9 months old

Dear Maxim,

You are 9 months old and Mommy and Daddy are still completely in awe of you.

So what have you been up to in the past three months? Well, you finally rolled from your back to your front. You have done it a few times, but really don't see the need for it. You much prefer to sit. This is your favorite thing to do, sitting. You are starting to spin around on your bum, more from wiggling than from willing, but I think you are starting to think about moving. We now put you on your belly when you are in a good mood and you push yourself backwards around the floor. We really should put a Swiffer on your belly to help pick up all the dog hair!


You pushed through one tooth, and there doesn't seem to be any more on the near horizon. It wasn't a terrible experience for either of us, so I am hoping the rest come in with little fuss. Only time will tell on this one. You now go down for your naps all on your own, and in your crib. You rarely cry, and if you do it is very short lived. You tend to just babble to yourself and kick the aquarium on and off, and then finally drift off to sleep. The one thing you do need to sleep is to put your blanket over your head. The first time you did this freaked Mommy and Daddy out, but now we just go unwrap it when we go to bed, but you always manage to bring it back up in your sleep.

Your nights are on the majority really good. You go to bed around 7:30, wake up about 4 or 5 for a bottle and will usually go back to sleep until about 7:30. And when you do wake up you don't usually cry, you let us know you are awake by babbling to the aquarium or your stuffed cougar. You love bath time and splashing Daddy. Now you are starting to cry when Daddy takes you out. You experienced your first time at the pool, which you weren't too sure of at the beginning but really warmed up to the whole experience by the end of it.

You continue to love to eat and now insist on feeding yourself. It gets really messy, especially when you are eating yogurt.


Our routine is busy. We have Olga and Matteo over most Mondays, Tuesdays we go to play group, and Wednesdays is Karen's. Soon we will be starting swimming lessons on Tuesdays and I hope to go to family swim on Fridays when we can.

You are still a really laid back kind of guy. People just gravitate to you and your easy going ways. You are starting to cry a little when Mommy leaves the room, but on the most part you are a pretty happy little guy. And for some reason, you love to watch Mommy and Daddy fumble and drop things. This really sends you into side splitting laughter, and of course, we are more than willing to perform for you.



I have three more months to spend with you full time and then I have to go back to work. I am already starting to be a little sad that I won't be spending so much time with you, but know that Daddy is going to love every moment he has with you this summer.

I love you Jellybean!

Mommy

More pictures of Max

Here are a couple of pictures of Max and friends.

This is Max's girlfriend Sara. He always has eyes for her, but she tends to blow him off.
This is Max consoling Sara, after he stole her toy.

This is Max playing with his favorite blonds: Zoey (curly haired one) and Andi (straight haired one). These two beauties are the wonderful daughters of our friends Dave and Andra.

This is Max and Olivia. He really has a thing for curly hair. Marty is also in love with Olivia. Josee and Brian are expecting another. I think Marty wants them to have another girl so that Max has a better chance!

This is Max and Alex. Max really has a think about stealing toys. Ack! Is the only child thing already kicking in??

We're heading to Texas!

That's right folks, Max and I are heading to Texas! Mom called at New Year's to see if Tam and I wanted to head down and see them. She has enough points to fly us down. Warm weather, free flight? Heck yes!

Oh oh, snag... Max needs a passport. Why do baby's need passports? I really find it a little ridiculous. So last week while Marty wasn't back I school I went to the passport office to apply for Max's first passport. What's the most ridiculous thing I think is the picture. You have to have their eyes open and can't show that you are holding them (if you need to). Now at least Max can sit on his own, but what about a new born? Or a three month old? I met a woman while, waiting for two hours in line, who had her eight month old with her. She said it took about 25-30 tries to get an appropriate picture! Max did it on the first shot. That's my boy! The photographer was very impressed. He even thought that it was ridiculous that you have to get passports for babies and he is getting 20 bucks to take the picture. He said in his country (not too sure where that is) the children go onto the parents passport until they are 10 years old. Now that makes more sense.

