10 months old

Maxwell Charles Millar turned 10 months old on June 19, 2012!!!  Yikes.  That means 1 year old is not very far away.  We need to start thinking about how we are going to celebrate that.

Here's some pictures of Max playing on that day:

On his tip toes

Video - He is starting to "talk" all the time, especially in the car.

Things about Max at 10 months old -
He wakes up 3 times during the night (it used to be 2, we are heading in the wrong direction!)
He likes all the different foods I have given him except avocado and black beans
He is good at picking food up with his fingers and will adjust it in his hand until he gets it to the perfect spot where it can go straight into his mouth.
He has started screaming as part of his communication.  :(
He is talkative - he says "momma" a lot.
His favorite toys are his basketball hoop and his activity table.
He hates getting his diapers changed and changing his clothes.  He cries and wiggles the entire time.
He waves sometimes to other people but also waves to himself in the mirror.
He gives kisses to himself in the mirror/oven door.
He pulls up and walks along things
He is really good at kneeling and often plays while kneeling.
He loves his dad - He must save his best laughs for his dad because I never get laughs that are as great as the ones Peter gets.
He has started crying when I leave Brittany's at lunch to go back to work.
He wants to be picked by me more than he has in the past.
He has mastered splashing in the bathtub.  I laugh at the surprised look he gets on his face when he splashes and water comes up to hit him in the face.
He is tough to keep contained!  He is all over the place and we can't plan on him staying put in one place anymore.
He is 100% a morning person.  He wakes up and typically is ready to get up, he doesn't want to lay around and cuddle.  He is really happy and talkative in the morning.
He can drink out of a sippy cup, a water glass (if you hold it for him), and has even drank out of a straw a few times.
He still eats 99% organic food only and mostly unprocessed, homemade stuff.
I don't make his finger food though.  The finger foods he eats are bread, graham crackers, puffs, and yogurt bits.
He still nurses and never wants to stop.  I think he would nurse for an hour if I would go for it (which I won't...he is also starting to be really wiggly while nursing).
He will mirror back to you sounds when you are talking to him so you sorta have "conversations".
He is ticklish on his sides, belly, armpits, and the front of his neck.
He LOVES Landen, Hayden, Brittany, and Joe.  He is always so excited to see them on Mondays if we haven't seen them over the weekend.
He is NOT good at napping on the weekends.  We are lucky if he goes down twice (like he does during the week) and they usually only last about half an hour (not 1-2 hours like weekdays)
He will fall asleep in the car sometimes. 
He really enjoys a music class he and I have been going to called Kindermusik.  It's with other babies around his age and we sing, and dance, and play with instruments.  I love that it's teaching him to love music and he has fun interacting a little bit with the other babies in the class. 
Since we have been going to Kindermusik I sing the songs we have learned to him all the time.  He will sometimes "sing" along with me. 
When he's upset, I can almost always calm him down by turning on classical music or singing to him.
He is in a phase where he doesn't like to read as many books.  He gets bored with a lot of books quickly and only likes them if they are colorful and short.  He is a big helper to Momma and turns the pages himself (usually with his left hand).
His belly button which previously looked darker than his skin tone now looks like an normal belly button.
He is good at beating on a toy drum and can also putting balls in the holes on the other side of the drum.
He is finally getting more hair!!!
He is not picky on food or milk temperatures - give it to him cold, warm, whatever...he doesn't care.
He has such a cute teethy smile and always cheeses up strangers but won't let them hold him.  He will typically flash his smile and then turn his head away and get shy.
He is a PROFESSIONAL at cheesing it up for the camera.  The trick is just catching him when he's not moving so the pictures aren't blurry (this is where my new awesome camera helps a lot!)
He eats 4-6 oz of food at each meal.

Last day as a 9 month old

 Playing on the drum

 Going after the puffs

 Smarty pants - figuring out how to turn the handle

 Apple, Banana, Spinach smoothie for dinner

 I know I shouldn't be playing with this cord....

 Cooked smile

Loves for my Momma

First Father's Day

The day before Father's Day, an exciting thing happened. Our realtor was on vacation so we were wandering around on our own checking out a couple of the new home builders/neighborhoods that we felt we had narrowed our house search to. We stopped in a brand new neighborhood to get a list of the spec homes and see what the prices were like. We had been looking at both new and existing homes but in the end just weren't finding any existing homes that made us excited and so the search over the last 2 weeks had been more focused on new homes.


While it would be nice to build our own home from scratch, we didn't want to wait that long to get into a house (our lease is up in August). And I don't have issues with spec homes because I'm fine with buying a home where a designer, who designs homes for a living, picked paint, tile, etc. out because we are certainly not the experts! Anyway, we checked out the spec homes in a brand new neighborhood (the models just were finished) and walked through a couple we liked. One of them really interested us because it had 3 bedrooms downstairs (including the master) AND the media room was downstairs. This was the first house we had been in that had the media room downstairs. Typically we had been looking at houses with only the master downstairs and all other bedrooms and media room were upstairs. Since we have Max and someday will have other little children, I just don't like the thought of them being so far away from us when they are little not to mention I'm not interested in trucking it upstairs in the middle of the night if they wake up. :) The house was still in the stud phase so it took some imagination to figure out what went where and what it would look like when it was done. But, we had been in enough homes at this point that I was getting good at seeing the final vision of the house when all that was up was the studs.

