Max makes bread - sort of

Max and I had an exciting afternoon cooking bread together.  Cooking with Max is one of those adventures that seems like a great idea until you actually attempt it.  He loves the whole process, but seems to feel his role is to grab everything he can get his hands on and throw it on the floor.  That said, he often makes a good helper (by which I mean he doesn't hinder the process too much) if his job is to put the lid on and off a pot repeatedly.  He also really loves to stir things in bowls, which works really well when making bread.  Usually letting him stir things is a little dangerous because he tends to pick up some batter on his wooden spoon and, you guessed it, throw it on the floor, but bread dough is so thick that it tends to stay in the bowl even when you sick Max on it.  Since the bread dough was so stubborn, Max took up his third role whilst helping cook: eating.  He usually tries to grab whatever ingredient you are currently working with (butter, eggs, sugar exc.) and put it in his mouth.  Raw bread dough was no exception.

Max, unable to throw bread dough on the floor.
Notice he looks depressed.

As I watched Max bring the dough to his mouth I was reminded of the time my sister's son asked to drink some beer.  He was perhaps 2 and a half and was begging for some "pop".

Son: My want pop!

Sister:  That's not pop.  Its beer.  It makes you woozy in the head.

I think he might have been laughing at me
in this picture....

Son: My want woozy in the head!

Greta:  Let him drink it.  It will taste terrible and he will never want it again.

Sister (to son):  OK, you can have some beer, but it doesn't taste good.

My sisters son eagerly grabbed the beer, took a big gulp and then spit it out all over the table.  "My NO LIKE that pop!"  he declared.

And so, I figured, let Max eat the raw bread dough.  It will taste terrible and he will learn not to eat raw baking.  I bet you can guess how this ends.  Max LOVES raw bread dough.  He ate the whole fist full declaring "mmmmmm" the whole time.  The lesson in this experience is that I will not be letting him try beer

Max can barely contain all the bread dough
in his mouth.  Despite appearances he
is not about to hurl.
.

Another late night with Max

It's 3:51am right now.  Max has had a really rough go of it tonight.  Greta and I are being especially diligent in our attempts to keep Max trained to sleep by himself in his own bedroom.  But it does raise a tough dilemma every now and then.

For instance, tonight he woke up screaming.  Bad dream?  Teething?  Let him cry a bit more and see if he goes back to sleep.  Still crying.  Hmm.  Okay, I'll drag my tired old butt out of bed, pop his soother back into his mouth, and shush him back to sleep.  Done.  Now I can go back to sleep.  Ten minutes later: more screaming.  Bad dream?  Teething?  Or just trying to get us to pick him up?  Let him cry a little more and see if he goes back to sleep.  Still crying.  Hmm.  Okay, I'll drag my tired old butt out of bed again, pop his soother back into his mouth, and shush him back to sleep.  Done.

Well, now I'm wide awake.  There's a good chance he'll wake up crying again, so I sit upstairs reading a work-related paper waiting for him to scream.  There it is, right on cue.  This is pretty abnormal -- he must be teething again.  I need to give him acetaminophen for the pain.  That's a delicate operation that cannot be done without picking him up.  (Believe me, we've tried.)

Woe is me.  Despite our tough stance against picking up crying babies in the dead of night, I am now forced against my will to undertake the onerous task of picking up my crying baby in the dead of night and snuggling up with him in the glider chair for some quiet time while we wait for the painkillers kick in.  I may stroke his hair while he falls back asleep in my arms.  But that doesn't mean I'm enjoying it.

Thankfully, Max sleeps through the night more often than not these days.  But every so often we get a night like this and it reminds us of what life was like when Max was younger.  (4am -- the water softener just kicked in.)  Sue and Jeff undoubtedly get "nights like this" almost every night with baby Anne.  Hang in there, guys.  It gets much better.

These late-night forced cuddle-fests often lead me to reflect upon how busy our life has become and how often we think of everything we do -- taking care of Max, walking the dogs, maintaining the house, earning a living -- as just a torrent of fires that need putting out.  It's easy to forget that most of these tasks are quite enjoyable.  Indeed, most of these tasks are what makes life worth living.  If only we could turn down the volume a bit.  Perhaps then we'd take the time to enjoy putting out these fires and maybe write more blog entries.

In order to adhere to the no-pictureless-posts policy of this blog, I've included below a new picture of Max, Viola, and Merlin all crammed into the ding, taken on Teela's second stop at our house, this time on her way back home to Bloomington.

Yep, three's definitely a crowd.

It's now 4:18.  Max just started crying again.  Maybe I'll let him cry a bit more and see if he goes back to sleep.

Two babies in a ding

Teela, Merlin, and Viola stopped by our house for a couple nights -- a rest stop on the way to Ottawa to visit Gramma and Grampa James.

Max kept calling Viola by the name "Anne" and we kept correcting him.  He eventually called her "Vai" a couple times.  Perhaps he now understands that Anne is not another word for "baby".

As usual, we barely got our act together to take only a handful of pictures.  Max introduced Viola to his rope swing, which he calls "ding".  Pretty cute.

"This is my ding.  It's MY ding, but you can use it with me for a bit."

Blackflies and bruises at The River, May long weekend

It was a big May long weekend up at The River.  We got some great photos (see below).

