Christmas Ketchup

Yesterday we had a low key Christmas. Cin buns in the morning, sandwiches for lunch, and then chicken kiev for dinner. I made some fries to go with Mark's dinner. And Max, of course, was a fan. Mark had ketchup on his plate. Max tried it. It was good. So for the very first time he got to have ketchup on his own plate. And he was very serious about his dipping and eating. :)

School Days Max

Joanna sent me these pictures a couple of weeks ago but I was a slacker and didn't get them posted. These are photos of Max playing around while helping Joanna pick up her girls from school. Max wanted to wear the backpack and carry the lunchbox, just like the girls.

Max Knows Grandpa

My folks were here over the weekend for Christmas. We had a great time. Max took a little while to warm up to everyone but was soon trying to lay on the floor like Uncle Michael so that they could play with the wooden sorting toy together. He loved his shopping cart from Granny and Grandpa, although he was more interested in putting the other toys in it and running away, instead of putting in his toy groceries. He also had a great time with Auntie Sheena hiding a toy car in the curtains. A good time was had by all.

But at one point Grandpa put his coffee in the microwave to heat it up. After making the oooeeeooo noise for the microwave, Max was concerned that the microwave had dinged but no one was opening it. I told him that it was Grandpa's coffee. So he went into the front room where everyone was gathered, grabbed Grandpa's hand, and dragged him into the kitchen. He then pointed at the microwave. Dad got out the coffee and then and only then could Max relax! What a helpful baby. :)

Pirate Monkey Max

I got this little outfit after Wes was at the mall and saw a different cute outfit. Max was no into me taking his picture this morning. At least not a picture that showed the matching monkeys on his shirt and jeans. He was pretty excited about the little matching shoes.

Max at My Gym

NannyJo sent some photos of Max at MyGym today. He seems to have had a wonderful time on the swings. Not a surprize since he is a huge fan of the swings!

Sleeping Max

Here is the photo Joanna sent me today of Max taking his nap. I am so jealous. I wish I was taking a nap...

Max has fun with NannyJo

Where's Max?
Peek-a-boo!

Hey baby, how you doin'?

Thanks to NannyJo for the photos and the captions!

Max Does Chores

Mark spent a lot of time outside this weekend working on raking the leaves. Max was really excited about helping. So much so that I had to take him outside on Sunday morning and rake leaves with him. I'm not sure how I got stuck with raking leaves, but at least it gave me some good photo opportunities...
This is Max using the big rake. He is not in any way detered by it being far bigger than he is!

Here is Max with his tiny baby rake. Kyle bought this rake for me and Angie several years ago when we had the cicadas. The rake has a hook on the non-rake end so we were able to empty out the skimmer baskets without reaching our hand in to the cicada-infested water. And now it is a tiny little rake that Max can use. Thanks Kyle! Here Max is working on the flower bed.

And here is Max using his baby rake in the part of the yard that actually got raked. Note that he must have his tongue sticking out for this work. :)

His shirt is seasonally inappropriate, but this shows his new big boy haircut. We think he looks a lot older now that his hair is so much shorter. I'm still getting used to it.

Max also has two new words. He says "Yeh!" and "yogurt." If you ask him any question, he will pretty much say Yeh now in response. Or he will shake his head no. So that is pretty fun. We learned that he knew yogurt over the weekend when he tried to get into the fridge but already had a bottle of milk. When I closed the fridge he started crying. I asked him what he wanted and he said yogurt. So I opened the fridge again and handed him a yogurt and he was immediately soothed. We then sat together at the table and he mostly fed it to himself. It was a bit on the messy side, but he was very happy and did a pretty good job with it.

Max is still a very busy boy. So busy that he had to wake up at 4am and not go back to sleep again until we were driving to work. Between Margaret keeping us up Monday night and Max keeping us up last night, Mommy and Daddy are really needing some sleep!!

Here are some pictures of ActionMax!

Max "playing" game cube with Nik.

