Max's self-photo. |
Dad, Max, Peter, Aaron and Allison at a sushi buffet. |
Max and Buni at a petting zoo. |
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.
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. |
Max helping mom cut some food up. |
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."
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 , 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. |
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. |
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.
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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.