Greta, Max, and I were arrived Friday morning, a full day before everyone else.  We spent the morning at a mom & tot event at nearby Edge Hill, a small, private Waldorf school just a few kilometers from The River.  It was a nice opportunity to learn about the school (if ever we intend to send our children there) and to meet people.

Shortly thereafter, Hailey got into a porcupine.  We tried pulling out the quills ourselves, but she was having none of it.  We tried alcohol and acetaminophen to no avail.  Out of options, we bit the bullet and took her to a vet.  $250 later we had a very groggy dog with no more quills in her mouth.  Not the best way to spend a Friday up at the River, but all's well that ends well.  Sorry, no pictures of the porcupine, quills, or sedated dog.

Tom and Jean arrived on Saturday, with Sue, Jeff, and Anne hot on their heels.  Everyone stayed until Monday -- a nice long stay up at The River.  Highlights include:

• Gus was the only person to do any significant swimming in the chilly May river water, though Greta and Max joined for a brief spell.
• The blackflies were out in force, as evidenced by the photos of Max below.  By day he gave no outward sign that the bugbites bothered him.  But by night he would grind his face into the mattress or bang his face into the wall to scratch the itch -- all while sleeping!
• Max took a couple nasty spills, as evidenced by the lumps and black-eye in the photos below.
• Max drove the tractor with grampa.  Max loves the tractor.
• Gus and Greta used their new trailer hitch for the first time to bring home the trailer.

But enough of my yakin'.  Enjoy the photos, courtesy of Jean and Sue!  More can be found here.

He's a natural.

How could anyone fall asleep while riding a tractor?! 

Blackfly bites, black eye.  All in a day's work.

This shot is great.

Gramma with baby Anne.

Max investigates his cousin.

Uncle Jeff rarely makes it into this blog.  But this shot was to good to leave out.

Max uses dinner utensils for the first time

This morning Max used a fork to eat food for the first time ever.  He was eating pancakes with blueberries and whipped cream for breakfast.  (The mess was epic.)  He was given a fork with his meal today as an experiment in early childhood development.

Max used his fork as follows.  He picked up a piece of pancake in one hand, set it on top of the fork in his other hand, then immediately picked the piece of pancake off his fork with his hand and fed himself.  The fork served as an intermediate rest stop between his table and mouth.  The whole spectacle was greeted with thunderous applause from both mommy and daddy.

Sadly, we got no pictures of the event.  Perhaps we'll catch it on film sometime in the future.

Max the bear

Max has decided that all cool babies know what the bear says.... in fact, all cool things say what the bear says.  He flips through his books looking for anything that remotely resembles a bear and then loudly proclaims RAWR!!!  Thus, the grizzly bear, the polar bear, the panda bear, the kola bear and the teddy bear all say RAWR!!!

Trivia:  Based on this article, what does Max think the bird says?
(Note: You cannot use his mouth as a clue as he is actually
saying bird in this picture.)

Grandpa Gutoski is largely to blame for all of this.  He started the bear obsession.  Max loved to have him read an animal book and name all the animals.  When he got to the page with the bear grandpa would say "The big bear RAWR!!!" in a gruff voice that Max loved.  Max was so delighted that grandpa proceeded to attach RAWR to every animal in the book ("And the dolphin says...RAWR!).  Now the bunny rawrs, the lizard rawrs and the duck rawrs.  To Max's delight, the dump truck also rawrs and you can kind of make the dog rawr.

Fortunately, I am his mother and thus he has learned a certain amount of respect for the chimpanzee. It says "Whoo whoo whoo ah ah ah".

Disclaimer:  I do not really believe in accuracy getting in the way of a good story, but since this blog to act as a sort of baby book for Max, I feel compelled to report that he also correctly knows the sounds of the fish, sheep, cow, owl (although he thinks owl is representative of all birds) and cat.

Gardening and yard work with Max

Before I begin, please notice and admire the fancy new look of this blog, which features a cute picture of Max taken last fall as its banner.  Here's the original source photo.

Today Greta and I finally got started on our gardening.  Max and the dogs helped us all the while.

Max helped with these lettuce transplants.  Shaky chewed his ball.

Max and mom admiring their handiwork on the transplants.

Max can now do two things at once: climb stairs and play with a trowel.

We decided to abandon an old bed of herbs we established outside our yard on city property.  The bed was getting too overrun with grass.  I transplanted any herbs I could salvage from the defunct bed into another bed inside our yard.  Greta had to point out to me which plants were weeds and which were herbs.

To honour Greta's sister Wendy, I will now provide a Wendy-style list of the stuff we transplanted today:

• oregano
• celantro
• chives
• some other herb who's name I've forgotten
• yet another herb
• rhubarb
• lettuce

Greta transplanting herbs (mostly).  In this picture you can clearly see the rhubarb and chives.

These are our raspberry bushes, now into their second year.  We are VERY excited about the amount of raspberries we expect to pick this summer.  We did absolutely no work on these bushes today -- I only include the picture because I like raspberries.

And finally, I spent some time today chipping away a little more of our retaining walls.  (See image below.)  We've undertaken a very ambitious project to replace our rotting railroad-tie walls with concrete blocks that we obtained for free off craigslist.  We were pleased at getting such great bricks for free.  But the pleasure quickly turned to anxiety when we realized exactly how much work it is to build a retaining wall.  (GULP!)

These rotting railroad ties need to be painstakingly pried up.  For rotting wood, they're extremely stubborn!