Chinese Cabbage

What Chinese cabbage, you say? Well, that’s the size of our baby girl in utero! She currently measures about 14-15 inches long and weighs about 2.25 pounds. Her brain has developed more tissue and has formed grooves on the surface. I love to feel her moving inside, and Jeff is now able to regularly feel and see the movement also, which never gets old. Tomorrow morning I have quite the prenatal visit….I’ll get my 28 week Rhogam shot (given because I have a negative blood type and Jeff has positive) and I’ll do the one hour glucose test. Some of you may recall that I failed the one hour glucose test when pregnant with Max and had to take the three hour one. That did not go well for me, and I really don’t want to take it again. I’m going to eat nothing but protein tomorrow until I have the test and hope I pass!

Here’s the latest belly pic:

My friend Leanne made this cute dress for the baby. She is a very talented seamstress and whipped it up in a weekend. I can’t wait for our daughter to wear it!

Max continues to be his wonderful, amazing self and we’re soaking up every minute with him. Last week we had one glorious day of sun amidst what’s been a very rainy spring, and we seized our chance to go to the park:

Max can now climb these steps by himself (though we stay close by!):

The swing remains a favorite activity. He’ll still usually do the sign for “swing” whenever he says “park.”

I’ve posted before about how Max likes to do “Tripod” (putting his head on the ground while his buns stay up in the air). The other day I came home from work to find the following scene. Max wanted Grandma to help him put all of the stuffed animals in tripod position:

This week I made a pasta dish for dinner one night that had chopped tomatoes in it. As I was prepping dinner Max asked to eat some tomato. Since getting fruits and veggies into him is trial and error lately, I was all over this request. I put some pieces of tomato in a small dish and he sat on the kitchen floor by me to eat it. He talked about how Chester (his bear) couldn’t have any tomato, and then he laid down on his tummy on the floor, put his face right in the dish and said, “Hi tomato!” He kind of combines “potato” and “tomato” so it came out more like “Hi ponomato!” I was cracking up. Later at dinner he wanted more of the fresh tomato, so I grabbed one and started slicing pieces for him. He indicated that he wanted to eat the whole tomato, not the pieces, and so he did:

Yesterday Jeff and I went to Ikea while Max stayed at Grandma’s house (a place he loves to go!). We were on the hunt for a couple things for the baby’s room, and I’m glad to say we were successful in our search. We got a chair and a bookshelf/storage thing (it has open squares, we’ll use some for books and put bins in the others). Yesterday Max helped Jeff assemble the chair.

Trying out the screwdriver on his rocking chair:

Daddy’s helper:

The whole family got in on the act. Dory tested out the box:

Pixel helped with the directions:

The finished product!

Today our friends Laura and Dave came over for lunch. Laura’s birthday falls just a week after Maxwell’s, so we got a cake to have for dessert. Max was very excited about the possibility of cake, so much so that instead of eating lunch he kept asking to eat the cake. We explained that we would have cake after lunch, so then he asked “Max hold cake?” Yeah, nice try buddy….”I don’t want to eat it yet, just let me hold it.”

We have a running joke with Laura that involves cakes that say “Happy Birthda” instead of the traditional “Happy Birthday,” so that’s what we had today:

The birthday celebrants:

I’ll leave you with a couple images of Max enjoying his cake at last: