Max do it!

Max's self-photo.

Despite the intial potty training promise, it's now moving in fits and starts. We honestly keep Max in diapers too much, which means he has to remember whether to find a potty or just go in his diapers. Also he hates, and I mean HATES, pooping in the potty. Even though he'll get a bag of cookies for pooping in the potty, he's been known to run off and hide in a closet to poop in his underwear instead.

Max and mom on her birthday at a fancy schmancy restaurant in Nevada city. It went pretty well - there's a window where Max can watch the cooks, but he got bored and went with me to go potty. When we came out, I caught his hand when he was literally a couple millimeters away from grabbing  the bottom glass of a champagne glass pyramid.  

Dad, Max, Peter, Aaron and Allison at a sushi buffet.

Max and Buni at a petting zoo.

Max at a rock wall in a local park. I admit to being scared when I  stepped back from him to take this photo, but Max is usually pretty careful and deliberate, which I think are good qualities in a rock climber.

Mom's consulting job ended, and this means she's able to spend a lot more time with Max.

Yesterday, Delia, Max and I looked over my earlier blog entries. What was shocking to us is that we barely recognized Max in the photos. He looked so different - not just smaller, but with a completely different head. What was also really surprising was Max, whose photos were so unfamiliar to us, sprang to life in the videos and his sweetness, his relentless curiosity, and his mischievous smile was showing even before he could talk. Luckily for us, these traits may be hardwired. Another good thing came out of it - Max now saw "little Max" and he became much more receptive to the argument that good food will make him big and strong, and too big get his hair cut by Shiloh (featured earlier). Only little boys get their hair cut by Shiloh, it turns out.

So it's interesting to see how Max changes and how he doesn't. Max, over the last couple years, has been quite happy to use us as servants. In the last few months, this has taken a dramatic about-face and he now wants to do almost everything himself. Actually, perhaps there's more to the story. He's much more coordinated, stronger, can talk better, etc. and perhaps now we trust him more. In any case, "Max do it!", or in shorthand, "Max!" is a rallying cry these days.  He wants to do everything from buckling himself in the car seat to making his own hot-air popcorn. 

Max gave himself his first haircut. Here's Max with a Flowbee, which we bought to cut hair. It basically sucks air through some clippers with a vacuum. See how he's missing hair in the front? That's not the Flowbee. The clippers are unplugged. Max was actually cutting his fingernails with some nail scissors, but Mom left the room and returned to find a big clump of hair on the ground.

Overall, I'm very happy he's trying to become more independent, but of course he needs to fail at things a bunch of times before he learns and gets good at it. Fine for dressing himself, not so good when he's operating an appliance.

Our neighbor has, unfortunately, gotten too sick to walk her dog Candy around the block, but Max is willing and able to help out.

We have a big assortment of toys that Max is sort of interested in, but mostly he wants to do what mom and dad are doing. And, because I cook a lot, Max wants to cook as well.

Max helping mom cut some food up.

Max making a smoothie. I let him do this, but I don't know how to feel about it.  This kid is extremely determined and he wants to play with electric things.  The blender has a ton  of safety locks on it, but I don't like the idea of him playing with things when he doesn't understand the consequences.  I try to explain to him that his hand will turn into a smoothie if it goes in there. Hopefully it registers....

Max with the mother lode of spices in our kitchen.

I stumbled across an article about toddlers cooking and found a really cool recipe book, "Pretend Soup", meant for toddlers, BTW. We just used it to bake muffins.

One thing that hasn't changed over the years is his love of music. Hopefully we can turn this love into playing music. Max wants me to take him to different live music venues around town and he's received a couple business cards for music lessons, which I probably should take more seriously. In any case, my current strategy, when he gets older, is to steer him into playing guitar and keyboards, because (a) they'll allow him to play the songs he loves to hear, and (b) I want to learn them also. He'll also spend a lot of time on the stereo playing different CD's, and this comes to fruition when I call home from work, Max grabs the phone and starts belting out Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance."

Max , a day after watching a live jam band.

Max, me, Delia, Dan and Buni. Max likes organizing concerts, or if you will, telling other people to play and dance for him.

Max's concerts, cont.

Max and Dan being guitar heroes.

Finally, what may or may not have changed is his deviousness. Is he more devious, or do I just look for it more? Hard to tell, but let me tell you about my investigations in the last couple weeks or so. Again, most of the time he's an adorable kid. So sweet it's hard to remember his plotting. So I took notes.

Max with Good Cookie Monster (below) and Bad Cookie Monster, whom I suspect is about to be very bad by flying through the air when he's not supposed to.

1) Motrin
Max got sick a week or so ago, so we gave him some Motrin syrup. Max likes Motrin. A lot. He does not understand why he can't drink the entire bottle, so we, of course, have to keep it out of his reach. We put it up on a counter.

So, Delia and I were on the couch. Max decided to wander into the kitchen, never a good thing.

"Max, what are you doing?"
"Getting a chair."

