9 Month Check-Up!!

So Max is getting so old... well, technically not that old relative to like turtles or something, but for being my baby, he's getting pretty old. He is 9 months already! Time flies. Tyler and I agree that Maddox is just beginning to get really fun. He loves spending time with us and his personality is totally coming out now. He's hilarious!! One thing we can tell so far is that this kid is going to be STUBBORN!! When you tell him 'no' he cries like we've just killed him. And he totally understands what it means, too. He's a climber. He climbs on EVERYTHING. He loves loves LOVES snacks, especially little baby cheddar goldfish. He's getting more picky about his food. He wants to eat everything on our plates. He likes to watch morning cartoons on PBS. And he's decided he will no longer take a bottle from Tyler at night. He's getting harder to put to sleep, too. I hope it's just a phase. And no teeth yet!


Anyway, that's a little update. He's still not walking on his own yet all that much. Every once in a while when he sees something he really wants he'll let go of the couch or chair and walk over to it. Other than that he prefers to crawl. He's so cute, when he sees something that might hurt his knees to crawl on, he stands up on all fours and kind of walks over it on his hands and feet with his butt in the air. SO CUTE!!


We took him for his 9mo check-up and he is doing great. The only thing of concern is that apparently he's very VERY small. He's not even in the 10th% for height and weight. And he had dropped two growth curves since the last visit. The doctor wasn't sure if he just switched to this new growth curve or if something more serious is going on. I tried to tell the Doctor that Tyler and I are very small people (not "little people") and that we didn't expect much from our kids. He didn't really seem to pay attention to that though. I'm not worried. He eats fine, plays fine, acts fine -- I think that means he's fine.

OH, and he points now! When he sees something that he likes or wants or is just excited about he points at it. It's so cute to see his chubby little finger point out his favorite toy or a birdie outside in a tree.

And the other day Tyler called to say hi and he wanted to say hi to Max so I put the phone by his ear and he got this HUGE smile on his face and looked up at me and said "Dada?" Now, he probably was just babbling, but still, it totally seemed like he was telling me or asking me if it was dada. It was adorable!

We love our little monkey A LOT. We wish you could all see him as much as we do! Sometimes he does these cute little things and I want to capture it all on film so that I can share it with everyone and then I think, hey, I'm the mom, I put up with all of everything, I'm allowed to have secret moments only I know about with my baby. Right? I think so.

3 Things

A la Tawni...

3 Things

Three things I'm afraid of:
1. dieing
2. midgets
3. puppets
4. Really nasty odors (i have the strongest sniffer in the world)

Three People Who Make Me Laugh:
1. my baby boy max is hilarious
2. my roommate for life, alice
3. bill cosby has always made me laugh

Three Things I Love:
1. holding max close and rocking him after he falls asleep
2. the smell of rain on pavement
3. TV
4. italians, italian cooking and being italian

Three Things I Hate:
1. when people don’t leave comments on my blog!! :) (yessiree!)
2. when tyler makes me do the money with him
3. cleavage (it's just gross)

Three Things I Don’t Understand:
1. people with accents (any and all accents -- seriously -- SPEAK ENGLISH!)
2. how to record TV using the VCR
3. why God made spiders (shiver)

Three Things On My Desk:
1. uh, since my desk is the kitchen table, a vase of flowers
2. pictures of max i have to send out
3. planner with a half eaten bagel on it

Three Things I’m Doing Right Now:
1. procrastinating
2. sitting on a heating pad for my sciatica
3. and just this second i was trying to swat a moth that got into our house that was flying in my face -- GROSS

Three Things I Want To Do Before I Die:
1. go on a food tour of the world
2. watch my babies grow up
3. hike to half dome

Three Things I Can Do:
1. cook -- i have to say i am pretty good at it, too
2. paint
3. sit on the couch and watch TV all day (no lie)

Three Things I Can’t Do:
1. climb ladders (i'm scared and practically wet my pants when i have to)
2. physics (the really hard kind)
3. take out the trash

Three Things I Think You Should Listen To:
1. regina specktor
2. that kelly clarkson song from Idol
3. past the mission -- tori amos

Three Things You Should Never Listen To:
1. liberals (here, here!)
2. drunken homeless men on the streets of berkeley no matter how tempting it may be to take off all your clothes and dance like barney
3. il divo (try il puke-o)

Three Things I’d Like To Learn:
1. how to crochet
2. photography (tawni, we have a lot in common)
3. how to style my hair