So now I have something to plan. Seeing that I haven't had anything to plan for a while I think this trip might get planned to death. Marty is already rolling his eyes at me. Oh speaking of Marty, he has to write a letter granting me permission to take Max out of the country since Max doesn't have my last name. Marty is loving this "having to give permission" thing and now walks around the house granting me permission to do every little thing. I hope that grows tiresome for him soon as it already has for me!

Home at Last!

Phew! We are finally home. It seems like we have been gone forever. The holidays were a little crazy but filled with family and quite a few laughs 'til you cry.

We headed to Toronto a little earlier than usual this year as Glenna took her retirement on December 21st and the whole Detto clan when out for a lovely brunch at the Old Mill. This is a swanky brunch with scampies and prime rib. They didn't have a crepe or omlette station, but it was so busy that you would have had to wait for hours if they did.

Being in Toronto gave the fam time to get to know Max a little better and Max got to spend spend some time with his big cousin Connor. Max seemed to take a liking to Connor and Connor seemed to like playing with Max's toys.


I don't think Max much understood that he was experiencing his first Christmas day. And true to baby form, he preferred to play with the paper and packaging than the gifts themselves. Connor, on the other hand, totally knew that there was good stuff inside the packaging and struggled to get into them as fast as possible.


The day ended with the traditional Christmas turkey feast and Christmas crackers. I find this picture really portrays the three Detto boys well. Marty: always the ham, Mike: "look what I have to deal with!" and Kevin: always at the ready with a smile (and quite the perfect smile now that his braces are off).

Something different Marty and I did this year, we got up on Boxing Day and were in line to shop at 7:45! Glenna was kind enough to watch Maxim for an hour while Marty and I braved the shopping crowds so that I could get a new leather jacket. Half price on a beautiful leather jacket is really hard to beat. We were in and out and back at the house by 9:00. Pretty impressive if I do say so myself. We did see some line ups that were probably a 100 people long. Now that is dedicated bargain shopping.

We headed back to Ottawa with a quick stop at Dave and Andra's in Oshawa. We had a great day with them and the girls. Marty and Dave played Guitar Heroes III for what seemed like hours. Oh wait, it was hours! Thank goodness we do not have a PS3 or I think Marty would be dropping out of Teacher's College to pursue a career playing air guitar.

We were in Ottawa for a mere two days before heading to Montreal to ring in the New Year with Tam, Matt, the kids and Danielle, Adrian and the kids. I didn't make it to midnight though, I was completely exhausted. Max didn't seem to think sleeping by himself was a good thing for the past few nights, and when you are away from home and do not want the entire household to wake up to piercing baby cries, you will do anything to keep him quiet. I wonder how tonight is going to work out when he realizes he has to sleep alone in his crib for the night.

While in Montreal I was planning on going to see my grandmother, but the weather was bad on the 31st in the morning and didn't end up going. On New Year's day the weather was not great but we decided to give it a shot, packed up the car and headed home. The weather went from not great to incredibly terrible. It took us over an hour to get about 70km. We were having a terrible time trying to stay on the road so we called Tam and told her we were heading back. 3 hours and 2o minutes later we were back in Montreal and unloading the car.

This morning it was sunny, clear and cold and the roads were better. We were home by 12:30 and unpacked by 12:35. Not really but I made short order of it after we had a quick lunch. I just wanted to be home.

So now here we are, sitting in the living room staring at a dead TV. The TV isn't dead itself, but the satellite got busted by ice falling off the roof. Now we try and decide on a movie to watch. Wish us luck.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and Marty, Maxim and I wish you the very best for 2008.

Baby's first tooth

know it's a weird question but Max has the worst breath! But the big news... Max has cut his first tooth!! And he did it with pretty much no fuss. Or maybe that was what Sunday night was all about. He was a little fussy yesterday and when I checked his mouth this morning, there it was, a little tooth just poking through the bottom gum.