Max has a little chair in the kitchen he stands up on to wash his hands in the sink. Soon, Max emerged out of the kitchen and dragged the chair to the counter. He climbed up and tried to get the Motrin.

"MAX!  GET DOWN!"

A couple of these warnings later, he slowly got down...and sat in the chair, watching me.

After 15 seconds or so, Max said, "Wanna talk?"

Hmmm... Max never makes this suggestion. In fact, Max generally hates it when Delia and I are talking to each other. He'll helpfully remind us of this during our conversation by saying "NO TALKING!!" Perhaps because we share some genes, I have a hypothesis about his request.

"Max, do you want me to talk to mommy?" I asked.
"Yeah," he replied.
"Max, do you want me to talk to you?"
"No."

OK, final test. I turned to Delia. "You know, housing blah blah blah." I said...sure enough, Max took advantage of the distraction to leap up the chair and desperately lunge for the Motrin.

2) The computer
I was using my laptop and Max wasn't. This is, of course, an unacceptable situation for Max, so Max, after some pleading, climbed on top of the chair to be with me. I was in the middle of programming, so I closed the laptop. When he opens it up, the screen is password-protected so he can't get in. But, Max is next to me on the chair and it's pretty cute.

"Daddy sit on that chair?" He helpfully suggested, pointing to a chair next to me. Clearly my presence is not conducive to his quality time with the computer.
"No, Max, I'm on this chair."
"Daddy sit on that chair?"
"Max, I'm sitting on this chair. You can sit on that chair." I know he won't like that idea but I'm enjoying messing with him.

Max pushed the laptop next to the other chair.

OK, fine. I'm clever too, I thought. I sat down in the other chair.

Max grabbed the laptop and moved it back to his chair.

For those of you keeping score at home, somehow Max is in his chair with the computer and I'm in another chair watching him, which is exactly what he wanted in the first place. Perhaps this is not the best parenting example, but I conceded defeat and let him try to find the password.

3) Bad Penguin
We have a game where we have a bad penguin. It's a little stuffed penguin in Max's room. We tell Bad Penguin to stay in the crib, but somehow the penguin flies out of the crib anyway. We've repeatedly told the penguin he was bad, we've tried threats, we've made the penguin face the wall, we've even called the police and thrown the bad penguin in jail, but he's still a bad penguin. We play Bad Penguin a lot and it's one of Max's favorite games. Quite frankly, Max gets yelled at, a lot, and he probably needs this game as an escape.

So, anyway, Max is throwing bad penguin out of the crib, and I'm getting really tired so I'm getting annoyed easier. I'm picking up bad penguin from this corner of the room that's hard to get to, and.....

If you've seen "The Usual Suspects" (spoiler alert) where, at the ending, the police officer realized that the idiot he was interrogating the entire movie and released, was actually the mastermind of an entire criminal organization, then you'll understand my realization about Bad Penguin. He always threw Bad Penguin away from me. I was playing Bad Penguin and he was playing fetch with Daddy.

I decided to stand in front of the corner of the room to intercept his next throw.
"Daddy sit over there?" Max asked, pointing to a stool somewhere else.
"No, I'm staying here."
"Daddy sit over there?"
"No, Max I'm standing right here."
"DADDY SIT OVER THERE!!!!!"
"Sorry, Max."
Unfortunately, this story did not have a happy ending. Max burst into tears. But, we still play Bad Penguin, although perhaps not as often.

4) Never fall asleep.
I usually take care of Max until 10pm or so, but mentally I oftentimes shut down at 9:15-9:30, so on my worst days I'm lying on the floor and drifting in and out of sleep while attempting to watch him.  Again, I have vague feelings that he's harder to deal with during this time but I assumed it was because we're both getting tired. That, it turns out, is a bit naive. Mostly, Max helpfully takes my head and pushes it up so I can't go to sleep, but on other days Max will take advantage of the situation. An example: A couple nights ago I turned on Blue's Clues because I didn't know another way to hold his attention if I drifted off. Max isn't the biggest fan of the show, but he'll watch it with me. Anyway, I drifted off, and when I woke up the TV was off.  This meant he climbed up the TV stand and pressed the power button on the top of the 46" flat panel TV without accidentally grabbing the TV and pulling it down on top of him. He knows, very well, that we don't want him to do this, but he did it when he saw I was sleeping.

(Note: Yesterday during Blue's Clues, he wanted to climb on the TV to tun down the volume. I told him no. He replied, "Go to sleep, Daddy!")

Some time ago I was told by coworkers that kids have the entire day to plot against their parents. I am paying attention to this now.

---------------------------------
So, if you add these stories together (and the additional fact that Max is a fantastic and really fun travel companion) you'll wonder if he's bored and why he hasn't been put in day care. Good question. We've had a loyal babysitter for a long time, but we decided to look around at day cares again, and it soon became clear to both of us that Max would probably be better off in a good day care.

