Max and I will be embarking on his first plane ride on Wednesday. We’re off to Michigan to visit Maxwell’s Oma and Opa, and to see his Wagenaar relatives. I am excited to be in Michigan and a little apprehensive about the almost 5 hour plane ride. Thankfully on the way there my mom will be on the same flight as us, but we’ll be coming back just the two of us, as she’s staying longer. For many reasons, I wish Jeff was able to come with us! Hopefully Max will sleep for much of the trip. We celebrated Father’s Day today since we’ll be in Michigan next Sunday. Jeff got a frame with Maxwell’s footprints on it, and we wrote “Max Loves Daddy” on it also which is oh so true. I think it was a hit. We spent the day relaxing at home together, which is one of our favorite things to do on the weekend. I also was able to get some naps in while Max had Daddy time. Max is still doing short naps during the day, but he did a nice long stretch of sleep last night, from about 7:15pm to 2:30am. I’m hoping those nighttime stretches get longer, especially since I’ll be going back to work the week after we get back from our trip (let’s not even talk about how hard THAT will be!).

Max is making progress on getting his fingers reliably in his mouth and has started to actually suck on them some of the time. He’ll do either hand but seems to prefer his left. Which fingers go in the mouth is totally random. He would dearly love to put his other hand in his hair while sucking on fingers…it will go up on his head and kind of wave around and try to grab on. However, this effort is hampered by the fact that he still doesn’t have very much hair.

The other day my mom came over to visit and I was feeding Max. She came up behind the chair we were in and looked over my shoulder and said hello to Max. He looked up and gave Grandma a great big smile, as milk came out of his mouth and down his chin. So cute!

Here’s your weekly picture fix:

Maxwell has so many cute outfits, I just love getting him dressed each morning. Many days he gives me the opportunity to put him in more than one outfit when the first one (or more!) gets baby fluids of some kind on it. Here’s his cute striped train outfit from Grandma:

Many of you know that I attended the University of Michigan for grad school. When we were in Michigan last summer, Max was just a few weeks in utero. We got him this onesie then. Go Blue!

Max’s Oma is a flight attendant, his Uncle Greg has worked as a pilot, and his Grandpa has his private pilot’s license. So a love of flying could well be in his blood! Here he is in his snazzy airplane shirt:

And finally, one of the three of us taken today, for Father’s Day:

So it was a HOT week here last week….we’re talking in the 90s every day. It was a little much for early June. I’m happy to report that the past few days have been much more pleasant. Still sunny and warm, but not so blazing hot. Max seemed to do okay in the heat. I wondered if he’d be too hot swaddled but we tried going without it a few times and that did not go so well, so we ended up swaddling him in just a diaper and pointing the fan right at him. We had a fun weekend spending time with family and friends. Maxwell is just as cute as ever and giving us lots of smiles and little laughs. On Sunday night he slept from 9:30pm to 4:45am! Of course I did not sleep that whole time, kept waking up and checking on him, but it was still glorious. Unfortunately it wasn’t repeated last night, we had a middle of the night wakeup, but maybe he’ll decide to try it again soon. We can hope! He’s still been doing a lot of the short napping, with a longer one interspersed every so often…to give us hope, I guess.

Next week Max and I will be flying to Michigan to visit family. This will be Maxwell’s first time meeting the extended Wagenaar family and he can’t wait! I hear they are pretty excited as well. We will also get to see his Oma and Opa Moore. The only sad part is that Jeff won’t be coming with us, and we’ll be gone over Father’s Day. Many apologies to my wonderful husband for taking The Boy away for that day…we’ll be celebrating it this Sunday. If you have any winning plane travel tips, by all means send them my way. I’m hoping for a cooperative baby and understanding seatmates…or even better, empty seats! My mom will be with us on the flight there, which will be a huge help, but we’ll be coming back before she does.

Pictures!

This was taken at my Grandma’s house when we went up about a week ago.