It's a bit of a spoiler - but we ended up thinking back about this house quite a bit over the next few days, had our realtor check to see what the builder could do as far as lowering the price, and eventually when the builder came back and said they could lower the price $27,000 from the asking price, we decided this was the house for us! More on that to come but I wanted to remember that the day before Father's Day was the first time we saw the house.

Back to the good stuff - Father's Day! June 17, 2012. Peter's first official Father's Day!

Max was up early so I quickly took him out of the bedroom so Peter could sleep in. We made good use of the time while Peter was sleeping. We made Peter a Father's Day Card.

This was Max's first time using crayons. He only wanted to eat them...

...and wrinkle the card...

...and then throw it on the ground.  :)

We gave Peter a picture frame to put Max's hand and foot print in and take to work. We also gave him work out clothes, headphones, and an armband for his iPhone when he's working out.

To Dada From Max

Best Father's Day Card Yet!

After opening presents we went on a run to test Peter's new clothes. Max was not happy about it (mainly because we made him wear the hat).

Unhappy

REALLY Unhappy

Funny Family Faces

Whew! That was a fun run!

It was great to celebrate Peter. Last year I wrote a short blog about why I was looking forward to Peter being a father. You can read it by clicking here. I went back and read this and Peter is all of that and MORE. He has been a better father than I even imagined. He adores Max. He is so attentive and helpful. He misses Max when he has to go to work and he loves playing with him when he's home. Max LOVES his dad. He's a daddy's boy for sure. Peter can make him smile and laugh like no one else can. I am crazy grateful to have Peter as my partner in parenting.

I love this picture because you can see how much Peter loves Max.

"Daddy's Best Friend"

My two favorite guys - Handsome and Handsome

Future basketball star

Max can "play" basketball.  He loves this toy.  Look at those skills!

Video - The next video shows his skills better but I think the way he's also keeping his legs warmed up shows how seriously he takes this sport.

Video - Good job Dirk Nowitski  Max!

Middle of June

 Max loves books.  He is happy to be surrounded by books that he can look at.

 He also likes making a mess by pulling lots of books out.  :)

 Notice how his feet are crossed?  He is starting to sit like this more.

Checking out the fort his cousins built

 In the fort watching a movie.

 Having dinner!  Roasted Broccoli and Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Mangoes and Apples

 Keeping Max happy while I try to get ready in the morning is tricky.  He comes into the bathroom with me when I shower and plays with toys on the floor.  I have started putting him on the counter while I put my makeup on.  He thinks it's pretty cool to play with the small, shiny shapes of my makeup.

 I made Max his first smoothie with these ingredients - Pineapple, Avocado, Plain Yogurt, and Banana(followed a recipe in the awesome baby food cookbook by Tyler Florence that Brittany gave me for my B-day).  It was awesome - I would eat it any day!

We had dinner over at one of Peter's co-workers houses.  Andrea has become a friend and a great support to both of us as new parents.  She has two dogs and Max played happily with them.

Andrea got out this activity table that her daughter has used and is lending it to us for Max.  He was so excited to play with it.  Perfect toy for a boy who loves to be standing!

Couple of things about Max:

• He has started making the "f" sound by saying "fuh, fuh, fuh"
• He also makes "da", "buh", "nuh", and "muh" sounds
• He has more hair but it isn't the super soft baby hair anymore :(
• He doesn't like it when you touch his head, so if you rub his head he will push your hand away

How to eat puffs

Max is everywhere - pulling up on everything.

 Hayden, Max, and I pulling faces in my iPhone

 Max cracking up at himself

 Max will play while kneeling

Video - Max interacting with himself in my phone.  My favorite part is when he pushes Hayden out of the way.  Wants the spotlight all to himself.  HA!

 I wanted to capture what it was like to feed Max puffs.  I enjoy watching his mouth "chew" the puffs and the way his little fingers grab the puffs.

 Chewing

 More please!

 Moving the puff to the perfect spot in his hands.

 Ah hah!  Made it to my mouth!

Max got distracted by "Jeopardy", opening his mouth so Peter can put it in.

Perfectly placed between his fore finger and thumb!

 Sucking on that puff

Pucker lips!

As you can tell, Max loves eating his puffs (I love that they aren't loaded with sugar but instead have good things like kale in them.)  He loves eating nearly everything.  We found something he doesn't like - black beans.   I made some baby food for Max that had black beans in it and he hated it.  He wouldn't open his mouth for it.  I didn't want to throw it out so we kept trying different ways to get him to eat it.  Well, funny boy, one time Peter was trying to get him to eat it and he makes this noise that sounds like "Nooooooooooooooooooooo..."!  And he did it twice!  Peter and I looked at each other like, "did you just hear that?!"  Too funny.  We ended up mixing it with plain yogurt and then he'd eat it.