One Month with Max - long

An eating machine...making sure he gets every last bite of food off the plate!

July 16th - one month with Mr. Max. How time flies once we have our children home with us!

Max didn't have a great one month anniversary though. :-( On Monday and Tuesday, I had to discipline this boy quite a lot due to hitting and biting. He knew the minute he did something wrong and would immediately start running from me....so we weren't liking each other so much by Tuesday afternoon. :-) (Don't worry, he has a strong hold on my heart!)

On Wednesday, we saw the pediatrician again and started the dreaded shots. The doctor also wanted to go ahead and draw blood for the tests required by our agency. I made daddy help hold Max for the shots since he was already mad at me from the discipline. As soon as Max saw the nurse enter the room with the needles, he immediately began shaking his head and saying "no!"...he knew what was coming. :-( They had to do 3 sticks for the blood draw and ended up getting samples from his foot (ouch!). Poor baby!

Because Max struggled so much during all of this, his legs were REALLY sore where they gave him shots. He ran a low-grade fever Wednesday night and just sat in my lap, screaming every time I had to move, change his diaper, put on his pj's, etc. I guessed that bedtime was going to be a disaster...and it proved to be just that. He slept for about 2 hours and woke up screaming again. After getting him calm, Max then proceeded to throw up...twice. I cleaned him up and by around 3 in the morning, the two of us snoozed a little while sitting in the living room. Max could never get comfortable enough to lay in the bed, so he slept on my chest (just what we both needed after all the discipline issues earlier in the week). At 5 in the morning, I was so exhausted and decided to try sleeping in the bed again. Thankfully, I was able to get another hour of good sleep, and Max got about 2 hours....enough to get us through another day!

On Thursday, Max had more fever so he clung to me like a baby koala (so sweet). His legs still hurt, and he didn't want to walk. By Thursday evening, he was feeling much better though...and was completely back to normal by Friday morning.

Other items of note: While we were at China Camp, we saw our ped who informed us that Max's tests for parasites came back positive for giardia...yippee! (NOT!) We started the meds on Monday and it must taste horrible -- Max says NO and covers his mouth when he sees me get it out of the fridge. I've tried secretly putting the meds in other drinks, but he must be able to taste it, so that hasn't worked. Thankfully, we're almost done with the meds...then we get to do another round of poopie samples....woohoo! (again...NOT)

Speech: Max's speech is progressing well. Sometimes when he gets frustrated, it sounds like he is speaking Russian though. When he was sick this week, I first patted his back and said, "I know it hurts". Max picked up on that and constantly moaned, "I know" every time his leg hurt....we heard "I know" over and over and over! Another new phrase from Max is "Here you go!" He says this each time we hand something to him.

Words he clearly says: look, Jazzy (the dog), Puckles (for Freckles the dog), Allyee, Claire, Emmayee, momma, daddy, baba, ball, what's that, all gone, where'd it go, diaper, I poopoo, muck (for milk), I know, here you go, more, hello, bye-bye, wei (Chinese way of answering phone), beep-beep, I wuv ooh, up, all . There may be more, but this is what I can think of right now.

Sisters trying to teach him how to go backwards down the stairs.