I have a Moby Wrap (infant sling wrap) that I’m planning to use for the airport, so I’ve been practicing with it the past few days. Max seems not to mind hanging out in there:

On Saturday Max was wearing a cute red polo onesie and jeans. Jeff was inspired to also wear a red polo with his jeans, and they looked very sharp together. Check them out:

Here they are doing some tummy time:

Jeff has been playing around with the photo editing program GIMP. You can do some really cool things, I will leave you with one that we love. And yes, Max’s eyes are really that blue…that part of the photo is untouched!

It was Jeff’s birthday on Monday. It worked out well that it fell on Memorial Day this year, so most of you probably enjoyed a day off for Jeffrey P. Moore Day. We had a great family day together. We started the celebrating a day early while Greg, Leah and the girls were here. Leah baked a yummy chocolate cake (note the candle groupings…three and five, we got a little creative).

Then on Monday we went to lunch at Blue C Sushi in Lynnwood, one of those places with the belt going around and you can just grab the plates you want. It was yummy, even for a non-seaweed/raw fish lover like me, there were lots of options and you can see we had a big stack of plates when we were through:

Later I took a few pictures of my favorite boys together. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful husband and son!

On Thursday Max had his two month checkup. At 10 weeks old he weighs 12 pounds, 1 ounce and is 25.5 inches long. This puts him in the 50th percentile for weight and the 98th percentile for length! Looks like he takes after mom and dad in the height department. He has rolled over during tummy time a few times now, and he obligingly demonstrated this for the pediatrician. I think it is accidental, he will be pushing up with his arms and looking around and then just kind of tips over to one side and rolls onto his back. But it’s still very impressive! It’s so fun to see him learning new things. Tuesday night my friend Jessica arrived and stayed with us for a few days. It was so wonderful to have her here and the time together just flew by. Here she is with Maxwell:

Jessica is a very talented photographer. While she was here she took some great pictures. Here are a couple:

We have had an unbelievable string of beautiful days here…sunny and warm. I’m hoping to be able to get out for some walks this week. It didn’t happen today, Max has been taking short naps all day. My cousin-in-law Callie says that having a baby is like taking a trip somewhere and getting jet lag but never recovering. I think that’s a very apt analogy! I know someday I’ll catch up on my sleep, and this is definitely better than the days when I never slept more than two hours at a time. Maybe tomorrow Max will take some longer naps for me. We can hope, right?

Here’s one final picture, of Max in this cute outfit I got for him at Old Navy the other day:

Max was officially two months old on Tuesday….though he was 8 weeks the Thursday before. As my friend Becky said, it’s kind of like pregnancy math, where you’re pregnant for 9 months but it’s 40 weeks. We are loving all the smiles he gives us, and he’s starting to do a funny little laugh sometimes. One of those gives me enough energy to make it through a whole night of interrupted sleep. We had a pretty uneventful week last week, we did enjoy a visit from a friend of mine and her 10 month old boy. It was fun to see them and I was reminded that we’ll have some childproofing to do before Max becomes mobile! Thursday night Jeff had to work late so it was just Max and me. Around 8pm I got him to sleep. I was tired, hungry, thirsty and ready to find some dinner. I walked out of his room to see that one of our cats (neither confessed but I suspect Dory) had eaten a piece of ribbon we had out from one of our baby gifts, and then thrown the ribbon back up. But she didn’t just do it in one spot, she apparently walked down the hallway, throwing up as she went. I really wanted to just leave it there, but I did clean it up…with a small break to get Max back to sleep when he woke up partway through the process. Needless to say, I was very happy to see Jeff when he got home and a big hug from him improved things dramatically!

Here are Max’s two month pictures…as Jeff says, the bear has shrunk since last month!

We are enjoying a visit this weekend from Jeff’s brother Greg, our niece Elizabeth, Greg’s awesome girlfriend Leah, and her daughter Emma. Well, actually, all four of them are awesome, and we love having them here. On Saturday we had, in the words of Emma, “Excellent girl time.” The four girls went and got manicures while the boys hung out at home. We discovered that the nail place will do little girls’ nails for only $3! Leah said it was worth that just to have someone else trim Emma’s nails. Here we are showing off when we got home:

The girls are enjoying their time with Max. What a cute group of kids!

