A quick reminisce

Movie night with Max. (Movie: "Battle Royale", recommended by Quentin Tarantino.) The DVD player is on the right.

Before I begin, I will dig through my online mailbag and find.....one comment. This is from my cousin Mara, who raves about the ERGObaby.

Now I feel guilty - will my vindictive blog bring down this fine company? I'm sure it's a good product. I have seen very happy babies in an ERGObaby with my own eyes, which is why I got one. That said, I'll give $20 to anyone who can keep Max in an ERGObaby for 10 minutes without screaming. A couple caveats: He must be awake and you can't do everything in your power to distract him.

Oh yes, and, while I agree that AT&T is evil (as are all wireless carriers), I found out from some salespeople that AT&T only charges a $75 upgrade fee for all their other phones. Apple, apparently, was behind the deal I would get.

Now then: I started looking back at old photos of Max, and couldn't believe how small and helpless he was.

Max, a couple days old.

That was over eight months ago. But childhood moves quickly and things have changed. Here's an older Max now.

Max, a couple weeks ago.

In keeping with this theme (Max getting older - probably fertile subject matter for the foreseeable future) Max now prefers finger food over baby food. This turns out to be a great deal. First, instead of having to coax Max into eating every bite and not taking away the spoon, we just throw some food on his tray and let him eat with us at the table. Where before baby food cleanup oftentimes required a full clothing change and face wash, now we simply hang Max over a sink and shake the food off him. We then spend a couple hours picking new food chunks off wherever he is currently crawling. I have no idea how the food got there.

Nonetheless, he is fussy. I know this because he'll only eat meals I cooked using a Mark Bittman recipe. A couple days ago, I added more flavor into a bean dish by adding every French ingredient I could think of: mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, vinegar...Max put some in his mouth and, very soon, he surprised me with how many wrinkles he could put on his little face. And Delia laughed. LAUGHED!!! I have my revenge, though, because I have plenty of leftovers to serve them.

And, what else...an interesting thing happened at 4:00 am this morning. I woke up to hear Max crying-not too unusual, especially when he's teething, but this time his crying had a very unusual intensity. I mumbled for Delia to feed Max but Delia wasn't in bed either. I followed the sobbing and found Delia holding Max near his crib - he wouldn't eat! That hasn't happened since he was a newborn. Singing helped some, and thinking teething might be the problem, we gave him some Tylenol, which calmed him down instantly (I think he knows it takes pain away). After a little holding, he was willing to eat and was soon happy again. He's sleeping now.

What happened? He's never refused food because he was teething. We do know that we left Max with our babysitter last night to see a movie, and probably for the first time in his life, someone else put him to sleep for the night. Our current theory is that Max had a nightmare - maybe he would never see us again? Unfortunately Max isn't talking, so we'll never know.

Increased growth, etc.

(Editor's note: Some of the pictures below, and actually in a bunch of my other blogs, are movies. You can tell they're movies because there's a green triangle on them. Click on the triangle to play the movie.)

Max and Delia, Lake Tahoe, last week.

Max and Delia, same venue, etc.

Max's first try at real (nonpureed) food. The green objects in his mouth are broccoli.

My mom (Grandma Kaplan) and Max.

Max in box. I don't know how else to describe it.
Delia's mom and dad giving Max a bath.

Delia cutting Max's toenails.

Putting Max in his car seat.

We interrupt this blog to discuss the iPhone 3G, offered on AT&T. After hearing many people atwitter about this device (now $99), and, quite frankly, being called a loser at work for not having one despite having AT&T as my cell phone carrier (at least, I presume that's why I'm being called a loser) I decided to buy one this morning. After a quick Google search, I am redirected to the Apple online store.

Wait, that last sentence was really boring, but hang on! After getting highly personal data about me and my cell-phone plan, I was offered the iPhone 3G for $299.

"Huh..." I thought, "$299 is a lot more than $99, even for relatively low values of $299." I looked around the Internet and kept getting redirected to Apple's store. But on the same page as my quote, Apple had a description of the phone which says:

"The 8GB iPhone 3G has some great new features. It even has a new price — Just $99.^2"

$99 is better. "Hmmm...I want that phone instead." I thought.

I can feel those relatives currently working in telecom, shaking their head at my naivete. The only important number in their sentence was the "2" footnote. You see, I'm in the middle of a 2-year contract with AT&T, and because I'm already a loyal AT&T customer, they don't want to give me the phone at the same price they offer non-customers. I have to sign on to a new 2-year contract, and pay an additional $18, to be able to spend $299 on the iPhone 3G. The $99 price repeatedly puked out all over THE SAME PAGE AS MY QUOTE was apparently there to mock me.