Three Favorite Foods:
1. chinese food
2. apple pie
3. sausage and pepper sangweech

Three Shows I Watched As A Kid:
1. The Chipmunks
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (we even had a club at school and we all had fake compacts like April made from paper and tissues)
3. and when i was really little Zoobileezoo

Three Things I Regret:
1. being a crazy teenager
2. August 22, 2000
3. my Auntie Rose not being around to watch my babies grow up

Four People I'm Tagging:

1. Alice from Ms. Sarcalice Chiang
2. Lauren from Kitchen Chronicles
3. Chelsea from Life Amongst the Monahans
4. Joanie and Jerry from life as we know it

Mama's Boy (aka My Secret Obsession)

So tonight was a hard night for my little boy. Nothing major happened, he just had a more difficult than usual time falling asleep. Usually he screams himself (and by scream I do not mean cry, I mean little screams at the top of his lungs) or talks himself or chews his blanket to sleep. But tonight he kind of had a melt down so I sent Tyler in to try and quiet him, make sure he wasn't wrapped up in the corner in his blanket and to see if he wanted the rest of his bottle. He was fine except for the sobbing part. That's when it's my turn. And I have to admit -- I LOVE IT when it's my turn!! I absolutely adore, cherish and find it deliciously addicting when my baby wants only my shoulder to rest his head. I melt with motherly delight when I pick up my sweet baby and his sobs quickly dissipate to sniffs as he rests his sweet-smelling little head on my shoulder. When it's only momma that he wants I am in maternal heaven. When only I can calm my baby's storms before he lays his little head down to sleep I truly feel like a mother, like this is what we (Max and I) were meant for. I love my boy. I love being his mommy. I guess you can say I have a scrumptiously lovely obsession (that I don't plan to give up any time soon)!!

Steps and Steps

Max took his real, live FIRST steps!!! Unassisted!! No hand holding or walker pushing. Every day he gets better and better, too. Right now he will walk out of Tyler's hands all the way to the couch (a good 6-8 baby steps) as long as there is something on the couch that he really wants (like his blankey or a ball or sometimes his mom). He's been crawling and pulling up on just about everything for a while now and you can tell he just wants to walk so badly. It's adorable of course!

He's only 8 months old (almost 8 1/2 months) and I was walking at 9 months so it's not inconceivable that he could be walking for real by the end of the month. We'll just have to wait and see. He has yet to venture out on his own (turning and walking to something). Although, when he does see something on the ground and he is in a standing position he kind of turns and puts both hands out in front of him and falls on the floor. So I guess he's moving in the right direction... sort of.

Now there are many people who have said to us, "Enjoy this age when they aren't walking", "Ugh, when they start walking it gets horribly hard", "Babies should never learn to walk because it ruins their parents' lives" (okay, so no one has said that , but they might as well have). Yet, this is what I say -- "please, PLEASE walk for goodness sakes, and do it soon, because my back is breaking from holding you up so you can pretend walk around them room; mommy is tired and achy and it won't be so bad when you can walk over and get your own diapers."

That being said... ENJOY THE VIDEO!!!



P.S. No babies were hurt in the filming of this video.

A New Phase Has Begun...

My baby is slowly morphing into this wiggly, giggly, crawling, WALKING (!!) toddler. Yes, he's walking. Actually, he pushes his little walker thingy all over the neighborhood. Actually, he just pushes it to the mail box and back... but that's pretty far considering how much weight his stubby little legs have to carry.



Oh, and I apologize for the extremely annoying little boy in the video who keeps sitting in front of Max. He's very cute, but does not speak any English and neither does his mother so therefore I can not yell at either of them to get out of the way. It's a pity because I think it could have been really interesting blog-fodder.

Swimmin' With the Fishes

No, I didn't tie a pair of cement choos to the bottom of my babies feet and throw him off the town dock. (And yes, I know it's sleepin' with the fishes, not swimmin' -- hello, I am Italian; swimmin' just fit my post better). I just pulled a reusable swim diaper onto his little bottom and threw him in the baby pool! Max LOVES to swim!! Tyler takes him every Saturday to my parents' pool and swims around with him. We were going to have them take a swimming class together but it was a little out of our price range, so instead Tyler made the commitment to take him swimming every Saturday morning.