So far, we've seen 3: We can walk to the first one (good) and the kids were having a great time playing (some of whom Max knows - good), but the employees don't seem too bright (not too good), there wasn't much instruction and he probably wouldn't learn too much there. The second one was a Montessori school. Fantastic stuff to play with that Max really would like (including a microscope, a lighter, a pepper grinder, and water glasses), the kids seemed quite nice (that's where Delia saw the kids of the owners of the India Oven), and the instructor was classic old-school French instructor. I listened to a talk on Chinese New Year, where she had tons of props and held the kids attention well, but showed a tetrahedron, called it a "tetrahydron" and said it had 3 sides (she forgot the bottom one). Overall, a B+. Delia, however, said it reminded her of a cubicle farm (there were no cubicles but not much playing either) and wanted Max to play more. Also, the school is 15 minutes away, which means between us we would need to add an hour of commute time a day. Not a terrible thing, but if Delia gets a job it could be a problem.

The third day care is a couple miles away and co-owned by a charter school. It had openings (good) but was closed for the summer (bad). Delia took Max there and said there were a lot of Ph.D-education types there. Delia reported back that one of these teachers gave a puppet show about friends that was, somehow, excruciatingly boring.  During the show, Max helpfully asked her, "No talking?" As she continued, Max asked, "Want to go to Montessori?"

We both noticed the kids at day care were more polite than Max (very good) but the instructors weren't too worried about Max. They said that all kids come in like him, wild and untamed. But, probably the longer we wait, the more of a problem it could be.

Deviousness

Wow, this was a long time ago. Max coming out of Lake Tahoe in swim diapers. This is one of the first times  he's ever complained about being cold.

Max preparing for a Romanian church event. (We're Jewish, but, whatever...)

Max at the church event.

Max and Lulu.

Max playing at Peter, Allison and Aaron's house playing with their poodle, Meadow.

This photo was taken in November. Isn't it funny?  Max (bottom) is trying out cat food. Delia snapped this photo and sent it to my parents.  Whereupon my parents added the inset (top left) and e-mailed back the photo, titled "Like Father, Like Son."

Max is gone. I need any clues you might have as to his whereabouts.

Hello, everyone. First of all, thanks for a lot of really nice cards and presents. Max got a lot of love from a lot of people and they want to know how he's doing. So that's what I'd like to talk about. Max is changing quite rapidly, and the events below are compiled from different months and sometimes seem to be coming from a different kid due to the times they happened. Anyway, better just get this out and posted so I can move on.

Max is starting to express himself, and we're learning what is going on in his head. Some of it - actually a lot of it - is absolutely adorable. It's weird for a middle-aged man to talk like that, but it's still true. One example - he wanted to put me to sleep, so he put a blanket on me, massaged my back and hair and told me a story. It was so nice - that moment made all the time and stress and effort I put into raising him melt away.  What hasn't changed is the smiles I get when I come home from work - again, it makes my day every time I come home and see it. There's something about your son smiling - he isn't doing it because he's been trained to smile or because he's trying to get on my good side - he's just happy to see me.  I have to be ready, though - he's oftentimes in the middle of a project and he needs me to help him right away. It's fairly exhausting to take care of him - he really wants me around and paying attention to him - but I notice that even when I'm done with my shift, ready to pass out, and finish brushing and flossing, I'll want to see how he's doing again before I pass out.

These days, we go to downtown Grass Valley for some live music every Wednesday night. There's a local collection of musicians here and they get together to play cover songs. As is true for a lot of things in Grass Valley, they were surprisingly really good, and Max will stand there for long periods of time mesmerized by the musicians. One time, he was doing so, a tattooed construction-worker type guy in his 20s, came over and said, "Your son is so adorable!  My god, everyone at the bar just loves the kid!"  I scan the bar and see a bunch of guys who are missing teeth. Very strange but cool nonetheless. Girls have tried to dance with him (he'll regret refusing some day) and the drummer even let him play drums on their break.

He also loves spices. LOVES spices. We have a bunch of spices in his playroom and he loves just taking one, sniffing it, telling us what it is, putting it down and picking up another one. Unfortunately, he also likes pouring them on the ground, which makes us unhappy, and he also badly, desperately, wants to get into the mother lode of spices - the counter in our kitchen.

GETTING INTO TROUBLE, BAD BASKETBALL, COOKIE MONSTER AND OTHER THINGS


Max gets into trouble a lot. The laundry list of things he desperately wants to do and can't is huge. He can't play with electrical outlets, run the water for hours at a time, push buttons on the iPhone, use our computer, cook, play with the stove, vacuum, give himself a bath with moisturizer, run potty experiments, mess with lightbulbs, unbuckle his car seat, or open the car door when we're on the highway (he uses his foot to open the door handle). So he hears "Bad Max" a lot. "Bad Max" is really not a nice thing to say, and I know it, but I forget, as well as Delia.

Max's badness, however, has taken a very unexpected twist. My parents came to Grass Valley and my dad somehow came up with a brilliant game to play with Max. He gave Max a basketball and said, "Basketball, don't move anywhere! Don't be bad!" Then Max would, of course, throw the basketball down the hill. Dad ran and got the basketball, said, "BAD BASKETBALL! DON'T GO DOWN THE HILL!!" and gave the ball back to Max. I can't tell you how happy Max was throwing the basketball down the hill and yelling "BAD BASKETBALL!"

