The Double BOB

I have found that, much to my annoyance, a lot of our baby gear made it through two kids pretty well but has reached the end of its useful life before baby number three can really enjoy/use it.  Max has gotten a new video monitor, a new carseat, a new baby swing, and now a new BOB stroller, because version one of all of these products didn't survive the abuse heaped on them with the first two kids.

Until we gave away our old BOB on Freecycle (and for what it's worth, that stroller is a beast and served us incredibly well.  But six years of constant use, many many beach trips, and living outside at our old house for several years took a toll.  A more resourceful family than ours could have updated some of the parts and extended its use.  We are not those resourceful people), we had the old and the new available for our evening family walks.  The boys were quite cute in BOB v1 and BOB v2.  Their big sis is a cutie, too.

Wide eyes

I don't know why people remark on Max's wide eyes all the time.  I mean, it's not like he looks like this all the time.  Except that he does.

The Banjo

Dash loves music.  He loves to sing the songs from Frozen, listen to cds in the car, play our piano, and recently play his "banjo".   One of his preschool teachers last year and at camp this summer was a big music lover, and she helped the kids make instruments out of scrap materials.  Dash's banjo, made from a big cardboard tube, a lab tube of some kind filled with bells and other bits (to make shaking sounds), and some big rubber bands as strings, has been by far his most enjoyed item of the summer.  Most of the time, the creations from school come home, sit in a pile or on a table for awhile, and eventually get swept into the trash, or if I am feeling generous, a memory box to be saved for posterity.  The banjo, though, gets daily use even now, weeks after he made it.  Dash has been talking about Santa bringing him a ukulele this year, so maybe the banjo can hang on until then.

Four months old!

Baby Max turned 4 months old this week, and I am trying SO hard to document his early life at least to some degree, mostly because it is so much fun to go back with Ella and Dash to look at their baby pictures and talk about their milestones, and also because I know how much I will forget.  So if the Internet is forever, I better write something about Max on here.

So... four months old on August 22!  Ella helped me with his four month photo shoot, and as a result, in most of the pictures, he is looking to the side (wherever she was).  He also managed to pitch to the side and then get blue bear in his mouth at one point which he seemed to quite like.

Max is very physical, more so than Ella or Dash.  He love to stand on our laps and is really trying hard to sit up.  When he is reclined on a pillow, he does these little baby crunches, trying to get his torso off the ground.  He has managed to flip himself once from his front to his back but he isn't doing it regularly yet.  He loves to play in the Exersaucer and under the playmat where he is getting really good at grabbing the toys and putting them in his mouth.  He also loves to chew on his own hands which is making picture-taking increasingly difficult.

Max loves to talk and given the chance (which happens far too infrequently, poor third baby) he will have a conversation back and forth with us of "oohs" and "goos" and "ehhhs".  He also has a cat-like screech he likes to make which my parents say is reminiscent of one of my favorite sounds to make as a baby.  Genetics are weird.  Mostly he can't get a word in edgewise with Ella and Dash around.

He has a fast smile, and he rewards us with it very frequently.  The whole shape and look of his face changes when he smiles.  He has dimples on both sides and a super wide grin.  He is smart enough to know to always give his mama a big smile when she comes in the room, but if I'm being fair, he'll grin at most people.  Ella and Dash are two of his favorite people to smile at.

Did I mention he likes to pull hair? It's ponytails for me for the foreseeable future.  Ella, too, if she's smart.

Max also has a great laugh, somewhere between a squeak and a chortle and a squeal.  Ella made him giggle over and over by showing him a birdy toy with a mirror inside and opening it up and saying "Surprise!"  I got him going by dropping a toy and shaking my arms and saying "Where did it GO?"

By some miracle, he has followed the Cohen baby tradition of being a really good sleeper.  Baby sleep remains a mystery to me, but I will take the good when I can get it.  These days he goes to bed sometime in the 7:30-8:00 range after a bath (which he loves), a book or two (when we remember), and a good feeding (I still try to do it while watching TV but those days are numbered since he is getting much more interested in the world around him when he is nursing).  Most nights he wakes up only once to eat.  That time is super variable, sometimes 1 am and sometimes 5 am.  He mostly puts himself back to sleep very easily at night, and is up in the morning with the rest of the family around 7 am.  Ella loves to be the one to get him up and unwrap him from his swaddle.

He is napping in his crib now which was a transition we had to make from the baby swing.  He mostly took it in stride although there were several weeks of only 30 minute naps when we started in the crib.  Lately, he has been napping closer to an hour, once for three hours (!!!), and is generally pretty happy about going down for a nap without much fanfare.  He has no real schedule for his naps, but maybe with the summer mayhem ending and the school year starting, we'll find a schedule that allows him to nap in his crib in between school drop-offs and pick-ups.  We still spend much of the weekend out and about, letting him catch naps in the car or stroller, but I suspect those days are numbered, too.  I seem to recall a period of "baby jail" where we needed to be at home, a lot, for morning and afternoon and early evening naps.

Max has a lot of nicknames including Maxy, Maxi Taxi, Maxers, Maxersons, Bubbins, Maxnificent, The Baby.  The best ones are the ones we use and the kids repeat in the same tone of voice we use.  Ella's "Maaaa-xxxxyyyy" in her high, sing-song voice is priceless.

We'll find out how big he is at his 4 month doctor's appointment next week but he was just shy of 15 pounds a few weeks ago.  He definitely feels like the biggest Cohen baby at this stage.  His hydronephrosis (ie excess fluid in his kidneys, detected pre-natally) still hasn't resolved on its own but we're continuing a watch-and-wait program with ultrasounds every few months.  We hope it will resolve on its own one of these visits but at least the ultrasounds are non-invasive (and he brings a lot of cheer to the ultrasound techs every time we visit!).

Mostly we love this baby to the moon and back, and we are thankful every single day for his health, his laid-back and happy demeanor, and the gift of being his parents.