One Year already

Max's first birthday has come and gone- we had two parties to divide up the crowd a bit and both went well I think.

It's amazing how much has happened this year and how much Max has changed. It's so hard to imagine life without him now that he's here. All the cliches are true.

We made a "ball pit" with the aid of the Douglases inflatable pool and it is still in the office as Max

enjoys it greatly.

I could not believe how much snow fell this year! Max got more snow in a few months than I ever remember seeing in 31 years of living in Texas. His first Christmas up in Dallas was white and even though he was decked out with awesome jolly roger galoshes he was very uncertain about snow, but now that he's seen it THREE TIMES he seems to enjoy it. He smiles when it's falling and he was quick to tromp around in it in his Aunt Selah's front yard. He likes to taste it too. :)

This post is not particularly well-organized, so you'll have to bear with me. For Max's first birthday party Jack and I made 116 meatballs, balled fruit salad and a ball shaped cake along with some olives, pearl mozzarella and grape tomatoes for the spread. A cheeseball and crackers were also generously donated by the Douglases even though a pink-eye quarantine kept them from attending. The crowd was smaller than we expected but the event was good times nonetheless. It was nice to see the Wallaces with JJ, the three of them are very sweet together.

In other now-that-my-son-is-a-year-old-news, we've started him on a toothbrush. We got this Abby Cadabby one because it came with it's own toothpaste and was much cheaper. The toothpaste says it's okay to swallow and flouride free so I guess it's okay for little ones, I'm going to check with the doc on Monday just to be safe. Before I thought about it though we let him try it a few times and he LOVES that toothpaste- he will essentially brush his teeth all by himself just by chewing on the brush forever.

Here's the first cake that I made- both were pretty tasty, but had their own issues. I'm learning the quirks of dimensional cakes. This first one was the prettiest though, even though the top half was largely hollow because it ended up with a giant bubble crater in it during baking somehow. I filled it with one of the mini cupcakes I made.

My look for party was a bit slap dash as well, but everything still worked out good. Jack and I had been sick for a couple of days leading up to this party so neither one of us was as fully prepared as we had intended to be- it's probably best that the crowd was smaller than expected.

I like that Max and I have almost the same expression in this photo.

Max mostly just ate frosting. Honestly I should have probably just put frosting on one of his little beach balls and saved myself a couple of hours.

There are so many great pictures of him, and this one's a little blurry but it might be my favorite just because of his sweet little glee-face. Plus he's holding my hand and that's always wonderful.

His Grand Bears got him a Dallas Cowboys "Next Draft Pick" t-shirt and a matching do-rag. We laughed and laughed......

His second cake ended up much sturdier but I didn't bother with multiple frosting colors so it wasn't as magical looking. Max of course didn't care one bit and enjoyed the frosting just as much if not more than the first go around. This picture is totally Baby American Psycho to me. I love it.

He is learning all the time, we're working on a first word, I will be so amazed when I can start truly understanding what he wants/means. It's an exciting prospect. I'm trying to throw in a little sign language, I feel a little guilty about not having done any before now, but whatevs- moving on. He drinks through a straw like a champ now, I think I have Plum Tots to thank for that, their fruit purees in little bags with nozzles on them got him into the sucking action and then it was just the transition to a smaller tube. I should probably buy more straws, he's much more efficient with them than drinking from a cup. We're still practicing that though. Next on the horizon are St. Patty's and Easter- I'm looking forward to both and hopefully will get some posts up about what we end up doing.

Cheers.

Solid foods and sleeping snags

I've been making solid food purees for Max this week and find the whole process quite enjoyable. Something about finite tasks with a specific order of operations is soothing and satisfying for me. I discovered this at my first job as a concessionist at a movie theatre when I found myself happy at the prospect of making the hot dogs. Scoff if you must, but I really liked checking the internal temp on all the franks and once they were ready loading them into the soft warm hot dog buns that had been steaming in the drawer and then putting them into their little foil sleeves and folding the edge over neatly. I loved it- and compared to most of the other duties it was positively delightful. But I digress......
So far Max has eaten avocado, butternut squash, and acorn squash. (All organic) and he has seemed to enjoy them all, (next is parsnip!). It's so easy and simple to take a cube or two out of the freezer in the morning and put it in a cup to thaw for his little "meal" later in the morning/afternoon.

He gets really messy, naturally, and makes the most ridiculous faces- you wouldn't believe. He curls his tongue forward into his bottom lip and also does the little deep cup curl with his tongue. He tucks in his bottom lip ALOT while eating and ends up with a little "soul patch" of food pretty much the whole time. Then with his lip tucked under he starts to make chewing motions but combined with a little suction so his lips pop. It's really funny- I never could have predicted all the stuff this kid does.


I shortly thereafter put his little lap table thing across the high chair but before I could he kept bending nearly double to chew on the pommel thing on his chair- getting squash all over it and himself in the process of course. I think he's teething and so he really likes to chew on just about anything right now given half the chance.

Overall the food thing seems to be a success- I know I started food a while back but we took a break because I didn't have anything organic and I kind of wanted to wait until he was closer to six months to really get going. Now he seems really pretty happy about it and reaches for food and spoons all the time- and my water.

In other news, his sleep sessions have been a little squirrely lately. Some days he'll take two one hour naps and then others he'll barely manage two half hour naps before bedtime which then is much earlier. You would think that if a baby normally goes down at 7 and wakes around 5:30 that he would sleep later if he didn't go down until 8 one night but it's not the case.

Sometime between 5 and 6 is pretty much standard for him no matter when he goes down. Usually if he goes down early he just ends up getting more sleep and that's great- but then every now and then he'll go down at 6 and then be up at 4. yuck.

We do our best to keep him up until his usual bedtime, but there's only so much distraction you can manage before he just goes to sleep on you and he'd be miserable the whole time.

And of course, last night he went down like normal around 7 but then he was up and crying at 1:09 this morning! It was such aberrant behavior for him that I figured something must be wrong or off in some way so I went to check on him and ended up nursing him and putting him back to bed. I felt a little like a pushover, but there was something about his cry that "remound" me of the time he woke up with a fever so I thought maybe it was teething discomfort that had woken him. We'll see how tonight goes......