Haircut

so i finally found time for a haircut now that max is in daycare three days a week. i have some seriously mixed feeling about this daycare business, but you have to do what you have to do. it's pretty much impossible to try to write a coherent dissertation with an almost four month old baby constantly demanding attention.

but i digress. the daycare discussion can wait. this post is about hair. my hair and its sweet new cut.



















not drastically different, but definitely a fresher look with all the split ends gone and a bit of layering worked in. i was tempted to go shorter (i got 4-5 inches chopped off), but i chickened out. i'll probably go back in a couple of months and get the length taken up another three or four inches. my hair would just brush my shoulders then. opinions on that option are welcome.

Sitting Up (with support)

today, max and i are working on his sitting skills. he definitely doesn't have the core strength or balance to sit up on his own yet, but he can sit up on the couch for short periods of time.

see?



















and when i say 'short periods of time', i mean short. about 5 seconds after the above picture was taken, max tipped over. onto his face.



















but it's ok, he just fell over onto the couch. i sat him back up, and he thought about this whole sitting thing.



















he finally decided he likes this sitting up business.

Finally!

so, i started knitting a baby blanket around thanksgiving, hoping it would be finished by the time max arrived. it wasn't. i was about 3/4 finished with the last set of colored blocks (about 85% finished with the blanket) when i went into the hospital.

this week, i finally completed the blanket.

have a look at the finished product:
















now have a look at max enjoying the finished product:

Love, Thy Name Is General Electric

so, i'm sure you all know about this economic stimulus tax rebate thing that all american taxpayers will receive in the next month or so. basically, everyone who pays taxes gets $600 back from the government plus $300 for each 'qualifying child' (max doesn't qualify, boo). chad and i got a letter in the mail telling us that our $1200 will be here soon a few weeks ago, and we decided that we would use our rebate to procure new appliances for our kitchen. chad hated our refrigerator with its non-functioning ice maker, and i hated our stove, which just plain sucked (umm, i burned absolutely everything i baked in the oven for a month or so before i figured out the trick of preheating the oven then turning the temperature down to 75 degrees below the recommended cooking temperature).

i guess we could have just paid the $952 we owed the government (that's state and federal combined) this year and considered ourselves pretty much even after the rebate, but we knew we'd have to pay some taxes this month (and thus had planned accordingly), so we settled on buying a new stove, refrigerator, and dishwasher, just so we could have everything match.

so chad went on an appliance quest a couple of weeks ago, comparing appliance brands and the stores that sell them. we wound up buying GE appliances from home depot - all for the low, low price of about $1250 after rebates (it was about $1450 before the rebates). at first we were going to go with maytag, since there was a $200 manufacturer's rebate with the purchase of 3 maytag appliances, but the qualifying dishwasher for that deal was 3" taller than the space we have.

i will admit that we did not get our dream appliances ('cause that would be way expensive, and we are so not rich), but we got better ones than we had before. our only 'splurges' were the 21 cubic ft fridge instead of the 18 cubic ft one and a smooth top range (which i have been lusting after for forever) instead of the kind with regular burners. we got a pretty standard dishwasher, but it is shiny and new.

i must say, i LOVE the new stove. love it. the ceramic cooktop heats up much faster than regular electric burners, and they cool down quickly. there's even a light that tells you when the little burner circles are still hot. plus, the oven bakes like a dream, no tricks required.

chad was concerned that the fridge would be a lot smaller than the side-by-side we had before, but we actually have a lot more room now in both the fridge and the freezer, even though it's a plain old freezer on top model. plus, you know, we now have an ice maker that works, and that saves a lot of space, since we don't have stacks and stacks of ice trays in there.

as you can tell, i'm pretty stoked about the new appliances. now i just need to convince chad that we need new countertops...

Trauma, Trauma, Trauma

this little man had his two month checkup today, and it was a traumatic experience for all involved. let me just say this - vaccinations suck. i mean, i'm sure they're preferable to the various bacterial and viral infections they're protecting him against, but it sucks to hold your baby still (or try to, anyway) while a nurse pokes him repeatedly with a needle (actually, 4 different needles, not the same needle over and over). especially when he starts emitting high-pitched screams as soon as the first needle pokes him, and then he proceeds to turn purple and stop breathing for a few seconds between said high-pitched screams (but with his face still scrunched up like he's screaming, only silently), and this continues well after the poking and injecting are through.

the rotavirus vaccine was ok - it was given by mouth, and max thought it was pretty tasty.

other than the pain and screaming from the injections, max's doctor's appointment went well. he's 23 inches, 11 lbs. 8 oz. now (so he's gaining about an ounce a day). that puts him in the 50th percentile for size compared to other two-month old babies, and his height and weight are still in perfect proportion, so i guess he's not going to be one of those super-chubby babies covered in cute little fat rolls. my brother was one of those babies. i was not. oh well. it just means that max will be able to wear all his clothes for a long time instead of growing out of them practically overnight, despite his fairly rapid growth rate.

something else to mention is max's teeny tiny little head. it doesn't look tiny. i think it looks huge (well, compared to how small it was when he first popped out) and in good proportion with his body. but his head circumference (38 cm) is only in the 10th percentile. so 90% of two month old babies have bigger heads than max!

his tiny head isn't a bad thing, though. he's doing everything he's supposed to be able to do at this age - and some things that a lot of three month old babies can't do yet (like bat at toys on purpose, roll onto their sides, and hold their heads steady for long periods of time). by his next checkup at 4 months, max will be able to roll all the way over onto his tummy and grasp objects and put them in his mouth. he already coos and babbles up a storm, and he smiles at us frequently. overall, he's a pretty happy kid.

