So much to say

Well, it's been a while since my last post and A LOT has happened in the meantime. Let me start by talking a bit about me - Max gets plenty of ink, as they say (and as they say in the Coffee Crisp commercials, "who are THEY?"). Yesterday, I wrapped up what should be my last day of work in a really long time. I'm cleared for five months of leave from work to assist in the rearing of my child. This time is partly going to be for me to find a good daycare provider for Max, but also to bond with my little monkey and have the sort of adventures Holly and Max have been enjoying for almost a year. Ideally, the daycare will only kick in after a while so that I can at least get a taste of taking him to some classes and get a bit of routine going. There are still some logistics I haven't sorted out (let's just say I don't come with the same sleep-inducing tools Holly does), but I'm still really looking forward to the quality time together.

So back to the star of this blog. The past three weeks have been nuts. Max had his little junket out to Halifax, we had a cottage weekend up past St. Pierre-de-Wakefield (I'm saving that one for a future blog entry), and there have been a lot of little milestones for Max. While it has been wonderful watching these milestones go by, I think his little brain is on fire these days, because he sure isn't abiding by his old bedtime. Over the last week, in particular, Max hasn't been able to tucker himself out until 9:45 most nights and this past Thursday, he even made it to 10:45. I carried him upstairs about 20 minutes later (hey, our TV show wasn't over yet) and by then he was so unconscious that I managed to put him down on the floor, change his diaper, remove his clothes and pop him into bed without waking him. Up until then, I was starting to think that "sleeping like a baby" meant "not sleeping at all", but that night, he slept through one of the loudest thunderstorms I have ever witnessed. Max never ceases to amaze.

So what has Max been up to? Well, let's start with his mobility. A couple of weeks ago, Max was getting around on his tummy via army crawl. He'd use his right leg to push himself forward and his left would be up in the air like a periscope. One day, he figured out (after months of the one-legged army drag) that he could use his other leg to help out. Then, finally, he put it all together and this past Sunday started to crawl on his hands and knees. Wow. It got that I thought he'd just skip right by this step, but in the end, it was like he flicked a switch on and just decided to do it. Nuts. He's pretty solid at it to - living room to kitchen in 10 seconds. The funny thing is that before he got to the point of crawling, he was already pretty good at cruising around sofas and tables, etc. He can even make his way across a wall and keep himself standing upright (with something to lean on) for quite some time. You could have probably guessed that he was a talented stander from the pictures in Holly's Nova Scotia post. I guess in my mind, I had assumed that those two things would have come in the opposite order, but as our favourite resource book says "don't worry about when the milestones come, or in what order, just make sure they come". So there you have it - Max can crawl and cruise pretty well.

Still in the realm of mobility, Max has learned to back himself off of high things. I'm not talking about rappelling from the kitchen counter, the top of the fridge or the garage roof. I mean from our bed. He'll get to the edge, have a look, realize he wants down and then he'll throw it in reverse, pull a U-turn and go off the edge of the bed feet first so that he'll slide off into a standing position. This one blows me away because neither of us ever actually showed him how to do this. He just figured it out. So I suppose this means that multiplication table are right around the corner. In more stationary news, Max has also started to play in a kind of squatting/kneeling position where his shins and bum are all on the ground. I feel like my Baba would tell me that this is not a good position for the development of his legs...

What else...well, Max is not too far away from uttering his first word. It's not mama or dada. In fact, he hasn't said anything close to either of these for a while. But when Holly came back from Halifax and walked in the door, Lily meowed and came roaring down the stairs. Max said "AT!" loud and clear and has been repeating it ever since. This is definitely the first time that he has associated a sound we make with an object or action and then attempted to repeat that sound to us. We keep saying CAT to him, and sometimes I swear he says "ACK!" instead (like he knows how to make a hard C, just not where to put it), though most of the time, it's just "AT!". I've tried to take advantage of this and work on HAT, MAT and SAMIZDAT, but it looks like we're stuck with AT for now. Here's a video:



In the past couple of weeks, Max (and Holly, I suppose) has learned how to nap during the day in his crib. Holly is finally able (when plans don't have the two of them whipping around town) to typically get Max down for a couple of 60+ minute naps each day. It's a bit funny that this happens just as the cavalry arrives (OK, fine, so I'm more like a squire, at best), but at least it has started to happen. It made for a couple periods of relaxation last weekend!

Finally, Max is starting to understand that there is sometimes something to be gained by giving things to Holly and I. This is a very recent development. Prior to a few days ago, if we wanted something in his hand, we'd have to take it. Now, very rarely, Max will sometimes give us whatever he's got, either to have us do something with it, or just to "give" something. Here's a video of the most egregious example we've had so far:



So there you have it. Max is coming along quite well. We'll get back to blogging in a week and a half or so with all sorts of new pictures. Here are some recent ones to tide you over.