Here are some pictures of Max and Mattie in our neighbor's little blow-up pool. Mattie hated it until we took all her clothes and her diaper off. I think she thought it was a bath and couldn't figure out why we kept throwing her in there with her diaper on. (She's smarter than you think). Max of course loved it! And our neighbors' little girl, Marcelle, loved dunking her head in. It was really cute!!

Hoppy Easter!!!

We had a nice low-key Easter this year. Tyler and I took Max to my mom's house to have Easter dinner and to let the kids open their Easter baskets. It was just the five of us (me, Max, Tyler, my Mom and Mattie) because Danielle was out and Bob was working. We had a ham and then a traditional Easter Rice Pie (a lot like rice pudding but it's Italian so it's way better). We also had the Traditional Easter Ham Pie (also another Italian favorite) or Apizzaigain (pronounced apis-eye-gain). It was YUMM-YYY!!

We made the kids put on bunny ears to take pictures and then ended up at the park in the afternoon. It was a nice Sunday with the family.

Oh, and Maddox had mashed potatoes for the first time... and I think he likes them!!!

Dancin' Queen!

This video is adorable of Mattie. Every time she hears music she drops what she's doing and dances. It's SOO cute. Also, check out my mom's skills.



Oh, and you'll hear me saying "Mattie, do the leg!". I was trying to teach her how to shake her leg.

Whew!!

So I guess I'm long over-due for an update!! Alas... no new pictures since my camera is still at my mom's house. But I can give you a little update on our family!

Max now crawls normal. And fast. And everywhere!! He gets his little chubbiness all over our apartment and my mom's house and outside and the park and probably the grocery store and Target if I let him!

He also pulls up on everything he can get his fat little sausage hands on. It's so cute. He cruises on the couch and all the furniture and loves to pull stuff off any surface onto the floor (that is by far my favorite new trick -- my favorite part being cleaning up the broken stuff -- yeah, fun!).

The biggest revelation in a while has been that this kid has one of the biggest sweet tooth's I have ever seen. As a treat the other day I let him suck on a dried piece of mango. I wish I got this on video, because the look on his face was hilariously adorable!! He squished up his little eyes and had this big smile on his face and rocked back and forth and did his little squealy thing. He loved it SOOOO much!! Mostly because it is covered in sugar. He loves KIX cereal! Any kind of sweet fruit thing. I'm scared. I try not to give him any of that stuff, but sometimes I can't help myself. No, that's not true. Sometimes he's whining so horribly and acting so cranky that I just give in and give him a snack. Am I setting up my son to establish poor eating habits? Emotional eating? Unhealthy eating? Well -- so be it. Sometimes a person can only handle so much high-pitched ear-splitting whining. We'll fix the eating thing later.



Anyway, he's also had goldfish crackers (the baby sized ones) and he loves those too. I bought this little snack cup that has a rubber top where he can stick his hand in to get out a snack but it won't spill all over the place. But, of course, Max being the tricky clever little boy that he is, had his snack dumped all over the place in minutes with the super-special no-spill lid still intact on top of the cup. Go figure. It works for the most part, though.

He also takes his naps in his crib now! That was a huge thing and something I had been dreading. When Tyler was on spring break we took the swings to the used baby store and got $40 for them. I figured if they weren't in the house I would have to use his crib. The first day he only slept for half an hour. But the next day he was back to normal. He doesn't sleep as long as consistently, but it's much better than being on the back of his head for hours. He sleeps on his tummy which helps with the plagio a lot.



We had our first session of CST (I'll explain that in another post). I think it's working and I was actually skeptical. Well, not so much skeptical as I was unsure of what would happen. I definitely wasn't expecting to see such a change so quickly. I don't think his head will ever be perfect, but I think it will be okay enough that no one will really notice.

He's getting big and chubby and fun and cute and much easier to deal with during the day. I think his new found mobility kind of perked him up to loving life, instead of just making sure he ate and slept and whined enough to let me know it.

Enjoy the videos!!

Max-ele (like Pele, only with Max in front... get it??)

I think my baby is going to be the next Pele. I would say the next Mia Hamm, but she's a woman and I think Tyler would freak out. So I'll have to settle for having given birth to the next Pele instead.



Max LOVES to kick around balls. He kicks this little soccer ball all over the house, it's really cute. He is actually the one kicking it, too, and then he chases after it. This week I think we'll try headers and one-touch shots before moving on to dribbling skills and bicycle kicks. We'll have a super star in no time!!