New skills

Just a quick update that Max has finally gotten the hang of sitting. He's pretty good at doing it on dry land, but totally prefers crawling, so while he doesn't tend to stay seated for long, it's not for lack of balance or skill, it's that he wants to move. However, ever since Holly picked up a rubbery mat for the bottom of the tub, he has really taken to sitting unaided when having a bath. This frees up both hands to play with bath toys (which Holly used at Aquafit last week to keep him mellower in the pool...crafty).

Also, Max can now hold himself upright with a bit of help. He loves standing while holding onto the headboard of our bed, the seat of a chair, the bars of his crib (the outside, at least) and, as you can see, our couch with the cushions off. He has yet to find any pennies or dimes though. This ability to stand, combined with his love of adventure crawling over obstacles (like his parents), should prepare him nicely for doing something totally scary - like walking, say - before we're ready for it. Sigh. I'll take a deceleration in his motor skill development and an acceleration in his verbal skill development:)

When moms get really tired

So one night last week, I had to stay late at work. I called home a little after 6 to let Holly know I was on my way. No answer. I thought it was strange, but she said she had to go get some groceries so I figured she was out. I got home at about 6:45 and nobody was on the main floor. This usually means Holly is in the basement feeding Max, so I went down but found nobody there. The Maxmobile was in the driveway so I knew they were home. The only remaining explanation was that Holly was upstairs. With Max? Sleeping? 7 is feeding time - especially because he needs to head back to bed at about 8:30 or so. I got upstairs and found this:

Holly eventually woke up SUPER groggy and asked what time it was. I said 7. She said "at night?" Oh boy. Apparently, they went to bed at 4:45 (!!) and at some point Max woke up and Holly checked the clock, thought it was morning, wanted to keep Max from waking me up and told Max "Shhh! It's still too early, you can't get up yet." and fed him back to sleep...meanwhile it was about 6 p.m.. Needless to say, Holly had to catch up on some sleep. She's better now.

A busy two weeks

Hello, I'm back. The three of us have been up to a lot over the last couple of weeks so I guess it's time to get you caught up.

Right after I submitted our last post, we all went down to the Canal to see the tulips for Mother's Day. Apparently, Holly used to do this every year when her grandparents would come up in May so it kind of resonated with her that now she was the mother and not the child walking among the tulips. We saw all kinds of wonderful flowers including Holly's favourite (double tulips with lots of extra petals, almost rose-like) and mine (the tulips with the pointy petals, not the rounded ones). I wore Max the whole time and got pointed at, cooed at and generally ogled. Yep, I've still got it. Max got a bit of nice tulip time before he decided he was pretty hungry and it started spitting . . . that was pretty much the end of that.

















The next day, we got to celebrate our wedding anniversary! 7 years altogether, but our first with a little bystander. We didn't get up to much, but still got to get all reminiscent and schmaltzy with each other, so a good night in general.

The Thursday night, we all piled into the Maxmobile (on loan from the Tuscany-based Auntie M) and went out for our first Ultimate game of the season. We really weren't sure what we were thinking in terms of both of us signing up and bringing the baby. Every time we were both on for a point, he went a little crazy. It didn't help that the game overlapped his dinner time (we tried feeding him, but it was tricky to organize with us bouncing in and out of the play) and the start of his bedtime. Our teammates were wonderful, though, and did their best to keep him calm while we thrashed the other team :) . The one nice thing that came of that evening was that I think we established that Max didn't get mommy's mosquito-magnet gene. Although maybe he did and he just isn't emitting as much CO-2 as the mothership. Apologies for the lack of pictures; we didn't think to bring the camera.

On Friday night, we got together with our friends from Regina (well, Vancouver, Ottawa, Waterloo and only most recently Regina) who were in town for a visit. They brought their two-year old daughter who was less than one the last time we saw her. I have to admit to paying very close attention to toddlers now, thinking "Wow - Max is going to do those things sometime in the not-so-distant future! Crazy!". It was great to catch up, introduce our friends to Max and see how their girl is becoming a total angel and super cutie. 16 months isn't too big an age difference, right?

