Wish every morning could be a Sunday morning

Sunday mornings are the best best best best time ever.  We don't have to get up and go to work or go to Kindermusik class.  Instead we can just wake up whenever Max won't sleep anymore and wakes us up.  :)  He is so sweet and cute in the mornings.  He is still a morning person.  Which I love watching through my half closed eyes.  HA!

Video - Max talking in the morning

I wanted to capture how beautiful his eyes are.  They are brown in the center surrounded by green with dark blue around the edge.

Another picture of Max's eyes. 

Someday, the girls are going to chase after him for his gorgeous eyes and his dimple.

He's hanging out like this more often - on one knee

...always crossing his feet in the car seat or in the high chair

Uh oh...Max discovered the fun of the toilet paper roll.  Now I am in for it!

Hanging out with dada

Since he likes his arms to escape the swaddle I did a test one night and put him in the swaddle blanket with his arms already out.  He did fine with it (even though he looks silly).

In a trance thanks to Baby Einstein

Caught him in the act of coughing

Sweet boy sitting so sweetly

mmmmmmm

He's my son - happy because he's eating spaghetti

Video - Max practicing standing on his own for the first time.  It was so awesome to see him trying this.  I love how excited he gets about it.

Video - Max laughing which causes the hiccups.

A couple things about Max lately:

• Usually in the mornings, I bring him into the bathroom while I shower and he plays with toys on the ground.  However, recently he DOES NOT like it when I am in the shower and he stands there crying.  Goodbye short moments of relaxation.
• At our apartment building, he often talks or screams when we are going down the hallway in order to hear his own echo.  He does the same thing when we go visit the house - there's lot of echoes there since it's so open and empty.
• He is starting to stand up a little his own.
• He still gets the hiccups most of the time when he laughs.

Short Attention Span

It's a bunch of video clips!!!  From just one evening.  Max's short attention span means that we play with a lot of different things in a short amount of time.  Here's a glimpse into that...

Video - Playing with dad and taking his glasses off

Video - Max playing with his basketball hoop.  He doesn't use a ball, but does that really matter? :)

Video - Playing with his stacker cups

Video - Now we've moved on to playing with the racetrack.

He's in his Punk phase...

...okay, maybe not! 

He does however finally have enough hair to do something with! 

Thanks to a little gel my little rebel baby, Maxwell, rocked the mohawk!

Just call me "Chef Kallie"

He slept from 9 pm to 6 am!!!!! (Notice how he worked one arm free from the swaddle?  You would think that meant he doesn't want to be swaddled anymore but nope.  If I don't swaddle him he won't go to sleep even though he partially escapes in the night.)

The weekend is typically when I do all the cooking of Max's food.  This weekend I rolled up my sleeves and did some serious cooking.

Here's what it started out as...

Roasted Bananas and Blueberries

Green bean, potato, and kale puree

My best friend when making baby food - my Vitamix!

I found something new and fun at the farmers market - yellow zucchini!

Roasted summer squash and herbs

Roasted Apples and Cinnamon

Here's an example of the fun time we are having playing with Max lately.  He was playing around with Peter, taking his glasses off.  Max thought he was so funny every time he was successful.

Peeking over the edge of the couch.

Climbing onto the race track.

Reading a book.

He is really a lot of fun to play with!  We now play "chase" where either I crawl after him or he crawls after me.  I can call to him, say from the bedroom, and ask him to come to me and he will!  That is a fantastic achievement in his development because it means I don't always have to go get him and bring him with me.  I love watching him when he stands on his tip toes.  I think it's just so dang cute.

July 5 and 6

Some things about Max lately:

• He says "dada"
• For the last week he has been waking up once a night (wahoo!!!)
• He hasn't been going to bed very easily lately though.  Usually I lay him down after our routine and he goes right to sleep.  Instead, he has been sitting right up and crying and crying and crying
• He enjoys bath time
• He has a great cheesy smile
• He screams (ugh) and babbles (yeah)
• He will follow you around when you go from room to room
• He loves playing with his basketball hoop and his activity table
• He also likes playing with musical toys such as his drum and shakers
• He does a great job drinking from his sippy cup but has a horrible habit of dropping it when he's done rather than just setting it down
• Yesterday at the soccer game they also played the Canadian National Anthem and he "sang" along.  It was super cute
• He is super wiggly on the changing table so I have to distract him by singing or giving him something to hold
• He still nurses or gets a bottle of pumped milk.  However, the pumping isn't going so great anymore.  I pump 3 times a day for half an hour (twice at work, once late at night around 11) and only get a total of 4 oz - only enough for one bottle.  Thank goodness for weekends where I can nurse all the time and then I still have some frozen breast milk but it's a serious battle every day.  That stuff is like gold given how much hassle I go through to get it.

Many funny faces

Cheese

Rawr!

Huh?

Boo!

He was probably in the middle of saying something here.

He's standing on his tip toes so he can get his mouth around these little knobs on his bouncer. 

Caught the drool mid-action.  Always drooling.

We took another trip to the house to see how things were coming.  They had started prepping the yard and laid down some dirt.

Our house is on the right

House is all done in front

They finally put a "sold" sign out front but it must have had to be moved to lay down the dirt

Inside they had laid the wood floor in the dining room (originally they has missed this until we brought it to their attention - crazy how stuff like that happens all the time).

They finished and painted the ceiling on the patio

The backyard to the left

The backyard to the right

Painted cabinets in the master bath

The kitchen

They punched a hole in the wall in the garage to look under the stairs.  This house was unique in that there was no under-stairs closet.  I wanted one but the only option would be to have it open into the garage, which I was fine with.  We don't have a 3 car garage like I wanted so if we could get this closet, it would give us more storage space in the garage.  (Plus, I've been told under stairs closets are good placed to go during a tornado so I HAD to have one.  My dad suggested I ask if they could reinforce it with steel - they looked at my like I was crazy when I asked.  Guess these Texans aren't used to having crazy tornado-phobic West coast girls as customers.)

Stairs railing had been stained

The stairs

Media room

Looking out the media room towards the family room and kitchen