i must say, his sleeping habits have also improved dramatically. for the past four or five nights, max has been sleeping for a minimum of 5 hours at a time after i lay him down in the crib. when he wakes up at 4 or 5:00 a.m., he doesn't want to go back to sleep, but 5 consecutive hours of sleep are much better than 5 or 6 interrupted hours of sleep. and last night, max pretty much slept all night! for the first time! and i was worried when i woke up at 5:35 (all by my lonesome, not because i heard a noise) and realized that max hadn't made a peep yet! and we'd gone to bed at 11:00. so i had to get up and check on him. and he was snoozing away in his crib, perfectly fine. then he got whiny at 5:45, so i went ahead and got up with him. it was pretty crazy, waking up on my own instead of to a crying baby. it's been forever since that happened - like since before max was born.

he's even sleeping right now. he's slept an awful lot today, actually. i think it's all those shots. fever is a common side effect of three out of five vaccines he received today, and pain/swelling at the injection site is common in two of them (only one looks swollen, though). the rotavirus vaccine can sometimes cause diarrhea or vomiting, but so far so good. the doc advised me to go ahead and give him some infant tylenol when we got home, and i just gave him another dose, so we're pretty much trying to preempt any fever that might develop (and relieve the pain in the poor baby's legs). he's been a little fussy, but mostly max has just been sleepy today. he should be pretty much back to normal by tomorrow night.

So Many Things...

wow, it's been a long time, dudes. there are SO MANY THINGS i have wanted to blog about lately, but i just have not had the time since i went back to work. well, since i started going back to the lab, anyway. max goes to the lab with me on thursdays and fridays, and that's working out really well - he's pretty much been a perfect little angel while i do what i have to do, and i've even avoided any screaming fits during diaper changes while we're there. actually, he's never pitched a screaming fit when i've changed him in public - ever. i know, i'm as surprised as you are.

since i don't have time for details, here are the highlights of what i've wanted to blog about for the past few weeks:

• while he has not actually outgrown anything yet, max is probably going to outgrow one of his sleepers and two pairs of his newborn size pants soon
• max is getting huge - he is hovering somewhere near 11 lbs now - i'll know exactly how much he weighs next wednesday when i take him for his 2 month checkup.
  
• here's a picture of him napping in his swing, taken about 5 minutes ago.
  

• see? i told you so - huge.
• ignore the fact that both those pants and that t-shirt are size newborn.
• i am about to stop buying newborn diapers, although they do still fit him
• i am afraid that if i go buy two more weeks worth of newborn diapers, he will outgrow them suddenly, and i will be stuck with 80-160 newborn diapers
• plus, size 1 diapers don't completely swallow him anymore
• and we have 3 packs of size 1 diapers that we've had since before he was born
• but we haven't used any yet because until now they've been massively huge on him
• and pee cannot be contained in a massively huge diaper

some more stuff, not directly related to max (but still sort of in the max ballpark), that i've also been dying to vent about:

• my MIL loves max to death
• but she kind of makes me crazy
• because she doesn't listen
• i don't want other people to 'clean' my house
• especially when 'cleaning' just involves taking some stuff from one place and putting it in another place
• then i can't find anything
• because it's not where i put it
• eat my food, watch my tv, read my books, play with my baby, feed my baby, change my baby, put my baby down for a nap or two (on his back, NOT his tummy)
  
• that's what i want you to do when you're alone in my house watching my kid
  
• closed doors = don't go in there
• right?
• you know that, don't you?
• then why do some people think that just because they're alone in your house watching your kid (which is much appreciated) they can go into rooms and do things that they wouldn't do if you were home?
• rooms with closed doors
• the road to hell is paved with good intentions
• and good intentions are driving me crazy
• my MIL brings MORE STUFF for max EVERY WEEK when she comes over to baby-sit
• our house is not that big
• max is too young to know what the stuff is or to appreciate that it is for him, and he's rapidly accumulating more stuffed animals than i know what to do with
• i should never have told her i like monkeys
• she's really gone overboard with the monkeys
• she will buy anything if it has a monkey on it, regardless of whether we need it or already have two of them
• i don't like things whose sole purpose is taking up space and looking cute
• if my kid is going to wear a special holiday outfit, i want to be the one to pick it out
• she had her kid, and therefore her chance to dress him in special outfits
  
• max is NOT her kid
• he is MINE
• and i am a possessive bee-otch
• i like things a CERTAIN WAY
• and i don't take it well when that certain way is messed with
• babies need naps
• sometimes they don't want to take naps
• and they get cranky
• so sometimes you just have to hold and rock a baby for forever to make him take a nap
• because staying awake ALL DAY?
• does NOT help him sleep at night
• it actually makes the sleeping thing harder for him
• and i'm the one who gets to deal with the cranky baby who can't stay asleep
• so when i say the baby needs to take naps during the day or go to bed around 9:00, he really does need to
• he will be cranky at 9:00 because he's had a long day with someone in his face talking all day, and he needs to wind down
• so you have to walk around with him and talk to him in a soft and soothing voice until he falls asleep
• letting him stay awake until 11:00 because playing with him keeps him happier than putting him to sleep doesn't make the putting him to sleep any easier
• it actually just makes it that much harder because it's two hours later, and now mommy can barely hold her eyes open and doesn't really have the patience or the energy to put the cranky baby to sleep - and it means that mommy gets less sleep than she otherwise would
• and mommy needs every minute of sleep she can possibly manage
  
• so the baby? he needs to go to bed around 9:00. or even 8:00 if he seems sleepy then.
• i really do know what i'm talking about
• because i do this EVERY DAY
  

One Month

this little guy is one month old today! isn't he a doll?






















thanks to ross and kristen, max has pacifiers with his name on them.