But here's the thing. He has had the worst breath today. And I don't mean anything like sour milk. I mean serious halitosis. I could smell it in the front seat of the car! And while I was giving him his bottle before bead, I couldn't look down at him it smelled so bad. The only thing I can think of is that's it might be the garlic in the chickpea pasta thing that he had for lunch, but he has had it all week and today is the only day that it's bad. So what's different? The tooth. I know, it's a stretch. When should I start brushing said tooth anyway? Guess it's something to look up.

SNOW!

This is what it looked like from our front door about an hour ago. It's much worse now. The weather warning is predicting about 50cm of snow. That's just over a foot and a half for anyone still stuck in the empirical system. So as Marty and I begin to feel a little house bound (the snow is actually up over our door jamb!) we started to have a little fun with Max. He is our little play thing, you know.

At the moment, Max's favorite thing to play with is anything that stacks. These stuffed stacking rings are on an I Dream of Jeannie shaped bottle. Then there are four balls that are like little maracas that you can drop into the bottle which sets off lights and sound. What more could an almost eight month old ask for. As Marty and I got bored with just watching Max have fun, we decided to get involved.



We were rather impressed with Max's balancing abilities, we decided to see how far we could get.



We actually made it to three, but we were laughing so hard that I couldn't get a good shot.

As the ring stacking get a little boring, I decided to get a picture of Max with our Santa. This is one of our Thanksmas gifts, which I totally love. And Max has taken a shine to him as well. I took many pictures, well just because he is just so darn cute, but things started to get a little hairy.







Max finally got fed up and brought Santa down to his level and tried to rip his beard off. All in all a pretty good day. Now the little guy is having a great nap and I am considering a nice mug of hot chocolate, made with milk. Mmm...



Although Marty and I are marveling at the storm, each of us trying to remember when we last experienced this sort of dumping, I hope that everything returns to normal tomorrow as we are not prepared for a long shut in. Mainly, we only have enough formula to get us to tomorrow dinner time. This is going to teach me a lesson to make sure there is always an extra can in the house.

Oh, the little guy is awake. How are you weathering the storm?

Santa Claus

Olga and I took our little guys to see Santa Claus on Monday. I know Max is too young to understand the whole Christmas thing, but I have decided that I want to get a picture with Santa every year as long as he still believes. I should have a good 5 or 6 years hopefully.

Max was his usual smiley self and the photographer had quite a few really good shots. Isn't he the cutest? Grandparents, let us know and we can get some prints done.

Yeah Winter!

Welcome to winter! Today we are in the midst of one of the biggest snow storms I have seen in a very long time. It really is something from my childhood. Playing in the street with the dog in shin high snow and catching huge snow flakes on my tongue. Max even seemed to be trying to catch some snow flakes. Quebec students and teachers got a snow day today. Unfortunately Ottawa doesn't believe in closing the schools, even when the buses are canceled. So Marty had to dig his way out this morning and head into school. Basically what teachers end up being on days like today are glorified daycare workers, which is what they try not to do every other day of the school year.

I can't wait to get out cross country skiing. I usually head out to Meredith's and we go for a ski along the Wakefield Train train tracks, which are just at the end of her street. It's a great spot. If the roads get plowed, I may attempt to go out tonight. Though I am not holding my breath. I think we will have about 40cm by then end of it all. Yeah!

Here are a couple of pics from our snow fun this morning.

Finally!

Let it be known, that on this day, Friday, November 30, 2007, Maxim Tomas Detto rolled for the very first time. He is 7 months and 6 days old. According to legend, or Tammy, he will be right handed as he rolled right. We'll have to wait a while to test this theory. I am kind of hoping he will be left handed as I am the only south paw in the family.

This has made my day which threatened to be horrible as I have been awake since 3:30am. But now with a good cup of tea (with honey for my throat - laryngitis), a big bowl of miniwheats and my boy rolling, things are starting to look up.

This is Max right after he rolled, while Mommy clapped and praised him (a little too enthusiastically I think).

And this is Max when he rolled back over about 10 minutes later. Doesn't he just look as pleased as punch?

