A Random Update on Max

Every time *random* people ask me “How’s Max?”  I’m not sure how to respond.

“He’s good, thank you” leaves out a lot of information.

I don’t want to be that mom and say “Well he’s pretty much the most adorable baby ever conceived. I’m pretty sure he’s freakishly strong and all signs are pointing to him being the one to disprove String Theory at age 16”.

Nor do I want to be the mom that says “He’s great but he has been fighting this cold for 2 months and he has a cough that sounds like a barking seal.  The doctor says that since he has no fever there’s nothing we can do but he also has this horrible diaper rash that won’t go away.  Here, wanna check it out?”

So instead, I just say the first one and maybe add in how he’s starting to be mobile.  Then, I’ll walk away feeling awkward and *random*.  I suck at small talk.

But in case you do want a full blown update (minus the medical issues) *randomly* recounting Max’s new developments.

We’re one week away from 6 months and Max is doing totally great.  I assume he’s reaching all appropriate milestones but I stopped reading the parenting guides because they made me paranoid.  Brett keeps up better than me.

The biggest thing going on is that Max is mobile.   He has a very efficient army crawl and can get from point A to point B in the blink of an eye.  Of course, instead of going after his toys, he seems to find only the *random* things lying on the floor. Shoes, cords and the cat are all far more interesting then the expensive toys people have given him.  They also happen to be significantly more dangerous.  We’ve quickly started to baby proof the house.  While he is not full on crawling yet, he can get up on all fours without struggle.

I give it another week and the kid will be a crawling machine. When that happens, we’re screwed.

Max has also developed a “Scared as Hell” cry and it’s absolutely heartbreaking.  If he learns to use it at *random*, I’ll pretty much give him anything he wants. Currently the cry only happens when Max is actually scared but soon he will learn to use it for manipulate me and he’ll be eating cookies for dinner every night.  Seriously, those big eyes filled with wet tears is simply killer.

The best news, other than Max being a perfectly normal 6 month old, is that he has continued to (basically) sleep through the night.  It’s been about a month and I don’t think I’ll ever stop being excited.  Once a night, usually around 5 or so, he’ll fuss for a few minutes but he usually puts himself back to sleep before it’s enough to drag our butts out of bed. Now, if I could just convince my body to not wake every 3 hours, life would be perfect.

On that note it’s also wonderful that Max no longer requires a big song and dance to fall asleep.  We have a simple routine.  Bath .  Bottle.  Plop him in his crib.  Turn on his Baby Einstein aquarium and he’s out before the music is over. Gone are the days that required swaddling, bouncing, re-swaddling, humming, pleading, and trying lay him in his crib without waking him up.  Goodbye and good riddance.

I know the next 6 months will be filled with even more major milestones and I’m trying to savor the moments instead of counting down the seconds ‘til he moves out the next major development.  Food beyond rice cereal, crawling, walking, first holidays and first words are on the radar.  I already have a pile of *random* baby items that need to go into storage until I’m crazy enough to want to do this all over again.

Until then, I am just trying to enjoy the ride.