Maximus and Daddy's Day Off

All last week, as well as today, Max's usual daycare provider has been closed so she and her husband could go on a cruise. Because of that, we sent Max to the daycare center that Emma goes  to for the week last week. While we could have sent him there today as well, we decided that instead of paying for a single day at the daycare center, we would just keep him home. So I am using one of my personal days from work to stay home with him. I should add that I would be staying home regardless, since I do work from home. However, having a two-year-old at home while trying to get some real work done would be pure madness. I would be spending a majority of my time just trying to keep him from the computer keyboard, or keeping him from turning the computer off.

Our day started out fairly well. We dropped Emma of at daycare at her usual drop-off time, and then we returned home where I fed Max his breakfast of key lime pie yogurt and toast with peanut butter and strawberry jelly. Max decided to be helpful and volunteered to get into his booster seat at the table, something that he oftentimes resists doing. When he was done eating, he played with his toys a bit. Then while running into the kitchen, Max tripped over the leg of one of the chairs and fell head-first into the corner of the kitchen cupboards. While there was much crying, fortunately he did not see to be too injured. We then sat and watched TV for a little bit before heading out of the house for some errands.

[caption id="attachment_245" align="alignright" width="225" caption="Max was a good boy while getting his haircut."][/caption]

Our first stop of the day was to get a haircut for Max. It had been about five weeks since his last haircut, so he was due. Max did an excellent job sitting up in the chair at the hair salon. In fact, he hardly moved at all when getting his hair cut. Because he was so good, he got a sucker when he was finished.

The two of us then drove over to the Mall of America where we needed to find some birthday presents for Mommy. We spent a couple of hours wandering around the mall, finding some presents, and eating lunch. As we were walking around the third floor of the mall after eating lunch, I heard someone calling my name from behind me. I turned around, and after a moment I recognized the person calling my name. It was Julie, the manager of the Hardee's restaurant I worked at when I was a student at the University of Northern Iowa. I think the last time I had seen Julie had to be in 1998 when I worked there briefly during the summer between teaching jobs. We chatted for a bit until Max started pointing ahead, indicating that he wanted to get moving. We then parted ways and Max and I continued out shopping, picking up some birthday presents for Mel before returning home so Max could take a nap.

Emma Goes to a Birthday Party

Today Emma went to her first birthday party that wasn't for family. The party celebrated the third birthday of one of her classmates from daycare. The funny thing is that this girl isn't even in Emma's class anymore. A few days after receiving the invitation, Emma moved from the preschool class to the prekindergarten class.

In preparation for the party, we went shopping earlier this week for a birthday present. It was a little difficult getting Emma to understand that we had a limit on how much we would spend on the present. We eventually settled on a Play-Doh set with Cookie Monster and the tools to make all the letters of the alphabet as well as different food items.

The party today was at the Giggle Factory in Hudson, Wisconsin. The Giggle Factory is kind of like the play rooms that some McDonald's restaurants have, only much larger, and with sufficient space for hosting as party. I was a little worried about how Emma would do there as the last time she played at the McDonald's play area she said she didn't want to go back as it was too loud. I had no reason to worry though. Emma had a great time running through the play area and repeatedly going down the numerous slides. She also enjoyed watching her friend open her presents even though some of the other kids didn't stop playing to watch. Considering how much she ran around at the party, I was surprised that she didn't fall asleep in the car on the half-hour drive home. She did go to sleep fairly quickly after going to bed tonight though.

Four!

This past Sunday was Emma's fourth birthday. Time really goes by quickly. I can not believe she's already four years old! She seemed to have a pretty good birthday. We went to Don Pablo's for dinner Saturday night with Aunt Rebecca. Because we were there to celebrate her birthday, Emma got to wear the birthday sombrero, and we got a free order of sopaipillas.


We asked Emma Saturday what she wanted to do for her birthday. The only thing she indicated the wanted to do was to go to Sunday School, so since Maximus was sick, he has thrown up in the car on the way home from the restaurant Saturday night, I took Emma to church while Mel stayed home with Max.


After we got back home from church and ate lunch, Emma opened the presents we got her -- two Zhu Zhu Pets and the Zhu Zhu Burgers Overpass. She had a good time with her new toys, but later in the afternoon she didn't seem to be feeling well and she fell asleep on the couch. Emma ended up going to bed early because she wasn't feeling well, and by the afternoon, she also was not behaving very well. She still thought she had a good birthday though.

