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.

Photo Friday: A Summer Photo for a Cold Day

With the temperature around -14°F this morning, I thought a photo from RAGBRAI a couple of summers ago would be nice. This is me eating a walking taco in Brighton, Iowa. It's just 26 weeks until RAGBRAI XXXIX!

Emma's Legos

One thing Emma enjoys playing with is Legos. Last week, she left the Lego creations shown here on my desk before she left for preschool. She really loves putting the tree on people's heads. But yesterday she did something with her Duplo Legos that really impressed me. Without any prompting or assistance, she built one of the things shown on the label of the box the Legos came in. I was very impressed that she was able to make the connection between the picture and the actual construction of the item.

Photo Friday: T-ball

This Friday's photo is a photo of me from when I played T-ball. I do not recall how old I was when this photo was taken, but I assume it was sometime in the late 1970s.

Photo Friday: Cyclone Me

I intend on posting a photo to my blog every Friday beginning today, the first Friday of 2011. For the first of my Photo Friday photos, here is a picture of me as a baby with an Iowa State University sweatshirt which I presume was a gift.

Picture Day

Today is picture day at Emma's preschool. They just had pictures taken about a month ago, but this time it's "Holiday Pictures." As Maximus teared to shreds the form informing us of the impending picture day, I forgot all about it until I got Emma out of the carr and saw another parent carrying the picture sheet. Had I remembered that it was picture day, I would not have dressed Emma in her John Deere "I Love Dirt" T-shirt this morning. Oh it is a fine shirt, but I thought something a little nicer would be better for her pictures, even though we don't intend on buying any. However, just in case we decided we wanted some copies of her photo, I returned to preschool with a different shirt for Emma to wear, a solid red shirt. That should look nicer for her picture.

Nine Months Old

Maximus turned nine months old today. I can not believe that it has already been three-fourths of a year since he was born. In no time at all, he will be one year old.

Today we took Max to Sears to have his photo taken. As usual, they did an awesome job. Max once again cooperated for the photo shoot. The hardest part of the whole thing was deciding which photos to get prints of. Fortunately we have them all on CD so we can make more prints later if we decide to.

After getting the photos ordered, we walked around the Mall of America a bit. We had to get Max some new long-sleeved T-shirts as most of the ones we have for him are too small. All of his 12-month shirts have now been put away to be replaced by 18-month and 2T size shirts. Max is one big boy!

Photos

Last night we went to the Sears Portrait Studio at the Mall of America to get Emma's picture taken in advance of her third birthday in two weeks. We had been very pleased with our experience there last year when we had pictures taken. The photographer last year was very understanding when Emma didn't completely cooperate when we first went in, allowing us to come back a couple of days later to get more pictures taken. This time, Emma did much better at listening to the photographer, looking at the camera, and smiling. Our entire session took very little time, and we were once again quite pleased with the photos. I especially like that they include rights to reproduce photos on the CD which we purchased with our portrait package so we can make additional prints ourself. Looking at the portrait CD this morning, I did notice however that they did not include the enhanced portraits on it as they did last year. Those would have been nice to have on the CD to make additional prints of, but I suppose I can always add borders and change the tone of the portraits we do have, myself. Regardless, we certainly will be returning to the Sears Portrait Studio next month to get photos of Max taken when he is three months old.

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!