15 month old Max.

Ok, I suppose it's been a while but the holidays are keeping us busy as is everyone. So what's Max been up to?

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed the incredible dinner that Amy put together. My contribution to this year's festivities was to keep Max out of the kitchen.

He's extremely curious and is into everything. Containers seem to be important to him right now. He likes dumping stuff out of containers after we've neatly put everything away.

It appears that he enjoys helping mom around the house though so that's a good sign. We'd like to keep him used to this until he figures out that it's not fun. He seems to know what a feather-duster is for which is strange because we don't use them at home. I'm not saying that the place is dusty or dirty, we have other ways of getting rid of the dust. But for some reason, Max picks up the feather-duster and appears as though he knows what to do with it. He likes to sweep and mop but I think this is just parroting what we do and has nothing to do with actually cleaning.

Cleaning up after the party

Here's another example of Max in his obstacle course.

He eats everything except for sauerkraut and fancy, stinky cheese (I forgot what it's called but it stinks). Other than those items, he's isn't picky about his food, anything that Gerber puts out to Pizza Hut is fair game. He also appears to be a careful eater in that he won't take any more food until he's done with what's in his mouth. I don't know if that's something that all babies do but I think it's cool that Max does it.

Max is fascinated with buttons and switches. He'll be in the middle of a good cry when he's quickly distracted by a glowing button or switch--like a lit door bell or the keys on my laptop (that he's pulled off before). Max also now has a bigger kid car-seat so he sees what I see. He watches everything I do on the dashboard.

Speech! He still has his strange little alien-like baby babble. But we're also learning something about how Max uses words. We think that he understands what certain words are for. For example; if he hears an airplane or a helicopter, he'll point up at it--he's very good at quickly finding where the sound is coming from--and say something that might be, "airplane" or "Helicopter". Airplane sounds like "aiiii" and Helicopter sounds like, "perr", or something close to that. But you can't get him to say these words on command. If you say, "airplane" and point upwards when there's no airplane or helicopter, he'll just ignore you. At first we thought that he just didn't get it, we wanted him to repeat things. But if you think about it, if you're pointing upwards and there's isn't anything to point at, what's the point of looking up and making the effort to say such difficult words? We think that Max can make this distinction.

One morning, Max was trying to wake up his mom. He was tapping on her shoulder saying, "ente!" (ehn-tay). When Amy wants Max to come to her, she says, "vente!"(ven-tay), which is "come with me", in Spanish. Max used the word exactly as it's supposed to be used. So we're understanding now that Max might understand how some words are used. I have a difficult time getting him to perform acts on command. He seems to be on his own schedule.

He's getting really good at balancing and solving problems. Max seems to enjoy climbing furniture to see if there is anything of interest. When we ask him to get down, he'll get down--slowly and watch us. All he's doing is waiting for a better time to try the the same thing. He'll succeed eventually because he pulls certain things that might be used as a stool, like a pole of a toy--yes, he was perched atop the pole.

Play-do, he plays with play-do without eating it! He doesn't understand that you can make things with it. I think he just likes how it feels. He's using crayons now but he's only scribbling rapidly left to right. We offer Max as much artsy material as we can find.

As most 15 months old, he's relatively fearless--as long as I'm within five feet of whatever impossible feat he's about to do. He slides off couches, beds and other obstacles, he's getting pretty strong.

As you can tell, he tried on his suit for the first time. I've been looking for the right occasion to dress him in his waiter suit and our Thanksgiving dinner was the perfect occasion. The picture is actually taken before dinner. He tried to last but simply couldn't.

I must have been tired as well because his pants were on backwards. My sister noticed it when she claimed that his pants were too big. I told her that it was just weird baby clothing. She exclaimed, "Alex, you put his pants on backwards--geez!"

Oh well, baby clothes are weird.