The long weekend was a bit of a treat for all three of us - I didn't have to work for a day, Holly had two extra hands around the house for a day and Max didn't have to go to torture class, a.k.a his swimming lesson. Holly's folks all converged on Ottawa for the weekend as her cousin came up from Guelph and the elder family members returned from their Italian retreat. Apparently, it was a fantastic trip but it was pretty obvious that some aunties and grandparents were suffering from baby withdrawal. We also got out to Saturday lunch with a couple of friends (thank you so much for such a nice visit!) and "cool auntie Kerry" in Aylmer. Our friends have two younger children so I was in full "Man! He's going to be able to do that?" mode all over again. We also filmed an excellent video of what happens when Max gets close and personal with his good friend air, but I know there are some people who are philosophically against my reenactments of Max at Kittyhawk, so I'll just keep that under wraps for now. Know that Max loves heights. For now. However, I will release the video of when we got out to our friend's birthday BBQ food & fun people extravaganza Saturday night (thanks to you guys for such a rockin' time). Max had his first go at DDR and did OK. **Oh no! it looks like the video exceeds the size restrictions of Blogger. I'll have to figure out how to slice this thing up...

After a really good spell of sleepy nights, Max started some 2:30 wake-ups about a week ago and then seems to have regressed into screaming and ear-tugging recently. There's no sign of the top two teeth surfacing, but know we kind of know the signs and won't be surprised to see blisters or some other sign within a week or so. The only blip in his new bad-sleep routine came this past Thursday night, when Max's great auntie K came by to babysit for our second Ultimate night. Apparently he was a real treat to be around until the food ran out (sounds about right) and then he eventually passed out in her arms. Whatever downer she slipped him in his meal (or wonderful dormant baby-mothering skills she activated) that night worked like a charm as Max slept from 9:30-7:30 without a wake-up. Thanks so much auntie!

We got greedy though and assumed he'd do the same last night so treated ourselves to a couple of hours on the couch watching So You Think You Can Dance? (So good - our first hanging out like that sans baby in months) after Max went to sleep. We got so burned - he got up three times between 12 and 6 and Holly had to get up early to go garage sale-ing today (so many treats for Max . . . almost disgusting). So we're both a little tired now.

Torture class was better than normal today. Not good but better than normal. Max only cried through Hot Potato, If You're Happy and You Know it, Bombs Away, What Time is it Mr. Wolf? and The Grand Old Duke of York. He did not cry through the entire 3 minutes of ball-kicking at the end of the class. So only about 21/25 minutes = 84% cry factor today. Better yet, he sat through his entire time in the warm pool (yes sat, as in unassisted sitting) completely chilled out. Even after some kid threw a bunch of toys in the water and totally splashed Max in the face. After the last class, I had the list off triggers down to a) Max hates water in his face and b) Max hates colder water. Well, after today, factor b is certainly on the list, but factor a has taken a beating with that warm pool display. Granted, if Max is upset and gets splashed, he gets more upset, but it seems that if he's relatively calm, a splash surprises him and that's about it. The instructor came over to me in the warm pool and marveled with me. I understand that I shouldn't feel sorry for this guy for having inflicted Max on him (he signed up for it, right?), but this is a pretty calm class of kids except for my guy. Who knows, maybe the cry factor will dip below 80% next week. Unprecedented!!

The only other update is that Max had another run-in with the doctor on Friday and it looks like he's still riding his weight curve so that was good news. Although it looks like I was paying so much attention to his weight that I never noticed that he's generally short for his too now! Screw it, he's well-proportioned, hella cute, healthy and fun to be around. Although we have apparently been given the green light to introduce the second meat: ground beef. Of course this meant another trip to the local deluxe deli to get organic meats costing about 4.25 times the junk you can get at any grocery store. Good thing he only goes through about two adult servings in three weeks! Over the past couple of weeks, we've added parsnip, squash, and quinoa to Max's diet and have reintroduced brown rice mush and avocado. That makes 3 grains, 10 fruits, 8 vegetables and 3 proteins . . . as if he already eats 24 things!