Max's First Birthday Cake

Yesterday was Maximus's first birthday, and the first time he got to eat birthday cake. He didn't seem to sure about it at first, but he did end up eating some of it. A lot of it ended up in his lap however.

Happy Birthday Maximus

Today is Maximus Xavier's first birthday. As I recall, he arrived a little earlier than we expected. I had just finished cooking dinner, potato soup, on January 22 last year when I woke Mel up from a nap. About that time, her water broke, so we got my aunt and uncle to come get Emma, and Mel and I left for the hospital. The next morning, Maximus was born. He has grown so much in the past year. He weighed 7 pounds 8 ounces when he was born. He now weighs over 23 pounds. And his height has increased from 20.5 inches to over 31 inches.

We have had some challenges during the year, including dealing with his torticollis and plagiocephaly, but he successfully finished physical therapy and his head was reshaped using a cranial orthosis. One thing we are still working on is getting him to sleep through the night. With the exception of a night or two, until this week Maximus has gotten up at least once every night for a bottle. The past several nights though we have not fed Max when he was up. We have been able to get him to return to sleep without one. Friday night, he went back to sleep very quickly after getting his pacifier. I think we may very soon be done waking up with him each night. It will be very nice to regularly be able to get a full night's sleep once again.

He has also begun walking recently. I am looking forward to seeing what he will begin to do next.

Time to Blog

I've been having a hard time making time to blog lately. I have some time now, so I thought I would write about our trip to Iowa last weekend to celebrate my grandmother's ninety-first birthday, as well as the birthdays of my sister and my cousin's wife. We drove down to my mother's home Friday night. I think this really messed up Maximus's sleep schedule. It took a long time to get him to sleep. Fortunately, this meant he ended up sleeping much later than usual.

On Saturday we had lunch at the Colony Inn in Amana. Lunch was terrific! The mashed potatoes and gravy were delicious, and the Swiss steak I had for my entrée was quite flavorful as well. We then returned to my grandmother's house where we later had a small dinner followed by cake and ice cream.

My mom, sister, Mel, Emma, Max, and I went to the Other Place in Waterloo for pizza on Sunday before returning home. The drive back went pretty well except for the last half hour or so. By that time, Max had woken up and was tired of being in his car seat. He wasn't shy about letting us know it either. I hope we all survive our trip to Iowa next month for a wedding reception. That trip is going to be much longer than the one we took last weekend.

Happy Birthday

Today was Mel's birthday. Before doing anything for her birthday this evening though, we took Emma to the doctor for her three-year check-up. Emma is growing just fine. She is 39.5 inches tall, which places her at the 95th percentile for height. She is definitely going to be tall!

After the doctor appointment, we all went to El Loro in Eagan for dinner. Mel was going to have a large margarita and I was going to have a smaller one. Thinking that she may end up buying a second margarita later, I thought we should order a pitcher of margaritas. As I was driving, I didn't get to drink to much of it, and not wanting to waste a drop of margarita, Mel ended up drinking the vast majority of the pitcher's contents. We had a really good dinner, but Emma did not seem to interested in the food which she had ordered. She did like eating my rice, so maybe next time we go to El Loro, we should just get a side dish of rice for Emma. Sure, it's not a well balanced meal, but she gets plenty of nutrients throughout the day.

When we returned home from dinner, Mel opened her birthday presents which included a Minnesota Twins T-shirt, the DVD of New Moon, and Buckyballs which I had purchased with the gift certificate I had won from ThinkGeek.com.  We then rounded out the evening with some cake, which I baked, and ice cream.

Birthday Party

We went to Waterloo, Iowa, yesterday for Emma's birthday party. She shared a party with her cousins David and Benjamin, both of whom have birthdays either this month or next. While it made for a long day, driving to Waterloo and back in one day, we had a good time. Emma really had a great time. She got quite a few presents, and seemed to like them all. She even liked the clothes she got. When we told her that she needed to try them on tonight, she couldn't get to it soon enough. It is good that she got some new clothes, because she was lacking on summer clothes that fit her still. We gave her several T-shirts on her birthday, and yesterday she ended up getting quite a few pairs of shorts.