And the game has mushroomed. We now have bad balls, bad stuffed penguin, and worst of all, a bad cookie monster. I don't know how this bad cookie monster got into our house. He flies across the room even though he isn't supposed to, and is very devious. We have another Cookie Monster (a plastic cookie monster you can put food into) who is quite good. Unfortunately, as Max will show, Bad Cookie Monster will offer cookies to Good Cookie Monster. When Good Cookie Monster eats the cookie, Bad Cookie Monster then reveals the cookie had chili peppers in it.



DEVIOUSNESS

A photo of Max with a pretty common expression. This, I'm pretty sure, came from my mom's side. I could probably dig up several jillion photos of me with this look. 

There's a lot going on in his head. He's very curious. And he gets punished a lot. Perhaps for these reasons, or perhaps because of his genes (see above photo) he's beginning to show some devious tendencies.

Actually, I'm kinda proud of this, although I suppose I shouldn't encourage this behavior. But recently, Max, who really wants people to pay attention to his every action, now suddenly will walk off quietly somewhere. Delia and I rotate who's in charge of taking care of him and when it's her turn, I'll sit (generally exhausted, because I hand Max over late at night when I'm ready to pass out) with Delia as she relaxes. Eventually she goes to check up on him.  Quiet....quiet...quiet..."MAX!!! WHAT DID YOU DO!!!! NO!!! NO!!!" (continues for a couple minutes.)

This situation happens with me when I'm cooking. We used to have a babysitter take care of Max but she had to go to Japan to take care of her sick mother (by the way, Maya, if you're reading this, Max loves your presents and he still mentions you.) So now I need to distract him. I'll turn on Blue's Clues, which keeps him occupied until he decides it's more interesting to try to climb on top of the flat-panel  TV set and mess with the buttons.  "NO! MAX!  NO! NO!" I say. So now we don't watch TV much and he helps me cook instead. And that generally goes pretty well - he has a little stool by the sink so he climbs up it and helps me  peel garlic and onions, as well as operate the faucet so I can wash stuff.

Max and Maya. Max is trying to get the camera.

One time while I was chopping, he left and took his stool with him. This is odd - I'm the one who takes the stool away from the sink so he doesn't double our water usage.

"Max, where are you going?" I asked.
"To the table," Max replied. I'm confused, though - we have a dining room table but it has chairs and he doesn't need a stool to get to it. I went out of the kitchen. Max saw me coming.

"Daddy want to cook?" Max helpfully asked.
"What?" I asked.
"Daddy go to kitchen?" Max asked.

This is getting interesting. "Max, can I play with you?" I asked.
"No play with you. Daddy go to kitchen?" This might be the first time in his life that he did not want to be with me.
"But I want play with you, Max!"
"No play with Daddy? Daddy can cook?"

I'm burning with curiosity, so I go back to the kitchen, watchful and poised to strike when I discover his plot. He dragged the stool across our dining room.

I may have to backtrack a bit. Delia's current obsession is extreme couponing. For those who don't know about it (and for Max in 20 years or so), it refers to chaining together different sales, internet deals and coupons together until you can get some ridiculous deals on items. So here's an example. I've had an electric razor for a long time and the blades were getting dull. I felt a bit like I was lawnmowering my face. I asked for more blades, but Delia found out blades were $35 and found a $120 razor at Wal-Mart that she bought for me at $35. She merely had to apply for 2 rebates, visit Wal-Mart twice (it's 45 minutes away) and perform a product swap to get the exact right combination of receipts she needed.

Now, this sounds like fun, but there are in fact drawbacks. In particular, you may be limited in your product selection. For example, you may want Michelangelo's Chicken Parmigiana frozen dinner for work, but instead have to settle for moisturizer. Also, the sale items are "seasonal" - they go on sale for a short time so we need to stock up on stuff when they are on sale. So, we have on a table a huge pile of poor orphaned potato chips, dish cleaners and moisturizer, hoping eventually we or someone will love and use them. (Actually, the potato chips have been loved, which may help explain why I've gained 5 pounds.)

Sorry, back to Max. I go to the kitchen, Max got to the table and immediately unloaded about 1/4 bottle of moisturizer on his tummy before I could stop him. "NO! BAD MAX!", etc. etc. I said, but I was defeated and I knew it.

Here's another one from a couple weeks back:

I'm driving home with Max and stopping by a local market called Briar Patch to get some food.

Max said, "No going to Briar Patch? Wanna go home?"
Me: "No, Max. We have to get some food."
Max: "No going to Briar Patch? Go home?"
Me: "Sorry Max, we're going to Briar Patch."

This repeats as I stop the car and tear him away from the car seat. I figured he'd throw a temper tantrum but he was very polite. I put him in the shopping cart. Whereupon Max calmly says, "Max, you're being a very bad boy."

Huh? "Max, you're not being a bad boy. You're being a very good boy!" I explained.