OK, where was I...yes, I'm sure this related to Max somehow. So the last few weeks, Max became more proficient at crawling and standing, and especially, staying awake.

Max at his bedtime.

In fact, there is an ancient Eastern saying, which says "And when your baby yawns, and he rubs his eyes, and you wish to put him to sleep, you must realize that instead it is you who are tired." Of course, I wrote this, but I feel ancient and am east of, for example, Vacaville.

Because if he yawns and we try to put him to sleep, he works himself into such a rage that he's wide awake again.

Max is just getting started.

Max being put to bed last night, 10:30 PM. You can imagine how this ended. (Hint: "WAAAAAAHHH!!")

And don't tell me we need to calm him down with a book. He just uses that time to regroup. Massages irritate him. When we carry him, he tries to flip over and crawl out of our arms (or just cry). Far better to let him pass out on his own, illustrated by the following photos:

Max might be ready for bed now.

He might have also hit some milestones, which I would learn if I cared enough to find the baby book. Actually, he did hit a major milestone, one that requires some background. When Max was younger, he was a great hiking baby. We put him in a baby carrier, he fell asleep, we hiked, and life was good. But as he stayed awake longer, the complaints started. We suspected our Baby Bjorn carrier was the problem. Now we find it's outdated. The ErgoBaby is the newest addition (even based in my college town of Boulder!). I was attracted the carrier after seeing a mom with a very happy baby strapped on her back. On ERGObaby's website, it says:

"There is no better feeling than holding your baby close! Using the ERGObaby carrier gives you continuous connection, fabulous feeling of freedom, and security knowing your baby is safe."

We bought one, and after several attempts, returned it about 2 weeks later. If you wish, go to their website to see lots of photos of babies in the carrier acting exactly the opposite of Max. Max feels the continuous connection as well, which is why he immediately tries to push away when we put him in one, and follows this by screaming. The only good thing to take from this is, we can at least embarrass the sales staff by putting Max in the ERGObaby in front of customers.

So, anyway, we pretty much gave up hiking. But a long time ago, Delia's aunt & uncle, Allison and Peter, gave us a backpack where Max can be at head level. Max's neck wasn't strong enough when we got it, but we finally tried it out, and here we are:

Lake Tahoe, last week.

This could be a game changer. (Thanks, Allison&Peter!) I must say, he's very entertaining to carry. I can't see him, but I can tell what he's doing by how my backpack is lurching. Then I can feel the feet in my arm, and the occasional tickle on the back of my hair. I heard from a coworker there will also be the spitup, but it's a small price to pay for a happy kid.

The climber

Max at Pioneer Park, Nevada City, CA.

In the last few weeks, Max has become a reasonably competent crawler. Immediately after reaching this point, he decided crawling was passe' and started climbing everything he can find instead. This includes kitchen chairs, walls, unstable baskets, mommy and daddy, and any of the massive assortment of items littered on our floors. Given our house, he apparently decided climbing was a survival skill. We can also easily identify what he likes to climb. A good example might be a brightly colored soft toy box, with lots of grippy handles to use. This is what Max will ignore as he resolutely tries to put all his weight on a lead-lined, thin, glass cabinet filled with a collection of Medieval weaponry.

He's gotten pretty good at pulling himself to standing on lots of different furniture pieces. However, what goes up must come down (except, I guess, for rocket ships) and here the story gets ugly. For really the first time, Max can hurt himself, and he does it frequently. There's a variety of falls: The worst is when he spaces out and lets go of, say, the couch, falling straight back spread-eagled onto his head. If he falls straight down, he whacks his chin on the table on the way down. Even the wall isn't safe - he was on his knees moving his hands up the wall, but slipped and whacked his nose on the wall on the way down. None of these have happy endings. Max freezes into "I'm about to scream" face, and tries to cry but can't breathe. By this time, usually someone has picked him up and is hugging him. Soon, he gains enough composure to let out the biggest scream he can. At this point, he'll pretty much cry forever unless we distract him with, for example, a book.

What can we do? Yes, I know. Kids have been around for 700 billion years and they've survived this long. But when I hear the "thump" of his head on our hardwood floor (strand-woven bamboo - over 3 times harder than most wood!) and think "Hey, glad that wasn't my head!" then, well, we'd like to do something. We bought floor mats, which Max immediately crawls off of. We follow Max around, tensed like Charlie Sheen in "Platoon" for any impending disaster. We leave him in a safe enclosed play area, causing him to cry uncontrollably.

So, finally, we bought Max a helmet. Yes, scoff if you must, but Max comes from purebred nerd lineage. Some background: I surfed in Los Angeles, and for a while I was kinda cool. I'd have these conversations with other surfers:

Other surfer: Yo, whassup.
Me: Dude. Awesome waves.
Other surfer: Yeah man, it's been insane.
Me: Yeah, I know, man.

The other surfer was probably a computer systems admin, but that's besides the point. I was cool. I also whacked my head on the sand, on my surfboard, and finally, after getting nailed so hard in my jaw that I couldn't eat anything larger than a grape for a week (and hearing stories of other surfers with coral in their brain), I got a surfing helmet. It's the nerdiest headgear ever invented. No one ever talked to me again. But my helmet let me try stuff I'd be way too scared to try otherwise, so it helped my surfing.

Umm, where was I...so Max now has a helmet, as shown below, and better yet, he's too young to know we made him a baby nerd.




OK, perhaps there were some initial difficulties, but after some persistence, we got Max to tolerate it. And, finally, Max in action.

Max reading a book

Max now likes to be read to about an hour a day. It's one of our most effective ways of calming him down when he's upset. His strong preference is for books with tons of sounds (these days babies' books have lots of things you can press to get sounds.) Regular books, even with lots of pictures, even really cool ones like Dr. Seuss, are a dicier proposition right now. Max makes his preferences pretty clear and they're pretty consistent - if he doesn't like a book today, he probably won't like it tomorrow. The instructional video below shows how to identify which books Max likes. It provides comedy on several levels.

Instructional video: How Max rates books.

6 months old, Part 3

We aren't ready yet.

Finally, Max is starting to crawl. We've seen it coming for a while - Max started to lift his tummy in Colorado around a month ago. I must admit I'm proud of him because he's been trying really hard to move around for a very long time - but the flip side is we didn't prepare. We ordered some baby barricades from Costco about a week ago and they are arriving Thursday. In the meantime, our house has transformed from, how should we say, "casual relaxed clutter," to "baby death trap". Max is now trying to climb up our reading chair, pull boxes on top of him, and, well, see below.

What makes him gravitate to the stuff that will kill him?

The naive reader would think I put Max in this pose. Nope. Max wanted to be there. He crawls over the couch so he can be upside down. He's happiest trying to fall headfirst onto the floor.

We are nostalgically remembering the days when we could drop Max somewhere and come back to find him in the same place. We can no longer do this without duct tape. So now we're beginning to babyproof our house. We bought a cheap door barricade a couple weeks ago. I came home from work to see Max crying his head off while Delia was sitting nearby, completely exhausted. What happened? Did Max hurt himself? (With mobility comes falling, we've learned.) Nope, Max crawled to the barricade, tried to push it over, and when it didn't budge he had a temper tantrum. I wonder if he knew the barricade was for him.

Well, I think we're actually current now. And he's 7 months old today.

6 months old, Part 2

OK, I'm still up. So, here's some more photos. I'm actually getting caught up!

Delia holding Max up on a park bench in Nevada City. Note slobber stains on bench. Max was teething on this day, but additionally, as it has been written: "Nothing has been truly explored until it is in the mouth. " Actually, did anyone write that? No? Well, if babies could write poetry, someone would.


Again, we're getting blog-worthy photos far faster than I can write about them, so I'm continuing my photo dump to catch up. Basically, we're starting to do stuff again. Granted, Max factors in heavily, and currently he's only happy when he's on a blanket playing with stuff (more to the point, trying to get off the blanket), so now our activities are heavily, well, blanket-oriented stuff like picnics, outdoor concerts, etc. However, Max can be in a stroller for a limited amount of time, which leads us to....

My good friends from Los Angeles, Gordon and Ali, saw Max for the first time in Palo Alto.

We also went to California Worldfest - a gathering of eclectic group of bands and even more eclectic group of people (think hippies and Rastafarians) in the Nevada County Fairgrounds. Despite the name, it's a beautiful, tree-lined park that has one of the best outdoor music venues I've experienced. The Indigo Girls and Los Lobos headlined this concert. However, there were much better groups playing. Why? We are now very keenly aware of what it sounds like to be burned out after singing the same song jillions of times, and those two bands all the symptoms. How do we know this burned-out feeling? The answer in a moment.
Delia, Delia's mom, and Max listening to Fishtank Ensemble, a gypsy-style band.

And, since Delia's family was around, I didn't have to worry about Max and got a lot of sleep.Getting sleep at Worldfest. The gentleman behind me is Delia's brother, Dan.

Max and Delia. Max loves putting his hand into people's mouths.

The next night: Thanks to Delia, I now have photograhic evidence of Max falling asleep while I'm reading to him. I though this was theoretically impossible. Max hates going to sleep. We've watched Max start screaming mid-yawn. Instead of drifting to sleep while being read to, Max almost always gets restless, closes the book, and starts crying. We'll put him to bed and he'll generally attempt a 5-minute protest before drifting off.