Knee Update

Well, I am not to play soccer, or any other sort of active sport. This is the diagnosis from my sports doctor. She figures I just have a bum knee. Other people get through the surgery 100%, but it would seem that I am not one of those people.

She told me to do some physio to strengthen the hamstring and quad muscle and do some jogging and maybe I could try again in the spring. Let's be honest here. I don't have the time or money for physio and I HATE jogging. So it looks like I will be a swimming/pilates/yoga person. Yeah... I will try and be more enthusiastic.

More news, I have come down with a cold and have lost my voice, so basically read this with a very high pitched squeek in your head.

Happy days!

Nothing new

I always feel a little guilty when several days have gone by and I haven't posted anything. But nothing exciting has happened lately. We are still in the same routine, though sleep has become a bit of a challenge again. Max seems to think that 5:30 is a good time to get up in the morning. I tend to disagree with him strongly, though I never seem to win that argument.

In case you are counting, Max turned 7 months old yesterday. No he isn't rolling yet and there is not a tooth in sight. Most people are telling me to count my blessings, but it would be nice to see him achieve the rolling milestone soon or I will start to worry. You can see that he is almost there, but still doesn't see the whole purpose of it.

Oh another little update on me. I have hurt my knee. I decided to play soccer more aggressively, which is how I play and I have been swollen and limping since Wednesday. I am seeing my sports doctor tomorrow to see what the problem is. There are three other women on my team that had the same surgery and they don't seem to have any problems. If worse comes to worse, I really hope I can find someone to buy my season from me. I hate to see $200 go to waste. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

A me update

I figured I would give a bit of an update on myself. Most of the blog readers are out of towners, so they don't know the little details of what's going on in my life. Believe it or not, I do a few little things away from Maxim.

General Health: I'm doing pretty good health wise. At the moment I am suffering a bout of insomnia, but I usually come out on the other side of them pretty much intact, though this is the first time since Max was born. We'll see how it goes. I still have about 10 pounds to go and am getting a little frustrated. I have been wearing the same pair of jeans, every day for the past 7 months. I am ready to burn them, and really think I will once I can fit into my old pants (hope you don't mind Tam!). I have accepted that I probably won't ever fit back into my tops with these new boobs, so I think Meredith is going to be getting some great tops in the next little while.

Physical Health: I still walk to the dog park almost every morning, and attribute that to getting most of the weight off. Now I am going to have to go a little farther to get the rest off. Heather has decided to join me for Thursday night swims which will make it so much easier to get there. Misery loves company. We went for the first time last week even though I was on only a few hours sleep I think I did pretty well. I have also started indoor soccer. My first game was last Tuesday. I didn't do nearly as bad as I thought I would and I don't think I was totally useless on the field. I went easy, not knowing how my knee would feel or if my lungs would burst. Surprisingly both were fine, so tonight I will push it a little harder. I am also going to try and fit in a night of yoga, or some pilates. That is going to be the tricky one to get organized. I seem to have lots of things to do in the evenings and Marty always ends up being home. He said the other day that he will have to find some things as well, since we both need the break from the house at least once a week.

Emotional Health: Well we all know that it was a little rough in the beginning. But I am feeling great right now (other than the lack of sleep). Max is such a little wonder and even when I am having a bad day, he is always there with a smile for me. And we can get him to laugh on cue mostof the time, so I can always get a little giggle out of him that makes me laugh right along with him.

So there you have it, a little update on me. What's new with you?

Dreaming American

Last night I dreamed that I was having knee surgery again. My surgeons were McDreamy and McSteamy (I had just watched last week's Grey's Anatomy - thank you PVR). So all in all a very pleasant experience. How did I know I was dreaming American? During my MRI McDreamy said that I definitely needed surgery and then said... "We'll book you tomorrow." I did how ever wake up before the bill arrived.

A bad night

For the past few nights, I have been suffering from insomnia. I get it every once in a while and I usually get over it in a week or so. But this is the first time that it has happened since Maxim arrived and I can say, it's way worse!

