Photo dump

There's quite a few new photos on the website. Look to the left of the blog and you'll see new photo entries.

-The management

Lamb

I never thought I'd be eating the best lamb I'd ever had while hunched over in a smoked out house reading the ESPN website. But I've realized things like that can happen when you get the right cookbook.

For the record, this lamb is not old. It's grilled lamb with green pea sauce and mint vinaigrette, from a Bobby Flay cookbook. It looked good in real life. I should look on some photography website, but I bet a straight-down shot in harsh light is not the way to go.

Bobby Flay's book is "Grill It!" But it's dark by the time I start cooking, so I tried to "Broil it?" Afterwards, the smoke was so thick we had trouble seeing to the other side of the room, and we learned: Fume hoods are good. So Delia would go nowhere near the kitchen until we opened all the windows and waited for the smoke to clear and for our house to reach 43 degrees inside.

But it was worth it.

Delia emerged from hiding to photograph Max looking at the fan.

Halloween

Max preparing for Halloween.

Delia took Max to Grass Valley's downtown Halloween kids party. Other than that, I will not comment on the picture. I wasn't there, okay?

Max and his new friend Sean.

We unfortunately didn't take photos of the actual trick-or-treating, but here's what happened. We live in the Morgan Ranch subdivision, which is one of the only walkable areas in Grass Valley & Nevada City. We've heard rumors that parents brought their kids here but we never saw them. We usually spent Halloween in the house eating the candy we bought. But Max got invited to go trick-or-treating in Morgan Ranch by some friends, and we were asked, "So you're leaving the porch light on?"

Umm...what?

We turned the porch light on and within about 10 minutes all our candy was gone and we had to slam the door and turn the lights off before a couple 6-year-olds made it in. OK, that last part was an exaggeration, but we couldn't believe the madhouse we found when we actually left the house. I was wondering if Max would get freaked out by all the fairies and vampires, but he went into a very studious mood. In any case, our candy was gone, but I had a way to get it back. I had Max.

"Trick or Treat!"

"Well, hello.....awwwwww.....oh, he's so cute!! What's his name?"

"Max."

"Well, hello, there, little fella!"

"Umm....yeah.....Trick or treat!"

(Smile fading) "Who's this for, anyway?"

"It's for Max."

(Smile gone.)

We then went to a post-trick-or-treat party, where Max immediately made himself at home.

Max post-trick or treating. He is eating the candy, so there! (Note: Candy quickly removed from his mouth. )

Max at party, shortly before he crawled into the bucket of ice water.

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.

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.