What did I tell you, dear readers? Here I am again, just a day after my last entry, writing another one. Granted, it will be short, but still. This is round two of our October fun: A visit to my grandma’s house. She lives a couple hours north of us, so we don’t get up there as often as we would like. It had been too long since we made the trip, and we were glad to be able to spend a Sunday there earlier this month. Thankfully Max is over his “I don’t nap in the car” phase, which lasted a long and torturous six months, so he will usually crash on the drive home. Sunday dinner (aka lunch) at Grandma’s can be a large affair, but this time it was a smaller crowd, so Maxwell got all the toys to himself. Here he is playing at the same table where I used to sit, with the the same Fisher Price schoolhouse that I loved:

He loved this mailbox:

With my grandma, my mom and my Great-Uncle Bill:

When I was growing up, my mom and I would come to Washington for three weeks in the summer and stay at my grandparents’ farm. I loved those visits, and have such happy memories of time with family (one favorite: When I went to town with Grandpa and we stopped for ice cream on the way there……and on the way back!). I feel blessed that Max will have wonderful memories of time with his relatives too. He has a Grandma close by, my mom’s extended family not far away, and our out of town family visits as often as they can, and those visits will have special memories all their own. I have friends who have some crazy in-laws, and I’m very glad to say that both sides of Maxwell’s family are filled with wonderful people–he is a lucky boy, indeed.

Yes, I’m falling behind on blogging again, but I’m getting back on track, I promise. I’m going to try to at least two, if not three, blog posts this weekend to get caught up on our fun fall adventures. Of course this is somewhat dependent on how long Max naps, but hopefully I can get one post done today at least. My friend Jenn is a great writer and she has undertaken a mission to blog daily for a month to get caught up. Of course, she usually blogs at about 3am, which won’t work for me since I get up not even three hours after that, but I love reading her daily entries. I don’t think I’m quite ready for that commitment, but I’ll try to get back to once a week at least.

Fall is flying by for us! We’ve had a visit from family and have more family coming next weekend, two birthday parties for Max’s friends, and we have a Halloween party with some friends tomorrow. Somewhere in there Max was sick again but I’m happy to report he is feeling much better now. He has however developed a new habit of waking somewhere around 4-5 in the morning. He’ll sit up in bed, hold Chester bear, and cry until I go in. Then he’s instantly quiet and goes right back to sleep when I leave. Hmmm…I’m thinking we’ll be working on a Falling Back to Sleep By Yourself refresher course soon. Hopefully it won’t be too traumatic for any of us.

Max continues to add signs to his repertoire, he now also signs “ball,” “where” and “swing.”  One of his favorite foods is broccoli. That was definitely inherited from Jeff, as many of you know I eat broccoli fairly often, but only because I know it is good for me. The other day we had broccoli and chicken. Maxwell would only eat the chicken if we hid small pieces in bites of broccoli. Jeff and I were amusing ourselves wondering how many parents out there hide the food they want their child to eat in the broccoli he loves.

For round one of fall fun photos, I’ll share pictures from a visit Max and I made earlier this month to a nearby farm. We wandered around, since it was a weekday morning we had the place almost to ourselves. Maxwell loved the flags around the parking lot:

Checking out the bins of pumpkins and gourds:

Have you ever knocked on a pumpkin? No? Give it a try!

Showing me his rock, which he found in the parking lot and held almost the whole time:

I love these three:

This farm has a “How Tall This Fall?” sign that is up every year. We’ve taken pictures in front of it for the past couple years, and I wanted one of Max by it this year too. Yeah, not so much. I’m going to have to go back with Jeff so I can click the camera shutter the second Jeff stands him in the right spot. This was the best I could do:

And a final one of him showing me his rock (as you may have guessed, this was generally how I got him to look at me for a picture):

Those of you who visit this blog to see pictures of Max have hit the jackpot today! We got Maxwell’s 18 month pictures from the fabulous Justine of J. Shelton Photography and they are stunning. For those of you who haven’t done it lately, photographing a toddler is hard. Max isn’t old enough to get the concept of posing or sitting for pictures, but he’s past the age where we could plop him on the ground and he would sit there obligingly. He was on the go the whole session and had his own ideas about what he would do and not do for pictures, but you sure wouldn’t know it looking at Justine’s images. She did such a good job of capturing his sweet smile and gorgeous blue eyes. I really wanted to post all the pictures here, but I did restrict myself a bit.

We had Max’s 18 month well-child visit on Monday. I was so busy keeping him entertained and contained I completely forgot to get his actual numbers for height and weight, but I can tell you he’s moved up to the 70th percentile in weight, and remains at the top of the charts for height and head circumference. His pediatrician said that it’s okay that he’s not saying very many words verbally, she was impressed with his 15 signs and said he clearly understands what’s going on. She said if he’s not saying more words in a couple months, then we could do speech therapy as it can help things to “click” sooner and reduce everyone’s frustration level.

This is such a fun age. I love interacting with Max, watching him learn new things, and playing together. It’s so funny the things that he picks up on….we usually take off our shoes when we come in the house, and of course take off jackets too. Now when Jeff or I come home, Max insists we take off our shoes and coat before he will give us a hug or let us do anything else. He likes to hide inside a big cardboard box we have out for him to play with. If you say, “Where’s Maxwell?” you’ll hear a little voice say “Hmmm” from inside the box. He’ll also say it when he covers his eyes up and we ask where he is. So. Cute!

Here’s the picture bonanza, enjoy!