Max grabs my wrist and digs his fingernails into me.

"MAX!!! WHY DID YOU DO THAT?" I said.

Max matter-of-factly replies, "Max, you're being a very bad boy. No going to Briar Patch. You go directly home."

And here's one from a couple days ago. My shift with Max is ending and I'm really tired. Mom is on the computer and will soon take over. Max says, "Daddy go to sleep?"

I said, "That's right, Max, I need to go to sleep."

Max said, "Nose-to nose and kiss?

Awww....I rub his nose and get a kiss on the cheek and a hug. "God night, Max." I said.  As I'm leaving the kitchen, I look back to find he climbed on the counter and is trying to extract all our spices.

I told these stories to my mom, and she shared her own one from the Children's Museum in Denver. 

Max at the Denver Children's Museum with my parents in the background.

Max at the Denver Children's Museum.

The Children's Museum had a cool tube that sucked stuff up into it. Max was fascinated by it. Unfortunately, so were some other kids, and Max couldn't get in. So, as my mom recalled, Max quietly walked up next to another boy and watched him. He imperceptibly got closer and closer, and inched his hand closer and closer to the control, all the time watching the other kid, until his hand was virtually on the other kid's hand. Finally, the other kid left and Max had his button. 

STORIES

He's also enjoying telling stories. He'll talk, oftentimes surrounded by people paying rapt attention (a situation I have never encountered firsthand in my life.) He needs a bit of coaxing, but here's a couple snippets:

Me: "Who's in the story?"
Max: "Lulu." (Lulu's the nickname for Louisa, Max's friend in Sacramento.)
Me: "OK, Max is running the water fountain, and Lulu comes to it."
Max: "And Max say 'Max do it! Max do it!' And daddy say 'Max, Lulu wants to do it.'"

Another story: (Editor's note: 'Gears' is a present Aunt Allison bought Max where you can put gears together and turn them. It's really fun to use and it's currently in the living room. I'll  share it with Max sometime soon.)

Delia: "Were you in the kitchen?"
Max: "Yeah."
Delia: "And what did you do?"
Max: "Want to POUR THE WATER! And Daddy comes in and Max say 'Daddy play Daddy play with gears? And Daddy say, 'I want to play with you, Max!' And Max say, 'No play with Daddy? Daddy play Daddy play with gears?'"


And another one from a month back as I was putting Max to sleep:
Todd: What should we tell a story about?

Max: Fishes!

Todd: OK, there were these big fishes swimming in the water and there was a big fish and a little fish. So the big fish thought, 'I'm hungry!' so the big fish ate the little fish.

Max: NOOO!!!!!

Todd: OK, tell me the story.

Max: And there was a big fish and the little fish said 'I'm hungry!' So the daddy fish put the baby fish in the high chair.

Todd: Yeah, so the little fish was hungry and the big fish gave the little fish lasagna?

Max: No, fish food!

Todd: OK, fish food. So the big fish put the fish food in the microwave.

Max: And the fish food was hot so the daddy fish BLEW on the food to warm it up.

Todd: You mean, he blew on the food to cool it down.

Max: NOOO, the daddy fish BLEW on the food to warm it up. And daddy fish blew on the food and the baby fish ate the lasagna and said "HOT! HOT! HOT! HOT! HOT!"





POTTY TRAINING

I started looking for some day care. He oftentimes mentions that he wants to go out and see friends, which is a good sign. So my first visit was to a Montessori school in Grass Valley. I was actually very impressed - tons of well-behaved kids working on toys and projects that I'm sure I think would be really cool back then (actually it's cool now) But...he needed to be potty trained.

Max loves his diapers. If he wants me to change them, then something very very bad happened in there. And I mean very bad. Normal excretions do not phase him in the slightest. I used to smell his butt for poop but now there's a much easier way - just pull his pants back and watch his reaction. If he's nonchalant, he didn't poop. If he yells "NO!!", tries to run away and in general tries to make me feel like I'm violating his 4th ammendment rights, then he has a nice surprise waiting in his diaper.

So clearly, I thought, he needed to be uncomforable peeing and pooping. This is easy - just have him wear underwear. And, the bonus is, I can take advantage of a child's natural ability to plan for the future when I put his underwear on. One would think he would not want to wear underwear if he isn't potty trained, but this is not so. I read an article that explained some interesting research - kids don't anticipate the consequences of their actions. Research showed that kids won't be able to anticipate getting cold if they don't wear a jacket, for example. So he'll let me put on the underwear, and won't associate it with the miserable feeling of pee in them.

So I decided he had to wear underwear in the house. Lo and behold, there's a pile of underwear one size too small on his dresser.  Hmm...., I thought....oh yeah. Didn't Delia try potty training before? Ah yes. I never really paid attention but the flood of memories of Delia, the babysitters and the grandparents failing to potty train him came back.

Anyway, Max saw me holding the underwear. He immediately said "NO! NO! NO UNDERWEAR! ONLY DIAPERS! WANT DIAPERS!! NO UNDERWEAR!!!!! and descended into a horrible whimper. Huh. Maybe I should re-read that article.