I know, I know…it doesn’t seem possible that Max could get any cuter, and yet, he does. We are so in love with him and it is so much fun to watch him grow and change. For a couple weeks now he has been really grabbing onto our clothing when we hold him…just like a little baby monkey. It’s so cute to see him hang on like that. He’s still really trying to get a thumb or fingers into his mouth, but usually ends up just mouthing on his closed fist. Sometimes he does manage to capture some fingers, but they soon go flying out of his mouth again when he flails his arms. I’m sure he’s thinking, “Hey, who took those fingers away?”

We’re no longer giving him the reflux medicine. If anything it seemed to make him feel worse, so we’re thinking that his tummy owies are more from gas and digestion than reflux, though he probably does have a touch of that. I’m sure that Maxwell is thrilled we’re not using the medicine, here was the face he would make every time:

We got to show Max off to both our workplaces last week. I took him with me to visit my coworkers on Tuesday. They had met him before but hadn’t seen him for several weeks and were impressed with how much bigger he is. Then on Friday we drove down to Bellevue to meet Jeff at work. This was Max’s first time there and everyone was suitably wowed by his cuteness. He was calm and alert for our visit, just dozing off towards the end. This week we’ll mostly be hanging out at home, I have a friend and her little boy coming tomorrow to meet Max, and we are looking forward to a visit from Jeff’s brother, his girlfriend, her daughter and our niece over the holiday weekend. Then next Tuesday my friend Jess arrives from Ohio. I can’t wait for her to meet Max!

I’ll leave you with a few pictures. Enjoy!

All wrapped up in his cute froggy towel (thanks, Aunt Tami!)

Hanging out with Daddy:

Maxwell’s Grandpa (my dad) sent him this onesie before he was born. Grandpa is a Porsche fan and clearly wants to instill this same love in his grandson. Here’s Max showing off his “I’m so cool” Porsche attitude:

And one with a cute smile:

We had beautiful warm sunny weather all weekend. Max got to wear shorts, and we tried out his sunglasses. They’re still a little big, but I think he liked them.

Have a great week!

I loved celebrating my first Mother’s Day as a mom yesterday! Jeff and Max got me a beautiful card and a stroller charm for my charm bracelet. Then we journeyed up to my Grandma’s house in Lynden for the family celebration there. This was the extended family’s first chance to meet Maxwell, and they were suitably impressed with his cuteness. The weather here was beautiful and we enjoyed spending the afternoon there. I am really lucky to be a mom to such a wonderful baby!

Max has had some assorted minor health things the past couple of weeks. He’s battling baby acne. Thankfully he is confident enough in his charm and good lucks that it doesn’t bother him a bit.   A little over a week ago his left eye started watering a lot and then oozing goopiness. Turns out he has a blocked tear duct, which is very common and can come and go over the first year. If it keeps up after that, an eye doctor can open it up. Those of you who know my eye issues know that I can barely stand to contemplate what that would entail, so we’ll hope it’s not necessary. He comes by it honestly, turns out both Jeff and my mom had the same thing. The pediatrician gave us a prescription for some antibiotic ointment but said we might not need it, turns out she was right…it got much better over the next couple of days. Then today we were back to see her to ask about reflux. Max has shown some signs and she said that it was worth trying medicine, especially since there are very rarely side effects, it’s a really small dose. We notice it mainly when he’s sleeping, or trying to sleep, and is bothered by what we’ve taken to calling “owies in the tummy.” The pediatrician said that we’ll need to try the medicine for two or three weeks to know if it is effective. Hopefully it will help him, it is hard when he is clearly bothered and we can’t do much to help. Thankfully it will also improve as he gets older.

One side benefit of the visits to the doctor is Max gets weighed. We have been so happy to see his weight increasing at a good rate. Today he was up to 11 pounds, 1 ounce! It will be interesting to see where he is now on the growth chart when we have his official two month appointment in a couple weeks.

Don’t worry, I have pictures for you! First, Mother’s Day:

The three of us (Max is awake but closing his eyes against the bright):

Four generations on my mom’s side:

Max and Mommy (his onesie says “Mommy loves me”…truer words were never spoken)

Jeff, Trinity and Max. Trinity is my cousin Jason’s daughter and she couldn’t wait to meet Max. She has sent us some wonderful things for Max in the mail, and yesterday she gave him a bracelet she made. He is very lucky to have such a sweet cousin! Trinity did a great job of holding him and was very helpful when I changed his diaper also. She is an old pro from taking care of her beloved doll Happy.

