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.