3

Today was the third anniversary of Emma's birth. I still remember receiving a phone call at work from Mel on this day three years ago telling me that her doctor had told her to go to the hospital. Since it was still a couple of weeks early, I was sure that it was nothing and that Mel would be going home from the hospital that day. I even told my coworkers that I expected to be back at work the next day. How wrong I was. Mel's water had broken and Emma was breach, so they delivered Emma that afternoon.

Today was, of course, much less eventful than that day. Emma did have a good birthday. Mel asked her if she wanted anything special for breakfast, giving her the option of McDonald's or doughnuts. Emma decided that she wanted a doughnut, one with sprinkles. The doughnut always has to have sprinkles. After breakfast, Emma opened her presents from us. We got her a Memory game, a pink soccer ball, and five T-shirts. It was good that we got her some T-shirts as we had her try on all of her short-sleeved T-shirts this morning and discovered that she had outgrown most of them. While we didn't have McDonald's for breakfast, we did have it for lunch as, after she said that all she wanted for breakfast was a bowl of cereal with milk, Emma decided that she wanted chicken nuggets, apples, chocolate milk, and a toy. So off to McDonald's we went to get lunch.

Emma took a really good nap after lunch. Then this evening we got the chicken alfredo pasta from Pizza Hut, one of Emma's favorites. She really likes pasta. I think she would eat noodles every day if we let her. She then blew out the candle on her birthday cupcake. We are having a larger birthday party tomorrow, so we decided just to have cupcakes and Dairy Queen ice cream tonight. After desert, it was bath time, followed by bedtime. For some reason this evening, Emma just started saying "X-wing fighter" over and over, so for her bedtime story, I located my Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back pop-up book from the basement and I read that to her. She really enjoyed it. She especially liked pulling the tabs in the book. Remarkably, the book is still in really good condition. Only one of the pop-up features does not work. Now Emma just needs to go to sleep, she's been in bed for quite a while, but she seems to be resisting sleep. We have to get up early tomorrow morning to head to Iowa for a birthday party with our relatives, so she better sleep soon, otherwise she is likely to be cranky tomorrow.

Nostalgia

For Christmas my sister got my mom a new scanner. Since the majority of the photos that my parents took for the early years of my life are on slides, she got her a scanner with a slide attachment. This week my mom has started getting to work as scanning these old photos in her collection. From what she has told me, she scans about one hundred slides each day. Some of these images are making their way to my mother's Facebook page. She started with photos from 1979 and has worked her way to 1980. I assume she will make it back before 1979 at some point. I for one really enjoy seeing these photos, such as the one of me at my seventh birthday party with the R2-D2 cake that Mom made for me. And I can not wait to see more of them, as long as she doesn't post any of the photos of my in my Underoos!

Maximus

This morning, at 8:23, my son Maximus Xavier was born. But before I go into any details about this morning, let me begin by writing about what happened on Thursday.

Thursday afternoon, Mel and I went to the hospital where Mel had an ultrasound done to see how the baby was doing. Mel's blood pressure had been very high on Wednesday when she saw her doctor, so he was a bit concerned. From the ultrasound, the technician estimated that the baby's weight was about 9 pounds 2 ounces. Mel was also hooked up to a monitor for a while so the nurse could listen to the baby's heart. Everything was fine though, so we were sent home, as we expected to be.

Yesterday when she got home from work, Mel decided to take a nap so she would be more alert when Emma got home from daycare. While Mel was sleeping, I cooked dinner. When it was ready, I sent Emma downstairs to wake Mel. It was then that Mel's water broke. Emma seemed a bit concerned by everything that was going on, Mel's cleaning herself up, and my getting things packed in the car. My uncle came over to Emma to his house where she then stayed the night. In the meantime, Mel and I headed to the hospital.

At the hospital, they verified that Mel's water had indeed broken and checked the location of the baby. Everything was fine. After Mel's doctor consulted with the obstetrician on call, Mel decided that she would deliver the baby by cesarean section, so around 8:00 this morning, Mel was wheeled into the operating room. About half an hour later, our 7-pound-8-ounce and 20.5-inch-long baby boy, Maximus, was born.