Oh yeah, Max has now gotten into adventure crawling. He still hasn't started cross-crawling on all fours (thankfully), but has gotten quite good at dragging himself over obstacles (cushions, mats, me). It's going to take a nation of millions to hold him back. Which makes me think - Holly grew up in a very classic rock household and I grew up listening to the lighter classic rock and quite a bit of Motown...I'm not sure how those influences have shaped our musical tastes (although Holly still loves to listen to The Boss and Van while I like jazz and, surprisingly, had to fill her in on Ben Stiller's Little River Band spoof on American Idol last season) but I often wonder how a child brought up on the sounds of Josh Ritter, Radiohead, Sarah Harmer, Indigo Girls, Justin Timberlake, Ani DiFranco, Jose Gonzalez, Be Good Tanyas, Outkast, The Postal Service, Chemical Brothers, Michael Franti, Daft Punk and Kanye West is going to come out the other side. Maybe there will be a genre in 2020 that will be a fusion of fusions that Max will get into. As long as it's not speed metal. Although I love that ad from a few years back of the punk teen girl who pops her thrash CD into the car player and does her best to look insolent. She rolls her eyes as driving dad reaches for the console . . . only to crank the music as he rolls up to drop her off to school. I want to be that dad. Car optional, I suppose.

Here is another video to tide you over:

Happy Mother's Day!!

So this one goes out to all mothers, but in particular to the mother of little Max and the mothers of both of Max's parents. As our East Coast friend J said recently, "Did anyone ever tell you that this parenting stuff is hard??". I said, "No", trying to understand her perspective, but a) she recently had twins, so REALLY "hard" for me is probably "half hard" for her . . . and b) she's a mother and I'm a father.

Repeatedly over the last eight months, I've come to the realization that, on top of the umpteen other ways in which guys have it easy, moms have it a lot harder than dads. It's probably some male doctors who keep penning these studies that prove that breastfed children are far more likely to be more intelligent (and healthier, and stronger etc.) than their formula-fed counterparts...I mean, it's all well and good that this is the case, but it's good ol' mom who has to be there at the beck and call of junior, not dad who hopefully can step to the plate a lot more when formula is in play. You read this blog, so chances are you know Holly has been and is still breastfeeding. Holly has been a total pro and someday I hope Max, with his bigger brain and bigger body (laughing slightly at that one), will read this and thank his mom for giving him a good head start, despite breastfeeding being a pretty taxing way to go some days.

Which brings me to my next point. You watch TV or read books and the mother of the angst-ridden teen is always saying something like "I changed your dirty diapers for years, and this is how you treat me?". Personally, yeah, the diapers smell, but I'll take them over the lack of sleep. Again, you read this blog so you know this has been a bit of a theme for me, but that sleep thing is a doozy. And this is where it is dawning on me that my mom and Holly's mom went through the same things we are going through and deserve a BIG thanks. I mean, they always deserved a thanks for the things that we could remember, but Holly and I couldn't remember back to the very start so now it's like we need to acknowledge our moms (plural, not ghetto speak) for two sets of things: the things they have done for us over the past year and the things they likely did for us 30-something years ago. So I guess they can feel doubly proud. I'll even throw some special recognition out there for Max's sole great-grandmother, who is another layer deep in the recursive algorithm.

In any case, I'll leave you with what I hope are a couple of indelible images of what all of this mothering over the years has led to - a pretty sweet kid in Max:

Max at 8 months

Wow, so sorry for the lack of posts lately. There has been a lot going on in Max world that needs reporting, so I'll try to blurt it all out here (this could be a long one)

First up, Max has two teeth. I've tried to take pictures, but he has to have his lips just right and be in just the right mood and then there's the issue of focus, etc. Needless to say, I've tried. They are the bottom middle teeth and are fully through the gum line. I don't think they've reached their full height, but at least they're through. The bottom line is that once they finished whatever they needed to do to push through, sleep returned to our very very tired household. It would have been one thing if we had not been sleeping for three weeks straight, but it was on and off so we never knew when we put him down how long he'd sleep. It meant a lot of 8:30 bedtimes. At one point, the teeth were through and he was still super crabby and, from the books we had, it seemed like he might have an ear infection. We hauled him into the doctor who told us "Nope. Still teething." "How much longer should we keep giving him Tylenol?" "As long as it takes". OK. At least we had been given carte blanche. The teeth themselves are kind of cute, but I can't help but think that we'll have to pop another one out to get that goofy toothless grin back. Or contract a vicious gum disease a la Bella. No, that's definitely not on the wish list.

OK I've tried to take pictures again and only one kind of worked. Overexposed as it is, here you go:







Number two: Max has (kinda sorta) learned to wave on command. Maybe 10% of the time if we ask him to wave, he will. He still does it like those Chinese cat things that dim-sum restaurants always have by the cash - straight arm, pivot at shoulder, no hand movement - but it's still cute. He has also learned to high-five on command...and this one's more like a 75% success rate. He loves the sound of the hand clap, but he still can't figure out that if he violently crashes his own mitts together, that the same sort of thing happens. In any case, it blows our minds that Max has been able to take a sound and process it into an action. Dude is growing up.