Anyway, after a week it became apparent that he'd ruin all our furniture if we just let him run around with underwear, and was pretty immune to the discomfort of pee if we put the underwear in his diaper. He was also pretty immune to incentives - he desperately wanted to eat chocolate but wouldn't bother pooping in the potty even if chocolate was a reward. Delia's parents relentlessly played a video of this good bear who likes wearing underwear and potty training, and I'm pretty sure Max hated that bear's guts.

So I did some Internet searching and found someone who potty trained their daughter in 2 days. Basically she just set a weekend aside and put the kid on the potty every 15 minutes until the kid was trained.

Amazingly, this worked quite well on Max. He didn't take much longer to get the basics down. In retrospect I think his problem wasn't motivation - he just didn't know how to pee/poop on command and never thought about going to a potty when he needed to pee. Once he got used to these concepts he progressed quite quickly. Before we knew it, Max said, "Wanna pee?", went to a little potty we have in the room, pulled his pants down, peed, got up and triumphantly ran across the the room yelling "Look!  I peed!" while shakily holding the urine-filled toilet bowl.

New content!

Max and his dad in Roseville. As before, most of my time spent with Max is really fun but I have no idea how to write about this without boring you, the esteemed reader. 

Max at the Sacramento Zoo in the spring.

Max at the zoo again. This fascination hasn't changed for 2 years. Delia's mom wants to give him toys but he loses interest quickly. I told her to see if Toys R Us has sewer grates. Some of Max's other interests these days include kitchen faucets, sink faucets, bath faucets, garden hoses, drinking fountains, lakes, pools, gutters and sprinklers. This must be a fairly old photo, as we haven't been able to get him to wear a shirt for months.

Ahh, here's a more recent one. Max is obsessed with this faucet, and we've sacrificed tons of water to satisfy his obsession. While we restrict his time, somehow he always ends up in this position.

Me and Great Uncle Peter (Delia's mom's brother) helping Max get down to a beach near San Francisco. Delia's dad is behind us.

Peter and Max at the ocean.

Well, hello, everybody. I've had the usual amount of busyness, but, gosh, it's been a long time. I just logged in to my blog and I found (1) It's a completely new interface, (2) Google's picture sharing service is now way easier to use (removing a major reason I hate writing blogs), (3) I now get detailed stats on how many people are reading it, and (4) amazingly, I had 5 people read my stale, moldy blog a couple days ago. Max, trust me, I took care of you and we did lots of stuff together, but I have no record of it. 

Actually, I have some records. Here's a story from March. It made me so proud that I told everyone at work about it.

We're sitting at a restauraunt near San Jose.  Max is walking around and almost hit his head on a table corner.  

Aunt Allison tells Max, "Be careful!  That's a table corner and it could hurt you!"

I add, "That's a table corner.  It's sharp.  The table corner is sharp."

Max, who is generally quite careful, gingerly puts his finger on the table corner.  It's really not that sharp.

Allison tells Max, "It won't hurt to touch it, but if you hit it hard, it will hurt!"  

Max stares at Allison. Allison makes the motion of hitting the corner hard a bunch of times.  "See, if you hit hard, it will hurt!  Max, try it!" Max looks at her quietly while Allison tries again. "Hit the corner hard!"

Max grabs my hand and whacks it on the table corner.

Max actually uses my hand for a lot of things, and it now makes more sense. I've been really behind on my parenting books, and only recently while sceruptitiously searupticiously impulsively looking through other articles did I link to this Wikipedia entry on attachment theory. For me it is the Top Quark in my unified theory of parenting. Meaning, it explained a lot of bizarre behavior on Max's part. For example, why would he do something he knows he's not supposed to do, while making sure I'm around to watch him do it? I thought he entered adolescence early, but the answer, it seems, is that the world's a pretty dangerous place for him and he knows it, so he always wants to have someone around to keep him safe while he does his experimenting. Or, to have a spare hand to let him know if a surface is too hot to touch.

Now that Max can walk and talk, he's much more fun to be around. However, in a way, parenting was a bit easier before he was 2. The advice up to that point was basically to love him as much as possible. Now, it's pretty clear he'll have to learn things from right and wrong and to adhere to arbitrary social conventions. 

Max eating pasta. Kindly look at his left hand.

Delia and I are trying to come to terms with rules and discipline, and we don't have all the answers. What is very interesting to me, however, is, once we explain the rules, how quickly Max tries to game the system. 

Max gets absolutely furious if we yank him away from doing something. So one of our babysitters, who actually got training in this stuff, recommended we count down instead (ie you get one minute to play with the faucet). It works quite well, generally. For example, after disposing of several gallons' worth of water from the CVS drinking fountain, I'll give him one more minute on the fountain. He'll actually step down from the fountain a little early (very nice of him), wanders off about 5 yards, casually walks back and...hey, there's a drinking fountain! Let's see how it works...