So last night, Marty, the love of my life, said that he would sleep in Max's room and do the night time stuff and let me sleep with my earplugs in to try and get over the insomnia hump. After catching up on some Heroes, I snuggled up with earplugs in and fell into a blissful sleep... for a while.

Marty said that Max woke up crying at midnight. A little earlier than usual, but Marty decided to feed him. Well, both Marty and I, in a brief stupid parenting moment, didn't look to see if there were any bottles made before we went to bed. How does that "assume" adage go again? So Marty had to hold a screaming Max while trying to make bottles. I can assure you that there will never be no made bottles in the fridge again. I however slept blissfully ignorant through the whole thing.

Then I woke up at 3:00am. This is the usual time that my insomnia kicks in. So I stumble down stairs to pee and then when I crawled back into bed I could hear crying through my earplugs. I take them out and Max is having a complete melt down. This is very unusual. Marty was at a total loss and so was I. I told Marty that there was no reason for the two of us to be awake, and since I was up I would try and sooth him. I did manage to. Marty was a little upset that I was able to do it quickly, but he has to realize that I am with Max all day and have picked up a couple of tricks. But the soothing didn't last too long. He slept for about 30 minutes and then woke up screaming again. So I gave in and got Marty to heat up another bottle. Max took it greedily (another growth spurt perhaps?) and fell right to sleep. If only I could say the same about me. Max started to stir around 6:00 so I brought him into bed with me. I used to be able to get him to fall back to sleep for another hour or so, but this hasn't worked for a couple of days now. So after listening to Max coo for an hour, I got Marty up. I needed to try and get some sleep. And I did. I slept until almost 10:00am! It was wonderful. I am feeling very refreshed today.

Here's hoping that tonight is better.

Maxim Update

For about a nano second, I thought that maybe I would join the NaBloPoMo (National Blog Post Month) where you attempt to post every day in the month of November. Good thing I didn't try or I would have failed miserably. Where did I get this idea? Karen - my ultimate blogging friend, of course. So since I haven't been very diligent in my blogging, I will try and give a comprehensive blog update.

We had our 6 month check up this week. Unfortunately, Max couldn't get his shots as he has a cold. He is blowing snot bubbles with the best of them, and his little voice is hoarse. I don't know whether to laugh at him or cry. So we have to go back in another week to get his shots. He is now a healthy 19lbs 2oz and 26 1/2". Best thing about the check up, the Doctor told me that we didn't have to sterilize the water for his formula. He said that they put enough unsterilized things in their mouths that it's not really needed. Woohoo! That saves a lot of time and stress.

We still have a nice routine. He sleeps in to about 7:30ish (I am sleeping in the spare bed with him, but I am not complaining). We go to the dog park every morning. In the afternoon I either try and get him to nap or we are out doing some errands. Night time is still really good. Marty gives him his bath and puts him down around 7:30. Max is a really good night time sleeper, and we are very lucky.

We are still really enjoying the music class we are taking on Thursday mornings. We have learned lots of songs and stories and Max seems to get a real kick out of seeing all of the other babies. We are going to start going to a drop in baby group on Tuesday afternoon with Heather and Sarah. As you can see, Max is trying to flirt with Sarah, but she is much more interested in the cube. We met Heather and Sarah through an online moms forum. They live just near by and we get along great. Isn't it the best when you happen to meet up with someone with whom you have so much in common with and just gets you.

Max's favorite place seems to be in his excersaucer. He actually has managed to figure out how to sit in it like a lounge chair. He is his father's son! He loves to spin around and scream at the animals. Actually his favorite thing is to yell and scream at their tails. He is really fascinated by them. He has also been enjoying the Jolly Jumper that Karen lent us. He is starting to get the hang of it, and again spins around to find the animals.

And finally, Max is eating really well. Avocados seem to be the only thing that he is not interested in. I guess I will have to thaw the avocado cubes and make some guacamole. Now he is having some turkey and we even gave him a little bit of spaghetti yesterday. I am hoping that he keeps his healthy appetite.

That's the news for now.