He also does a couple of other curious things with his hands and I have no idea what they mean: a) the self shake (he clasps his hands together as if he's about to shake his own hand and then he cranks his arms up and down), b) the Scrabble bag grab (he holds out one hand in front of him, palm up, and then moves his fingers as if he's trying to count the number of Scrabble tiles left in the bottom of a Crown Royal bag - dear Mr. and Mrs. Royal, please send endorsement bonus) and c) the conductor (he holds his hands up on either side of his head and then swivels his wrists as if he's conducting an orchestra - a dinner-time favourite).

Max has become a Jumperoo maniac. He has become quite good at timing his jumps to get a LOT of bounce out of the Jumperoo. It's become a fairly good option for keeping him entertained for 20 minutes.





Max can't quite crawl on his hands and knees yet, but he can get pretty much anywhere he pleases and in a reasonable amount of time. He loves to crawl into the bottom of his Exersaucer and in and around things. He played obstacle course with the dining room table and chairs on Friday and he was in heaven. It's definitely time to get many baby gates up. It's not shocking (anymore) to see him drag his way from the coffee table to the dining room table. Yesterday, he dumped one of our plants and got into the soil a bit. I don't think we have any idea what kind of stuff Max is going to get into.

Max is eating tons of different things and we have
yet to have a reaction from anything, other than initial BLECHs on homemade brown rice cereal, avocado, chicken and red lentils. He is currently a fan of rice cereal, oatmeal & rice cereal, chicken, red lentils, kidney beans, carrots, peas, sweet potatoes, green beans, cauliflower, apples, pears, bananas, mangos, blueberries, apricots and prunes. Next on the slate are broccoli, papaya and cantaloupe. Here is a picture of Max vs. prunes:

What else . . . The nice weather the last couple of days means that we have started going out for more walks. We've actually started to use the stroller, which seems to be built for someone a lot more barrel-chested than Max. We have to stuff the restraint system with blankets to make sure he doesn't slouch way too much. But it works and he has actually taken to it pretty well. As long as we keep it stocked with all the right toys (fruity key ring, spoon, maracas, doorstop...) he's more than willing to have a ride.

Finally, the torture continued this weeked. As you can see from this first picture, even getting Max out of the pool and on a big floaty platform can't get him to stop crying. Holly got to come along this week so we could snap a couple of pictures. The one problem (?) with having two parents on site is that there are two sets of common sense on site so even when one parent (me) thinks that maybe Max will be able to turn it around and have a good time for at least a second before the end of the class, there's another parent (Holly) to think, after 20 minutes, that it's over like Lindsey Lohan's 15 minutes and that it's time to pull the plug. The poor instructor. He just kept looking at Max and shaking his head at the baby who was going wire-to-wire in upset land. He actually started crying in the showers before getting in. And then the instructor said we were to sing a rousing rendition of "If You're Happy and You Know It". While Max is screaming. Oh the irony. But, as you'll see from the second picture, once we get out of the big pool and into the toy-laden bath-warm pool, Max does a lot better. Toys trump pretty much anything.

So life with Max continues to be FIVE STARS. We love our little guy and can't wait to see what the next month brings.

May showers

It's raining. Again. Max and I had a nice morning walk in the rain yesterday morning prior to his weekly half hour of torture (a.k.a. parent & tot swim class) so I don't really feel up to dragging him out for more cool drizzliness this morning.

Poor guy - it seems that he takes after his dad when it comes to being submerged underwater. We got to sing The Grand Old Duke of York and everytime we were to put the babies in the down position, we were to put them as far down as we felt comfortable. Well, I dunked him a few times. I'd never really seen that look on his face before. It was like the ultimate in confusion. After the submersions, it was lifejacket time. More like straightjacket time. Hatred. I don't know if he'll ever get used to this swimming thing. I sure hope so. For now it just feels like we're paying to make him cry on a regular basis. Imagine if all the baby activities did this? If every play group and reading circle and strollercise class was just a bunch of screaming babies? That would make me feel better about the pool:)

Holly might be able to make it next week so hopefully we'll snap some pictures.