extraction to counter chronic stomatitis. Crazily enough, she continued to eat hard food with no teeth! She was a serious trooper.

She really was the best cat anyone could have asked for. We loved her oceans and we'll miss her terribly. Bella Boo, I hope kitty heaven is full of all of your favourite things. You deserve it.

Max's First April Weekend

This past weekend has been a doozy, so my apologies if this post drags on.

One of the biggest themes of the past weekend was Max getting his sleep seriously back on track. It all started back on Thursday when Holly tempted fate with her first curried meal since last October, at Ceylonta, one of our favourite restaurants. When we last tuned in to the battle between Max and second-hand curry, the winner was gas at 2:00, 4:30 and 6:00. This time, Max decided to pass out at 11:00 after we got the first chunk of packing for our weekend together. We hit the hay right away in preparation for the rocky night...only to wake up at 7:00 in the morning without hearing boo from the nursery. Nuts. The first night he gives us a solid night and we were about to seriously mess with his routine...but good to know that Max can handle curries :)) Holly is really, really, really looking forward to Thai again.

We got the rest of our packing done, fired Max in the car and picked up Auntie Lar for a roadie to Toronto. Which Max would surface in the vehicle: Whitemouth Max or Manning Park Max? (drumroll) The winner is Whitemouth Max! After the rain and snow lulled him to sleep, he stayed out for a record couple of hours before we pulled off for a food stop at the now notorious Flying J of Napanee (frozen hard-boiled eggs, slimy chickpeas and white margarine made for a five-star meal for Max's Auntie). Once we hit the road again, Max fell asleep after a little bit of coaxing and stayed out until we got to Toronto, where I hopped out to go play some Scrabble at the National Championships (click here for the details:
http://www.scrabble-assoc.com/tourneys/2008/csc/build/index.html).

Holly here: I know this blog is about Max but I would be remiss if I didn't give a MAJOR shout out to Max's dad for finishing 15th at the Canadian National Scrabble Championships. He was seeded 29th but finished 15th. Yes, 15th in the country! How many times in your life can you say that you are 15th in the whole country at something? Not very often so super gold stars to our very own super Scrabble star.

At this point, Holly, Lar and Max got back on the road to go visit Auntie Krysta in Guelph for a couple of days. Manning Park Max emerged for a few minutes when we got stuck in gridlock leaving Toronto but we survived. After a nice dinner with some of Auntie K's friends, Max realized that he had slept a gazillion hours that day and didn't do so hot that night. Poor Holly. On Saturday, everyone took their time getting on the road, and then headed out to a local butterfly conservatory with a good friend of Krysta's (that's him holding Max as close as he's ever been to a butterfly. Afterward, everyone ambled off to a hip bookstore (Max didn't find any first edition Sandra Boyntons and so kinda lost interest...) before tucking into a fantastic dinner. Everyone got to hang out, stuff peas, carrots, apples and bananas into little dude's craw and then send him off to dreamland. This night, he regained his composure and had an OK night.

Sunday morning, Krysta bid everyone farewell (thanks Keister!) and Max was whisked back to Toronto, where he got to hang out with our close friend Jenn. Brunch got the day started right, and then some fab shopping on Queen Street West helped while away the afternoon. Jenn even got to carry Max around all afternoon! Max got to go on his first streetcar ride and his first subway ride, all in the same day. Everyone stopped by the CNSC site to pick me up and meet some elite Canadian Scrabblers. Then we retreated to Jenn's pad for a yummy dinner and some chilling out. That night, Max ran the score to good nights: 2, bad nights: 2. Just to keep it fresh, you know.

Yesterday, we all headed home. Whitemouth Max was in full effect on the way home and we were happy that the ride home was peaceful. We stopped off in Kingston for some delicious wood-fired pizza halfway and got home in good time. The last night of the weekend, we figured Max was going to give "bad nights" the best-of-five victory ,given the amount of car sleep on the way home. Oddly enough, when Holly stepped out for some groceries, I gave him some chow and then Max started signaling sleepiness with eye-rubbing and general crankiness so I put him to bed at 8:00 pm, before Holly got back. Again, we packed it in early (just like on Thursday) to prepare for a rough night...except that, once again, Max fooled both of us. I had to return the rental car first thing in the morning, but I figured I wouldn't need to set an alarm. Heh heh. Max slept right through to 7 am (!!!) He started off the weekend with a tremendous sleep, had a couple of blips and then wrapped it all up with a tremendous sleep.

Holly and I (probably mostly me) have been a little concerned about his nighttime habits for some time as he hasn't really had any routine or solid sleep patterns since the end of 2007. It was really wonderful to see him handle car trips better, have more long sleeps and get to visit good friends and family with the little guy. We had a wonderful weekend and look forward to (hopefully) providing Max with more routine and seeing him develop better sleep habits. But we'll still sneak in visits with all sorts of cool people :)) A big thanks to everyone who put us up and kept us busy this past weekend - we had a super time! Max thanks you too.

My boys

Is it just me or are my boys pretty darn cute?



In other news:

- Apparently, our "three-month old daughter" is very cute. Thanks to the weird lady at the vegetarian buffet place on Wednesday for that one. Real thanks to Is for a great lunch. Check out Max with his first Blackberry. Hopefully we aren't creating a monster:



- I'm wearing jeans that haven't fit me since early fall 2007. Yay me!