What Max's Up To

He walks. For about two months he's been walking with more and more confidence, getting faster and going farther every day. He says: dada, mama, dog ("doh"), cat ("cah"), bike, car, turtle, squirrel, helicopter ("gagagagr"), water, nana, and Yankees Suck. He can point to his nose and his ear. He loves to get tickled, and he absolutely adores swimming. At the pool, he charges into the kiddie pool, falling under the water, and then gets up and continues the charge. He's like Cool Hand Luke boxing Dragline. His lips turn blue and he shivers uncontrollably, but when you pick him up, he just says "uh uh uh" until you put him back in the water. He sleeps through most nights, takes a morning and afternoon nap, and is an all-around great kid.

Max News

These days he crawls around, faster every day. He only started maybe two weeks ago, and already he's starting to really move. Although, what he is truly interested in is walking. Even before he was crawling, he was pulling himself up to a stand, which he has now combined with taking a finger from each of your hands in his, and walking around with big, straight-legged stomping steps while you hunch over. When he sees something interesting, he'll let go with one hand, pat the object a few times, maybe even put both hands on it if it is high enough, and then without looking, absent-mindedly grope about in the air for where your hands should be awaiting his grasp, so that he can continue on his trek. It is very cute. Less cute is his tendency (fading quickly though it is) to pull himself up on something- say, the bread machine or the sewing machine- stand there for a few moments slapping the thing and acting pleased with himself, and then accidentally pushing hard enough to tip over backwards. He'll teeter for a moment at the top of the arc, like a rooster egg not sure which side of the roof to roll down, and then go over backwards. Except, instead of going over backwards sensibly, say by bending his knees and plopping onto his butt or putting his hands back to break his fall, he goes stiff as a board, hands at his sides and arms rigid, scrunches up his face and kind of trembling like the Lemmings who shout out "Armaggedon!" before blowing to bits when you nuke them(this is a video game where you herd lemmings from one side of an obstacle course to the other, in case you lost the drift there...). Then over he goes, and because his back is slightly arched, he leads with his head and ends up smashing his occiput onto the hardwood, or linoleum, or thin scrap of carpet, which makes him quite unhappy. Often we would only find that he had figured out a new object to pull up on when we would hear the sound of a small head dropped from a height of 30 in. onto a hard surface, followed by a pause, followed by screaming baby. Ever since I had "seizure activity" secondary to the umbilicus being wrapped around my neck, it has been important to have a brain damage story to brag about, so I guess this is Max's.
He's not really saying words yet, but he does jabber quite a bit. And he hasn't picked up any signs, perhaps because we are a bit inconsistent in our use of them with him. We're not in any rush for him to start talking, or naming things- I'm sure it will come in time, and meanwhile, it's nice to let that little brand new baby brain crank without trying to mold it with flashcards or computer games or Baby Einstein videos. Max seems very curious, and we try to let him explore the house with as few restrictions as possible- pretty soon he will have explored every floor in the house with the back of his tiny head!