Here’s Max after a bath on Saturday, showing off his mad tummy time skills. He held his head up like this for several minutes.

And finally, a shot showing that wonderful smile:

Here’s something I’m sure is news to you…you don’t get much sleep with a newborn around, especially if you are his sole food source. This is ironic, since it seems that Max sleeps for the vast majority of the day, but of course it’s in chunks that are considerably shorter than your average adult would choose. I am adapting to the tiredness and actually coping with it better than I thought I might, given that I have always been a girl who needed a good 8 hours, pre-baby. I must say that those of you who have done the newborn thing when you have another child (or two!) have my utmost respect and admiration. We’ll hopefully be there sometime down the road also, but right now I can’t imagine doing this with another little one around. I remind myself that all too soon Maxwell will be bigger and I’ll get more sleep and wax nostalgic about his tiny newborn days.

Max’s current favorite game is played at diaper changing time. There are several variations on this game, but all involve waiting until his current diaper is off and then releasing more of what caused it to be changed in the first place. Sometimes this happens before the new diaper is on, sometimes right after Mom or Dad gets a nice fresh one all set. A week or so ago he got a morning bath because he managed to catch an uncovered moment and there was pee all over, including his hair and ear. We try to keep the area covered during changes and you should see our lightning-fast reflexes when he starts to go, but he still seems to win the game more often than not. Truth be told, we don’t really mind that much, after being so stressed about a lack of wet and dirty diapers in his early days, we don’t complain when he produces lots of them now.

And now, on to the best part: pictures!

I promised to post some from Dad and Helen’s visit last weekend, here is one of all of us. Max doesn’t look too impressed but I can assure you he had a great time with his adoring visitors:

I’m sure you’ve heard of the importance of “tummy time” when babies are awake. Max does not always love tummy time but we do it every day for at least a few minutes. He is getting much better at lifting his head, so it seems to be paying off. Here’s a demonstration:

The other day he was wearing a cute new outfit and I just had to take a picture. You can’t see it in this shot, but there are cute green and blue striped matching pants. He is into some of his three month clothes already, but then some newborn things still fit. Baby clothes seem to be sized about like women’s clothes, which is to say, totally inconsistently.

I’ll leave you with a photo of Max with Mommy and one with Daddy. Excuse my crazy hair, I clearly hadn’t done anything with it yet that day:

It’s hard to believe Max is a month old already! Here is his official one month picture. He is posing with Chester Bear. We got Chester on our trip to Michigan last summer, when Max was in utero and only the size of a lentil. Jeff’s parents took us to the Chelsea Teddy Bear Company near them and chose Chester for baby Max. He was one of Max’s very first baby gifts!

I realized that I neglected to post any pictures of Maxwell’s first holiday….Easter! We spent a quiet Easter at home and my mom was kind enough to come and make Easter dinner for us. Max’s Oma (Jeff’s mom) got him this cute bunny hat:

Max is a little young to hunt for eggs yet but of course his Mom still had to take a picture:

We went to the pediatrician Monday for a checkup, and I am happy to report that Max was up to 9 pounds, 3 ounces…which is a whole pound gained in the two weeks since he was last there! He is in the 30th percentile for weight and the 90th percentile for height! Looks like he’s tall just like his parents. The pediatrician said he was looking great, he showed off how he can lift his head for her. It was very encouraging to get that good news after all the struggles we had early on with weight gain. We had a great time this weekend with my dad and Helen, it is always so fun to see Max meeting his grandparents! I haven’t loaded any pictures from their visit yet so I’ll try to remember to post those next time.

Maxwell is on Jeff’s insurance, but he is automatically covered under my plan for the first three weeks of his life. The two companies of course each want info on the other so they can coordinate benefit payments. So earlier this week I called my insurance company and gave them the info on Jeff’s plan, and then called Jeff’s company. She found Max in the system and said that yes, they did need the info on my plan. I started to give it to her, and our conversation went like this:

Me: Okay, so my plan ID is–

Rep: Wait, I can’t take the information from you because you’re not named on Jeffrey’s plan.

