It gets easier and other thoughts

A tow-headed Max with his older sister and grandmother, listening to Jazz music.
(Actually, I have no idea who those people are, and I don't think Max is blonde, but Max wandered up to them, so, whatever...)

Yes, it's been a long time. So long, I may have to change how I approach this blog. The previous theme was "misery makes high comedy" but I've noticed we've gradually had less and less of that material to work with. (By the way, I'm extremely superstitious about this - everything I write generally gets proven wrong in a week, so this post is inviting a horrible development. But I suppose that will at least give me more to write about.)

IT GETS EASIER

When people told us "it gets easier" a few months ago, Delia and I laughed. We laughed the rueful, centuries-old-tired, utter-loss-of-hope laugh. But, daggum if they weren't right. A lot of it was us gradually adapting to Max. Crying used to really scare us, but now it's much better. For example, we pretty much can figure out what is making Max cry now. It's almost always (1) Sleepy and angry about it (Tough!), (2) Hungry (feed him), (3) Fell and hurt himself (Soothe him), (4) Horrible stomach pains (don't give him chicken pieces), (5) Teething (give him Tylenol and generally suffer through this for a few days) and (4) Bored/generally wants attention (Do something to entertain him).

But there were milestones also that made life easier. They are:

1) Sleeping through the night (clear reasons),
2) Learning to cook,
3) Hiring Maya as our babysitter (she is fantastic at making our life easier),
4) Max being able to crawl (now we don't have to move him every 10 minutes because he's bored - he can explore himself!)

Before, we had to invest a huge amount of energy entertaining Max. Now he is perhaps too good at entertaining himself. (By the way, Max: When you read this blog, those are your mommy's feet. You may not guess you even have a mommy from these photos, but in fact she's the one who's taking care of you 90% of the time. Daddy just never takes photos to show this.)

5) A helmet for Max (now we only use it in the evening when he's really tired and spacey)
6) The baby backpack (the stroller was never too useful for us, but Max really likes being taken around in the backpack. Great for hiking, shopping, cooking, etc.)

Dad and Max at the beginning of the Bridgeport hiking trail. We ran into the South Yuba River cleanup day party. It's worth clicking on this picture because, yes, those bikers are generating the power in the guitar amps.
Max looking at the sky. I know this is happening when my backpack suddenly lurches backward. I have to continually ask Delia if Max is strapped in so he doesn't fall backward out of the backpack, which would be really bad.

Max after walk to Briar Patch.

7) Making a designated baby room. It's pretty big and free of electrical cords, bookcases he can pull down on his head, speakers where he can rip the cover off and investigate the tweeter, etc.

Max's play room. Picture taken as I write this blog.

Max can be left alone in there for up to 1/2 hour if no one is around, and much longer if he knows you're there, or even better, if you're in there with him. It has a futon Max can crawl up and down off of, and this gives us an opportunity to read while Max quietly plays, as shown in the video.

Reading in Max's play room.

So, in general, Max is now mobile enough to make his own fun, yet still nicely portable.


Max investigating his new car seat. Max tries very hard to climb up the sofa, and I wish I had a video of Max's ambitious, yet very risky, attempts to use the car seat as a ledge to get to the sofa cushions.

UNCOVERING MAX'S TALENTS?

Max will drop anything to mess with the guitar. By "Mess" I mean touching the strings, trying to eat the tuning knobs, climbing on the surface, etc.

Max at Walter and Kace's house in Sacramento, playing a haunting and yet ultimately uplifting experimental Jazz solo.

You may, of course, wonder, "Is Max a prodigy?" More likely, after reading this sentence, you want to puke. I admit it - I want Max to be great at something. I want him to be rich so I don't live my golden years as a Wal-Mart greeter. But, according to an article I just read, there's no evidence that people have inherent talents, besides obvious ones like being tall for basketball. Basically the people who are the best in their field have the most amount of a specific type of practice known as deliberate practice. According to what is apparently a lot of evidence in a lot of fields, behind what looks like a prodigy, you find an unusual amount of this deliberate practice in their life. So if there is a truly useful talent, it's the ability to sustain a lot of very grueling practice over a long time. And some articles say even that can be developed.

I have to disagree. As evidence I present Max's obvious talent in dentistry.

Max giving a periodic dental checkup.

Demonstrating proper brushing technique.

CONCLUSION

So, there's been stuff going on, but for a while it hasn't been the high drama we used to have. We only have incidents like yesterday: Max pooped in a bookstore, so Mom took him outside to change him. Only when Mom took the diaper off, and went for another diaper, Max took off, covered only by the poop on his butt, to a tree where he started eating the bark.