All dressed up with no where to go

typical weekend morning... dad on his phone, max on the ipad, emmalyn reading books

I bought a darling white dress years ago, before I was even pregnant with Emmalyn and I figured why wait for the "perfect" moment to wear her pretty dress?  Let's wear it on an average Saturday.  I feel lucky to have so many cute clothes for her.

Playing with egg shakers

Playing with scarves

Playing with bubbles

Then I figured why not get some cute pictures while we waited for Peter and Maxwell to show up for Maxwell's class.

Cheese

Bigger cheese

Total cheese

We tried to get a cute pic of both of the kids

This is my favorite

Maxwell got to play with the parachute in his class - it's always a favorite.

Pool and Popsicles!

We will have to work on her popsicle holding technique  :)

Halloween Part I - Britt's

 It's Halloween!

Max is putting the ball on his head and letting it roll off.  He thought he was pretty funny.

Video - Playing catch with Hayden.  Max is getting better at actually throwing the ball.

It was nice so the boys played on the patio for a bit while I was there.

Max started to say "cheese".  This is the smile I got when he said it.  :)  He is really aware when you are taking a picture and most of the time will smile when you ask him to.

Video - Max saying "Cheese"

Such a cheeser.  He's got a great fake laugh.

All the boys piled into the box together.

big...Bigger...Even Bigger...BIGGEST... Take 2

Take 1 can be seen here. 

Okay, maybe not so big on this one...but he has a little smirk.

Bigger Smile

Even Bigger Smile

The BIGGEST smile of them all

Teeth, Teeth Everywhere You Look!

Remember how Max's first two teeth showed up so early?  I was really hoping that we would get a nice long break before he had anymore break through.  (I'm still nursing!)  So much for that hope!

On March 24 (5 days after Max turned 7 months old) he had another tooth break through.  Remember when I said last time that I felt bad because the tooth had totally caught me off guard?  Yeah, well, that happened again.

Max had been fussy and there was lots of drooling going on so I thought that maybe he was teething.  I was watching the spot for the front two teeth like a hawk!  Well, all of a sudden, on the 24th, I look in his mouth and see that he has a tooth on top!!! But not in the spot where I'd been looking, no, he had broken his right incisor tooth (the tooth next to the front teeth)!

HUH?!?!

I couldn't believe it!  AGAIN, I had let a tooth totally sneak up on me.  So, being the anxious over-worrier mom that I am, I am worried because teeth are supposed to come in a certain order and this tooth defied that order.  Did this mean that he was missing the teeth that were supposed to come first?  Did this mean something was wrong with Max?!  After my always calm and collected husband did some research ala Google, we determined that while this wasn't typical, it was still okay.

What was unsettling was the additional information we learned which was that babies who typical cut an incisor first, while most likely cut the other incisor second and then will come the middle teeth.  And there were pictures of this - the babies seriously looked like vampires.  (Google it!)  Oh no, I worried, Max is going to look like a vampire baby.  It was past time for him to get pictures taken at a photography studio and I DID not want that look documented so I quickly made the appointment for the next day in hopes that we would beat that next tooth coming in and I started checking his mouth like hourly (I know, I'm silly) to see if I could see that second incisor coming in.

...wait for it...

And AGAIN, a tooth showed up out of the blue.  (This is embarrassing)  The NEXT DAY!  Yup, on the 25th he broke another tooth.  But not the incisor I had been so dreading, no...His left front tooth had broken through.  SERIOUSLY!?  Here I had been waiting and watching for a certain tooth to emerge but yet again, I was off track.  So now he was completely off the order of how a baby cuts their teeth.  I was relieved a little because now the space between the teeth was only 1 tooth versus 2 like I had been dreading (Dracula).

3 days later, on the 28th, his left incisor made it's debut.  (His right front tooth joined the pack a couple weeks later and finished off his toothy smile.)

Let me recap this for you - - 3 teeth all in the space of 5 days.  My son is an angel.  Sure, he was a little fussy and he liked chewing on the frozen teether I gave him after the first tooth showed up.  But overall his mood was great, he slept as good as he normally does (still wakes up 3-4 times after going to bed around 8 pm until 8 am), and there was no fever.  Whew!  And just like that my son went from having those cute 2 bottom teeth to having a mouth full of teeth.