Max is very excited about feeding himself his oatmeal. He is happy to eat oatmeal several times a day just so that he can put the food on the spoon and get it into his mouth. And it is good for him, so that works out well for everyone. :)

And this photo was taken this morning. Max playing with Nik's light up light saber.

Fun with Max

Over the weekend Max started playing peekaboo with me and Mark. He puts his hands over his eyes, palm side out, and hides until you ask"Where's Max?" and then he pulls his hands away and laughs and laughs and laughs. I have been saying peekaboo to him but so far he seems uninterested in saying the words. But at least he is having fun.

The doctor said we needed to work on animal sound identification. So we got the Farm Babies book out of the library and I have been reading it to him. He is now very excited to get to the end where the picture is of ducklings. He points to each of the ducklings and says "Ducky!" very excitedly. But then when I asked him what noise a duck made, he growled. So looks like we are going to fail on animal sound identification...

Max was also very excited about feeding himself this weekend. The suction-bottomed bowls seem to work very well on his high chair tray. He did very well with the oatmeal, because I was able to make it fairly thick. The applesauce, however, was much messier. But he definitely has the idea and is able to get food on his spoon and get his spoon to his mouth without tipping the food off. It just tends to run off the back of his spoon when he angles it to get it into his mouth.

Max's new words, other than Ducky, are cookie and yummy. Yummy Cookie makes sense but I am not so sure about Yummy Ducky. Especially if duckies are vicious growling animals...

Floss Phone

Max's obsession with the phone continues... He now asks for the dental floss and then flips it open and puts the open part down by his mouth like a phone. Since no one in the house has a flip phone, I am not sure where he learned this, but is sure is cute! He also freaked out a little this morning when my blackberry alarm went off. He had to get it right away and bring it to me. When Wendy called my blackberry Max grabbed it and came running to me yelling "Mommy! Mommy!" At least he is trying to help! And he's awfully cute while doing it.

I didn't photo document him this morning, but he and I did end up dressed alike. Brown cord pants and gold/tan soft tops. This is Max wearing the same outfit a few days ago...

Max at MyGym

Thanks to Nanny Jo for sending this excellent photo of Max enjoying his last class of this session. What a happy boy!

It hasn't QUITE been a month

But as Max's WorkDaddy pointed out, I have been slacking...

So here are some photos to tide you over until I can do a real post...


Max now gets his milk out of the fridge himself, to speed us up with putting it in his bottle.

Max came to our Halloween Party at the office. I keep the yellow chair under my desk for my feet, so he was pretty excited to see his chair at the office. And he decided he needed to wear my badge.

Max sleeping with the puppy toy from James and Ryan. I did not pose the picture. This is really how he fell asleep. That puppy is critical to bedtime now.

Max wearing his Tony Hawk t-shirt from Grandma!

Happy Max

Thanks to NannyJo for sending this little photo along.

More Max Photos

These are photos of Max in the car after his haircut. He REFUSED to wear the cape so his clothes were covered in hair. So he got to travel in just his diaper. In this photo Max and I are heading from the hair cut place (Thanks Karen!) to the mall so that we could do some family photos and pictures of Max in his Halloween costume. After the photo shoot we went to a surprize birthday party. Busy day! Good thing he was looking good!

Max wearing Julian's crocs!

Julian wanted to try out the sling, so we helped him get Max ingo it. What cuties, eh? Good job Mark!

Happy Max. :)

Wedding Photos

At long last, here are some of the wedding photos:

Max trying on his suit at home. We bought it in England (at Marks and Spencer, of course) in April, so we needed to make sure it was going to fit him 6 months later...

Max playing piano with Julian and Nik.

Max taking a break on the steps.

Nik and Max before the wedding.

I wonder if Max is wishing he had a flower like Dylan. There was a flower for him but we were worried about the stick pin.

Julian, Max, and Nik

Julian and Nik

Max getting ready to dance at the reception. He had already changed out of his black dress shoes and into his crocs. His choice, not mine!

Do you mind if I bring this chair over?

Max licking a ham biscuit. He wasn't really into the ham. But he liked the biscuit! And that they were close enough to the edge of the buffet table that he could help himself if he was fast enough!

Max and the Big Boy Swing

When we stopped off to see Jenn and Hinkle this weekend Max asked to swing on their big kid swings. So I let him. And he was totally into it! Jenn was nice enough to do a little video for me of this big moment. :) Sorry it is sideways. Just turn your head to enjoy it. :) Sound is not necessary and mostly consists of a pinata discussion and me coughing...

Wheeee!

Photos/Videos from the wedding will follow.

But Max's new thing is to say "Wheeee!" when we are in the car going around a corner or when he is going down a slide. Too cute. :)

18 Month Stats

Max had his 18 month check up. He's doing very well although we need to work on his body part identification skills and his animal noises.

He was measured standing up this time, for the first time, so we are now measuring height instead of length. His height is 30.5 inches which is the 25% percentile. His weight was 24.2 pounds which is the 30% percentile. So he is way down from his previous 80% percentile height and 60% percentile weight. His head, however, is still gigantic. 19 inches, which is the 90%. That is also down from the previous reading of 95% percentile but still plenty big!

Words Max Can Say

Mommy
Daddy
Doggy
Gretel
Kitty
HereYouGo
Thank You
OhYeh!

And he recognizes Nik and Julian when you say each of their names but he makes no attempt to say either name.
He makes a sound similar to keys when I give him my keys, but it sounds a lot like kitty.
Gretel is lucky enough to get two words. :)
I"m trying to get him to make a different sound for cheerios/kix/golden grahams but so far he is content to just shake his head no when I offer him each choice. I'm also trying to get him to say cheetos when I give him the baby cheetos, but I think cheetos and cheerios sound too similar so he mostly just points to the side of the kitchen where each are stored.

He does the signs for milk, more, and all done. And is now doing the sign for "all done" when he is done in the bath.

He will also drag me to the fridge and then take the carton of milk out himself if he thinks I am being particularly slow in understanding his desire!

Max the problem solver

I was getting ready for work yesterday and Max was already up and running around. I had my skirt on but didn't have my shirt on yet. Max looked at me. And then ran over to the dirty laundry basket. He returned to me holding up the shirt Mark had worn the day before. I think he had figured out I didn't have a shirt on and wanted to help me. Unfortunately he was not very excited by my refusal to wear Mark's dirty shirt instead of my own clean shirt. Ah well!

Max is also very interested in his shape sorting toys now. He has 3 different kinds at our house and one at Joanna's house too. One of the ones at our house is a cube with one side that opens. He really loves to play with the star shape, and can put it into the right hole in the first try, and long as you show him the side of the cube that has a star shaped hole. And being a baby he is willing to do this over and over and over again!

More bathtime fun

Last night Max demonstrated for Mark that he knows how to use a washcloth! He got it off the little shelf, dunked it in the water, and then used it to scrub his belly! Too cute!

Max helps Mommy

Max really is a nice little boy. :)

I recently changed the soap I use to wash my face at night, so that I could wash my face while taking a bath with Max. So now I wet my face with my hands, lather up the soap, and then rinse off the soap.

Max watched me the first couple of times. And then he figured it out. And figured out how he could "help" me. So now when I rinse my face I feel a very light touch of tiny little baby hands, helping me.

He's such a sweetie!

Max at MyGym!

Happy Max!

What is the only thing better than one Max? Two Maxes!

Chilling out...

One of his favorite activities is climbing up the slide. :)

Random Max Photos

Max running to me in his adorable jeans and tiny baby Clarks.

A boy and his dog. I'm pretty sure Max is making a light saber, since he almost always makes a light saber out of the mega-blocks that are only one bump wide. Gretel is very good with him. Perhaps because he likes to throw his cheerios on the floor for her when we are not watching him closely enough!

Max in the 3D glasses leftover from Coraline. What a silly baby!

Max and Gretel both giving me the wide mouthed smile! Max loves to sit near Gretel and play.

I don't know why he came out pink in this picture. But this was meant to demonstrate the super cute baby Clarks!

Max with his handmade wooden trains from Laurie's grandpa Max.

Max just being a ham...