22 months, I think...

It's been a while since I've blogged anything about Max. Work and a class I'm taking has been distracting me from my baby blogging duties. I document a lot of details about Max's daily adventures on a Google calendar and I thought about sharing that calendar with anyone who's interested but then I thought that maybe it's not such a good idea as there are medical exam details and diaper results from failed food experiments. So... I'm going to stick to blogged summaries.

Ok, Max is almost two, I lost count of the months now and I don't think he's into the whole month-by-month thing anymore so, Max is almost two. He runs everywhere--everywhere. He has battle scars to prove it too, I like to think of them as toddler merit badges. He has several dents on his head that he earned while scaling a wall outside and being introduced to gravity. Then there was the time when he climbed on my back and I didn't know he'd lost his grip, I stood up and "thump". Good thing Amy was there to hug him because he scowled at me. The scorch on his arm from a barbecue, the scratch on his other arm from a rosebush, the scratch on his left nostril from a fingernail, the road-rash on his forehead and chubby cheek from chasing a ball and tripping, and not to mention his knees, the list goes on. It's a good thing that babies bounce.

I know, I'm probably making Max sound uncoordinated but really it's exactly the opposite. He can dribble a tiny jawbraker down a driveway with amazing focus and can pick up rice using chop-sticks--with a little clenched fist! I can't do that. Amy and I watched him and asked, "how's he doing that?" I think that the fact that he's gained so many merit badges is due to his high level of curiosity and not really understanding how basic laws of Newtonian physics apply to him. Things that we take for granted like momentum, gravity, inertia, mass versus mass, things like that. But when he does understand it or at least suffers its consequence, he's very careful. He doesn't barrel down dirt hills anymore nor does he climb on or in the wheelbarrow either without looking up at me first--long story...

Potty training hasn't officially started yet. We have the equipment but haven't put much effort to getting Max trained yet. I can't speak for Amy but I'm sad about it because that means I can't change him as he's not a baby anymore, he's a toddler, then little boy and then--sigh--a man. I promise I'll have him trained by then, at least before his first date.

Words! So far, still not that many--at least, not words that we would recognize. He talks a lot and appears to even negotiate at times by pointing at the item and then what he wants to do with it. This means that he likes to argue but for now, we'll call it strategic negotiation. It's funny to watch because you know that he's trying to get a specific point across and that it looks like has an end result. I don't remember if I've written this before but so far the recognizable words are; "doe-doe" (JoJo his big sister), "Dah-kee" (Sami, his little big sister), "Dah-dee"(me), "Mah-mah"(mama). "Doe-Doe-dah-kee!!"- he mimics Amy yelling, "JoJo, Sami!!", "Oh-kee" - ok. He also says "thank you" and "you're welcome" but I can't even begin to spell the way he pronounces it. He understands about the same number of words in Spanish and can follow simple instructions in both languages.

Let's see, other words that he's starting to say are; Spike = "Sa-ee", ma-ma-ma-ma = "c'mon-c'mon-c'mon-c'mon", good night = "nigh" and a few other words that I probably don't recognize.

We still don't know what "Dah-Doo" means. But that was his first word.

We can already tell that drawing and scibbling are going to be big on his list of things he likes to do. He can spend a long time doodling on his chalkboard, erasing it and repeating. Max seems to be able to remember certain things overnight. I drew a picture of Elmo on the chalkboard and told him what it was. He tried to draw his own version of Elmo but Amy described it as a Picasso inspired rendering of Elmo. Still, he draws something that looks like the caricature and then yells, "Me-moh!". So evidently he can tell that it's Elmo and he's trying to work on it.

We're probably going to plan his second birthday soon. I'm not sure what we're going to do for Max or where we'll celebrate it. I can't believe he's almost two, so, so fast...