Dang.  He's 7 months old, has 6 teeth, and my goal is to nurse him to a year?  We'll see how that goes.


I really wanted to capture the teeth but found out it's really hard to do that when Max needs to have his mouth open AND be still for the picture to be any good.

 This picture was taken when he had 2 teeth.  You can sort of see the incisor on the left and the middle tooth on the right.

 Again, look closely and you can see the incisor.

 Looking all rolly polly in this outfit

Cute cute cute

 Playing on the floor with Hayden

 Brittany sent me this picture at work, I couldn't believe it - MAX IS SLEEPING IN A CAR!  He never does that for us. 

 Showing off his bottom teeth which will no longer be in the spotlight once the little ones that have poked through get bigger

 Profile - it hit me when looking at this today that his face is starting to move from away from that little baby face toward a toddler face

 Hard at work, playing

Getting bigger in the car seat, his toes are getting closer and closer to reaching the edge.  He had his feet crossed and I wanted to capture it but when I got out my camera, he stopped.

A couple things about Max lately:

1. He is still talking himself to sleep
2. He still likes to suck a little on his fingers or his thumb.  He doesn't seem to have a preference over which one.
3. He's noisy sometimes when he's nursing because he will "talk" while nursing.  It's funny.
4. I no longer have to spend time burping him after nursing because when he sits up now he burps pretty much immediately on his own.

Playin' with my Baby

VAMPIRE BABY! I let Max taste some of the berry smoothie I made.  When I took a picture he looked away and we got this creepy picture where he looks posessed with blood dripping from his mouth. 

He liked the smoothie so much that I put the bib on and gave him some more, it was messy!

Video - He loves this activity center and is finally tall enough to jump.  When we first put him in it, his poor feet just hung.

Video - My smiley boy playing with his cars and his race track.  He is so fun to watch.

Flashback to ...The first day he smiled

For some reason, this video didn't download from my phone.  I knew I was missing something!  So here it is - a video from the first day he smiled.  This isn't his first smile but right after I was able to coax that first smile out of him, I grabbed my phone, and captured him doing it again.  This was taken on 9-21-11, two days after he turned 1 month old.  It's crazy for me to watch this and see how much different he is now and realize this wasn't that long ago...

He's growing up, with or without me

He's getting so big (and I'm not just talking about his cheeks!).  :)

Max watching Baby Bach.  We let him watch it about once every few weeks or so.  It's ridiculous how it holds his attention.

Show me your teeth!

Yup, that's 2 little teeth!

 I have lots of pictures of Max smiling.  But his sad face is just as cute (most of the time).  He's so sweet and cute that I don't let him stay sad for long before I'm rushing to his side trying to make him happy again. 

One of the times I was at Brittany's house she mentioned something about Max holding his own bottle.  I was like "WHAT?!"  I had NO idea that he could hold his own bottle!  Of course Max never takes a bottle when I'm around, because if I'm there he's nursing.  The bottle is only used when I'm NOT there.  And it's been awhile since Peter's been alone with Max and needed to give him a bottle so he didn't know about it either.  I have to admit that when Brittany let me know this, that I was a little sad.  I didn't get to see the process as he tried to hold it but couldn't do it alone.  And I didn't see the first time that he held it by himself and I wasn't there to cheer him on.  I was sad that there was this skill he learned and I had absolutely no part in it and didn't even know he could do it.  I don't look forward to the time when this becomes the norm.

Brittany kindly sent me a picture the next time she watched Max so that I could see his skills in action.

Here's some of the things Max does now that he is 5 1/2 months old.

• He reaches down and holds his toes when he's sitting up
• When he wants to show you love (or get kisses) he will pull you into his face
• He has started laying his head on my shoulder when he's tired (but of course would NEVER fall asleep that way)
• He throws serious fits about going to bed in the evening
• He can now roll from both his back to his tummy and his tummy to his back

Two big things happened on February 6th - 

1. Max reached out to me for the first time.  MELTED MY HEART
2. He rolled over in his sleep to his stomach.  I was like, "Should we roll him back over?  Babies are supposed to sleep on their backs!"  So we rolled him over and he ended up rolling himself back over to his belly.  He must be like his momma and likes to sleep on belly.  (We did talk to his pediatrician about it a few weeks later at his 6 months appt and she said as long as we put him to bed on his back, if he rolls over by himself that's okay.)