Monday, March 23, 2009

3 months old

Apparently winter came and went.

Max just had his 3-month birthday. As of this writing, here's a summary of our accomplishments.


1) Max is still alive. Given the parents' incompetence and his 2:30 AM crying fits, this is a significant accomplishment.

2) Delia is still alive.

3) Max is much bigger. I look at his height and weight charts, and he really isn't that far off average, but for some reason he seems to be bigger than any of the other babies around here. Delia goes to a weekly mom's group meeting held by a nurse, and everyone puts their baby on a scale seeing if baby added a few ounces. Then Max comes in. The nurse calls him "the fat one" and puts his big butt on the scale. He usually gains anywhere from half a pound to a pound. His appetite has been ridiculous - he'll feed fully and get hungry again in an hour.

4) Max is a different baby now, and his changes are amazing. Sometimes it feels like he goes to sleep and wakes up with a software upgrade.

I won't bore you with the milestones he's supposed to hit, but I will say this: When we say he hits his milestone depends a lot on how alert the we are in catching the behavior, and also how, I guess, generous we are in saying he hit the milestone. And I think I'm a pretty generous grader.

The reason is I believe Max's actions are a lot less random than they look. Some time ago, when we put toys near Max's arms, his arms would move around wildly. Dan (Delia's brother) thought his arm movements were random, and to show this, he took a toy away and watched Max's arms. Max still flailed around (Dan was right) but started crying (Hmmmm...) So the next day, we put the toy up and Max's arms flailed around again. But we moved the toy this time and noticed his arm movements recentering themselves around the toy. Then, amazingly, one of us noticed him grabbing the toy. This is the Max equivalent of me grabbing a fly in midair with chopsticks. A few weeks later, the toys bring out well-positioned swipes.

So with that in mind, here are some other random movements we've noticed in the last few days:

I wanted Max to laugh (the baby book says he should have a laugh around now), so when he was smiling, I told him a humorous antecdote of Kafka and Gandhi discussing struggle. Max didn't respond very well (perhaps I didn't describe the insect succinctly) so I decided to make some fart noises with my lips. No, I did not include a video. So Max's mouth opened into a wide smile and he started making sounds like he was breathing hard: Hehhhh......Hehhhhh...Hehhhhh....Delia thinks it was a laugh. I think it probably was too, but it was very cute anyway.

Max likes to kick out with his legs when he's sitting. So I held him under his arms and lifted him to standing. When I do this, he likes to push down on his legs. Now for a while he cried when I did this, but about a week ago he started loving it. Then, a couple days later, while I did this, he lifted up his left leg. Then he gently put it down in front of his right leg. What...? Then Max lifted up his right leg and put it in front of his left, the whole time with a huge grin.

Just a second, buddy! He can't even push from his tummy yet. But I looked up this behavior and found it was a reflex - some babies have it at birth. Reflex or not, I took this kid out on the town last night (mom was sick) and before I knew it, Max was on a table trying to walk while throngs of women were adoring him.

5) It's never too early to get embarrassing photos of Max! We will need them when we meet Max's first girlfriend. Umm, Max, will you ever let us see who you're dating? Please? Max?
Embarrassing photo #1: Max in blue Panda Bear outfit. Note to Max: I would never, never, never, have put this on you. I was not around when this tragedy happened. There was no male in the room to protect you. But the photo is still useful nonetheless.
Embarrassing photo #2: Max's mullet.



Finally, it's April 5 and I finally finished his 3-month old thing. We've been much busier than we planned. Maybe we'll talk about this later.

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