He'll often not tell us about his intentions either. He will say "Want to sit with Daddy", which is very sweet until I realize it, too late, it means he wants to play with Daddy's laptop. Similarly, he will wait very quietly in the car until it's parked and we've unbuckled him, when he'll lurch forward and demand "Want to play in the car!" It's a hard maneuver to stop, which is why we frequently have this situation.

Max in car. Oftentimes we'll be in a park and Max will want to spend his time messing with all the buttons in the car instead. It generally takes less than a minute after he's done to reset the turn signals, radio, hazard lights, etc.

TUMMY

Grandpa (Todd's dad) and Max at the aquarium. His expression indicates he will soon say "Wanna play with camera?"

It was a pretty hot day at the zoo in Denver, and Max was listless and cranky. Given that we're visiting the zoo for him, this is not a welcome development. He kept saying "Want your shirt off?" (He's imitating us when we say "Do you want your shirt off?"..he doesn't consistently use "I" or "me" yet.) It's too sunny to take his shirt off, but he's miserable, I'm tired, and given that the shirt thing has been his only real demand, I finally relented. "OK," I finally say, "You can show your tummy." I take his shirt off, and he gives a huge smile and says huskily, "Tummmmmyyyy!" and starts running around. He had a great time the rest of the day, and that's been more or less the last time he's put a shirt on.  

Before this, he had a rash on his tummy for a while, and Delia realized he may have gotten it from being too hot. In fact, we'll be out at night in the mountains, there's a wind, I'm wearing a jacket, and Max is happily wandering around shirtless. I ask him "Are you cold?" He'll casually say, "No" and investigate a light on a walkway. I feel him and he's fine. We spent the first two of his shirtless weeks waiting for him to get sick, but it never happened (except for a certain time he drank swimming pool water, but I digress.) I don't know where he gets his cold tolerance from. I don't have any, Delia doesn't, and my mom has circulation problems. Delia's mom and dad will wear full clothes and jackets in the summer. Delia's brother and grandfather stay hot pretty easily, so apparently he got some genes from them. I only saw him shivering once, after swimming in Lake Tahoe for an hour or so. This includes a trip to San Francisco on a windy day where a bundled up person pretty clearly wanted to take a picture of me (wearing a jacket) and Max (wearing almost nothing) so she could post it in one of those "Father of the Year" sites.

SWIMMING

We also gave Max his first swimming lessons. This should be right up his alley, given his fascination with water. But we ran into problems. First, there was the bubble blowing. Every day, he was told to blow bubbles. Usually, he'd volunteer me to blow bubbles for him, but a couple times he stuck his mouth underwater. Then I heard a gulp. Umm, Max, you're not supposed to drink the water. So he gave me the biggest grin and gulped the water again. OK, we're done...I let him do some other stuff but the teacher comes by to evaluate progress. So Max puts his mouth in and...gulp...The next day we skipped class on account of illness.

As the sessions continued, Max became less and less interested. To explain what I think happened, I may need to back up for a second to explain "remote control wars." I had a college roommate who had a TV with two remotes. So we grabbed the remotes just started flipping channels until the other person gave up.  It was a miserable experience and there really were no winners. But if there was a winner, it was me. I realized the key was not to use the remote indiscriminately, but to watch him instead. He flipped through the channels wildly, but I waited, alert but relaxed, for the slight backwards movement that accompanied him sagging into his chair.  Ahh, he found a show he liked. I waited a couple of seconds for him to be fully engaged, and only then did I yank the channel to a test pattern.  

So, back to Max's intense 30-minute pool sessions. He would investigate the pool filter or water jet, only to be yanked away so he could the hokey pokey in the water with the rest of the class. By the end of the sessions he mostly didn't want to do any of the activities and didn't want to go in the water. The last couple of days, wondering what was wrong, I stepped back from the frenzy and noticed a lot of the other kids were being carried around by their parents instead of participating in the drills.  Ahh, I'm not alone. Similarly, I stepped back from Max's shrieking when I dunked him in the water, to notice the sounds of desperate screams from little lungs all around as other kids were put in the water also. 

Max, by the end of the lessons, took matters into his own hands and started ignoring the teacher to walk around (the pool was only 2 feet deep) and watch other kids do their drills, and I mostly let him. When he got some independence he got much happier in the water, and that's probably the point of the whole experience at this age. He never really learned how to blow bubbles in the lessons, but oh well. He asks to go to the pool now, which is good enough for me.

Actually, he learned to blow bubbles on his own later. We were at home after the final lesson and Max asked me, "Want to blow bubbles?" Cool. I give him a bowl of water and put it next to the sink. I was really excited. Max blew some bubbles, but that's not really what he learned. I know this because over the next couple weeks, Max would ask "Want to blow bubbles?" I would then enthusiastically gave him the bowl of water next to the sink. He maybe would put his chin into the bowl, then immediately forgot the bowl existed and started playing with the faucet instead. Angry I was outwitted by a 2-year-old, I told him "OK, WE'RE DONE!" and put him down. So Max sweetly asked me, "Want to blow bubbles?" Umm, sure. Of course he did the exact same thing to me again.

EXERCISE

Grass Valley had a long, rainy winter, and Max was cooped up inside quite a bit. Daddy got worried. Max needed to get out and exercise. So as the weather improved and the days grew longer, I tried to take Max on some runs.

Max never ran before but it only took a couple weeks of this before he started running in earnest. However, his running is not the same as adult running. I shall give an example. We were in Lake Tahoe, and Max spent the day in the stroller or playing in the sand. So the sun was going down, everyone was leaving, and I was determined to get Max some exercise. So when everyone else got far ahead I told Max, "OK, let's run after them!"

Max gave a war cry ("AAAAAAHHHH!!!") and then took off for about 10 feet before he noticed a light in a rock wall. He spent some time to investigate the light thoroughly, and when he was done we were even farther behind.

"Max, look how far ahead they are! LET'S GO!"

"AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!" Max yelled, and took off....and stopped. Oh, the rock wall had a light on the other side too. He needed to investigate.

However, it took maybe a little less time to get him away from the light and start running again.  "AAAAAHHH!!!!" He yelled, and ran... about 20 feet.  There was a light in a post.  This was the first light in a post and Max needed to study it. I looked down the path towards the family members fading in the distance and noticed there were lights every 20 feet. Sigh...Thankfully, Delia's parents are very patient and Max did run/walk the 200 yards while memorizing about 80 lights or so.

More diseases

Max and his friend Sean in Halloween.  I doff my cap to Sean, who has a really cool cowboy costume that his parents got from K-Mart.

Max and Sean, Halloween.

Max trying on fleece jackets at REI.

Max, Lulu and Shia (sp?) at Thanksgiving dinner, hosted by the Schwarms in Sacramento.

 Max at Chipotle.

Max shopping for fleece jackets at REI.

We were not happy with Southwest Airlines charging an extra seat for Max when he turned two.  Here we're exploring money-saving alternatives.

"I'm sick....ohhhh....ohhhhh....."
I'm trying to get sympathy from Delia.  I'm lying down and she's doing something on the web at a desk next to me.  She doesn't respond.
"Doesn't anyone care about me?"  I ask.  I'm a bit of a wimp when I'm sick.
No response.
"I'm probably gonna DIE, but it doesn't matter, because no one cares.  Anyway, enough about me.  What are you doing?"
She replies, "Moving all your money out."

I'm recovering, but our house has been a rotating bacteria culture.  Someone gets sick, Max gets it from someone, Max gives it to his parents, his parents get a secondary infection, that infection goes back to Max, and on it goes.  His most recent illness was another case of the croup, which for the uninitiated is an infection that causes the throat to swell.  Adults get it all the time and barely notice.  Babies get it and...their throats are much smaller so they have trouble breathing.  It's really frightening to hear Max wheezing, and after a bad spell we drove him to the emergency room.   What makes it worse is the timing:  Our tickets to Colorado, where we were going to spend Christmas vacation, were in only 3 days.

Max in the hospital after some Motrin.

 The doctors gave him Motrin for his fever, antibiotics for his ear infection, steroids for his throat, and Max, while not too happy about all the needles puncturing him, altogether handled the event very well.  And, two days later, a pediatritian said there's no sign of Max's ear infection and he's probably fine for air travel.  Later in the afternoon we saw a different baby.  He was smiling again, his curiosity returned with a vengeance, and he started jumping up and down on the bed again.  He was still coughing, but it was much more normal-sounding; not the seal-bark that comes with Croup.

Max and mom in Grass Valley, 2 days after the hospital visit.

So, as Max slept in the next day, Delia and I loaded our bags in the car and....as you can probably guess, we never went.   Max woke up with a barking cough, started crying continuously and for good measure was grabbing his ear.  As Delia's dad told me later, babies don't recover from illnesses like adults - their immune system is flakier and they can go from well to sick again. The silver lining to this is that we booked our airline with Southwest.  We purchased the cheapest, least-flexible tickets we could find (which around Christmas time were not very cheap), and with an hour and a half left until takeoff, we cancelled.  We didn't get our money back but all of our money can be used for travel within a year.  Southwest, you have my allegiance.  

So we readjusted our plans and, as Max truly got better, we went to San Jose to see Delia's parents.   We had some grand plans to go to Santa Cruz, San Francisco, etc. but so far have made it only as far as the Happy Hollow children's zoo in south San Jose before I got my latest disease.  

Max and a sheep at Happy Hollow.

The Happy Hollow Zoo, I realized, is very much like the Louvre.  Its treasures must be slowly savored in days, weeks, or even months (Editor's note:  Delia and I ran through the Louvre in a couple hours, pausing only to take photos biathalon-style.)  In any case, in about 3 hours at Happy Hollow, we were able to see the horse/goat/sheep/cow barn, the drinking fountain, and the turtle below.  We also for good measure found some redwood needles.

Max and turtle at the Happy Hollow Zoo.

We're currently in mid-vacation, I'm recovering in time to get back to work, and that's really about it.  Happy New Year to everyone reading this blog.