Finally, Max has taken his hatred of shopping to a new level. The last two times we went to Sacramento, Max flew into such a rage that we could only calm him down by singing the "A-B-C" song. For 45 minutes straight. And never deviating. He would cry if we switched songs. He would cry if we improvised, "A-B-C-D-E-F-G, H-I-J-God I hate this stupid song." He would cry if we tried the A-B-C song in rap. Or opera. He was a bit more tolerant of Vegas-style ("A-B-C - thank you. You're a lovely audience. Great to be here. D-E-that's a lovely dress...") but not much. Remember, we had to do this on two separate trips. As a coworker said, Max has trained us very well. We are still getting over PTSD-type symptoms from the trips, although I think we'd be okay if we let Max play on a blanket for a while before putting him in the stroller to shop for, oh, 4 minutes.

Now then, I'm caught up. Actually, I'm not. Coming soon: A major change sends the Kaplan family into chaos. Wait, was that Jon & Kate + 8? Hmm...no, it's us. Stay tuned.

6 months old, Part 1

Me, Grandma and Grandpa Kaplan, and Max at Whole Foods.

My mom and Max in Whole Foods.

My dad and sister with Max in my parents' backyard.

Max and Daddy near the Boulder Creek path, Boulder, CO.

Max in Boulder Creek path, Boulder.

Mom and Max in Pasta Jay's, Boulder. Despite the photo, Max is not peaceful. He tried to grab all the food and we eventually had to take turns walking him around Pearl Street.

Nevada City Bicycle Classic, about 4 miles from our house in Grass Valley. The gentleman in the black and yellow in both photos is Lance Armstrong.

Max enjoying the Nevada City Bicycle Classic.

Max is now 6 months old. Actually, by the time I post this, he will most likely be 7 months old. Perhaps 8 or 9. Maybe that's too long - Max has gone through so many changes and we have so many photos and movies, I'll have to take a break and just spill some of these photos/movies out here.

But here's update #1: People tell us parenting gets easier and, when our brain capacity was high enough to process the entire sentence, we'd perhaps laugh ruefully. But it has. "Easier" perhaps isn't the right word, although Max's sleeping through the night was a huge step in the right direction, but he's a much more solid kid now with a definite personality. Before, when he cried, we were pretty convinced he would soon die if we didn't intervene. Now we know he'll cry if we don't let him play with the computer keyboard or if we take liberties with the "A-B-C" song. More on that later. He's now a very entertaining kid, as probably shows in the photos. He's his most charming around strangers, which has given him a large throng of admirers.

And he's restless. And curious. Actually, that word isn't strong enough. Before becoming a dad, I knew our baby would cry a lot and he'd want hugging and later want some play. I was totally taken by surprise at his intensity. Very often, he'll play, sort of, but he is very intense, dead serious, and even a bit desperate. What's it like? Picture yourself working on an important project due tomorrow morning, and you're way behind, and you just injected 15 espresso shots into yourself through an IV tube. You're now in the ballpark. He's also easily bored and craves new challenges - I suppose it makes sense, given that babies need to develop, so that instinct should be there - but I'm floored he has all this motivation despite having not heard a single Tony Robbins tape.

He's happiest either trying to crawl over the side of a couch or trying to touch an electrical socket. We used to laugh at Max kicking while we attempted diaper changes. Now he flips over as soon as we put him down, and we desperately try to put a diaper on him with one hand, while the other hand grabs his ankle in an attempt to prevent him from crawling into our sink. Putting a diaper on him while he's standing in front of a mirror helps - he can talk to his new friend and his legs can't really go anywhere.

Now, then: We took Max to the beach with Delia's extended family.

Max explaining what he thinks about the beach.

Delia and Max. Delia has quickly learned you can't leave him alone for a second. He's grabbing sand and trying to eat it. Max's conclusion: He loves sand, hates sand in mouth.

Max in the water near Santa Cruz. The water was pretty cool, but Max didn't mind.

Max making his way towards the sand.Max and Aunt Allison.
The picture says it all.

Max is too curious sometimes. Mommy may stop feeding if Max can't focus.Mom showing her magical powers with Max.

Dad and Max at a free concert in San Francisco. Actually, we were in a mini-park behind some dumpsters because that was the only place that had enough level ground for Max to play around and stop screaming.

Well, it's getting late, so I'll put more photos on the next entry. But that doesn't seem right! Where's the story? Ahhh, things look normal but soon...a SHOCKING REVELATION threatens to tear the family apart.

Wait a minute...that's not my life, that's Jon and Kate + 8. Anyway, stay tuned.