Me: You can’t take the information on my insurance coverage from me?

Rep: That’s right, I’ll need to confirm that with Maxwell.

Me: (long pause)….um, he’s four weeks old….

Ah, the joys of the insurance bureaucracy. We managed to agree that she wouldn’t be getting much info out of Max, but she still wouldn’t take it from me. So I called Jeff, gave him the info, and he called them back. Definitely worth the hassle though when compared to not having insurance at all!

I’ll leave you with one more photo. This is Max in my most favorite blanket from when I was a child…known as “Baa-he” (my little girl version of the word “blankie”). Jeff’s mom was kind enough to perform some emergency surgery on the blanket as it has been much loved. It’s very special to be able to use it for Max.

It’s hard to believe Max is almost 4 weeks old already! Since he was gaining well at both of his weight checks last week, we didn’t have to go in at all this week. His one month pediatrician visit is Monday, so hopefully he will have gained well again then. Maxwell spent the last few days with a purple mouth, courtesy of Gentian Violet. He had some white spots on his tongue that the lactation specialist suspected were yeast, so we did the Gentian Violet treatment. It’s a natural solution that is very effective in treating yeast, you apply it daily for three days. It didn’t seem to bother Max at all but it does stain like crazy, giving his mouth and chin an interesting purple hue. It’s almost all faded away now, but of course we had to get some pictures for evidence:

Some of you know that we have two kitties, Dory and Pixel. So far they have thankfully seemed to adjust well to Max’s arrival, they mostly ignore him, though occasionally they’ll give him a sniff, and they’re not too impressed when he cries. The other day we placed Pixel next to Max, the following sequence shows what happened. Those of you who know our cats know that it the odds are extremely slim that we will ever get a picture like this with Dory.

Thanks for checking in!

So I realize that every parent thinks their baby is the cutest ever, and that we are a bit biased, but come on, look at this guy! This is after his first bath last week:

We are so in love with Max, every little thing he does or expression he makes just melts our hearts. He will be three weeks old tomorrow. We had some challenges the first couple of weeks with feeding…Maxwell wasn’t getting enough to eat, lost too much weight, got jaundiced, and scared his Mom and Dad to death. We’ve had one trip to the ER, lots of time with the lactation specialists, and a few pediatrician visits. For about two weeks we did an exhausting routine every three hours that involved breastfeeding, then finger feeding with pumped milk in a syringe, then pumping said milk. Then try to sleep for an hour and a half and repeat. Max was more interested in sleeping than eating. Thankfully this song and dance did help him gain the weight he needed and he is looking much better. At our weight check at the pediatrician Monday he was up to 8 pounds 2 ounces! We have another weight check with lactation tomorrow and are hoping for more good news on the weight front. They okayed us to go to just breastfeeding at the end of last week, which was a huge help. We still set an alarm to get up for feeding during the night but the shorter routine means there’s more sleep in between.

Jeff’s parents were here for a visit two weekends ago and his mom was able to stay for all of last week, which was a HUGE help. She cooked, cleaned, and just generally took excellent care of us. My mom has also been invaluable, coming over and doing the aforementioned cooking and cleaning and whatever else we need. Of course both grandmothers also love every minute of baby time they can get! Max’s uncle Greg and cousin Elizabeth were here this past weekend. Max and Elizabeth are each other’s only first cousins, so it was very special to see them meet for the first time.

Even though I am really tired, this time with Max is wonderful beyond belief. We love him so much and I treasure every minute with him. Jeff is such an amazing dad and I love to see the two of them together. I know it is very hard for Jeff to leave each day and go to work. We wish he could be home with us but are very grateful that he works so hard to take such great care of us! In these crazy times we remember how lucky he is to have a job.

Here’s a couple more pictures, we’ll try to post more soon. Thank you to everyone for the warm welcome Maxwell has received! My apologies if you’ve emailed or called and it is taking me a while to get back to you…I really appreciate hearing from everyone!

My two favorite boys:

With Opa:

Our family:

After bathtime, with Greg and Elizabeth: