Double Digits

 3 days                                1 month

5 months                         10 months

Max has turned 10 months old.  Not much to say this time around, so here are a bunch of pictures:

 We have a hard time exercising with Max around. He likes to climb all over us.

 Bryan's mowhawk request. Max's hair naturally lays down flat and I don't like the idea of putting gel on a baby's head, but I do put sunscreen in his hair when we go swimming since his hair is so thin and we don't have a hat for him.

This is the "beach" in Coeur d'Alene, ID about 20 minutes from us. It's no Southern California ocean and sand, but it's as close as we can get.

  Max absolutely loves the water and would squeal in excitement when the waves would come up to him.

 They have this super nice park right next to the lake and it's HUGE!

 He was very interested in the kid playing basketball.

Max overcame his precautions about the grass this day and totally took off on us.

 He has started sharing things with us. It's cute with his toys. It's gross with his food.

 In his 9 month post I put a picture of him sleeping on his back (very rare and unusual). This here is one way he usually sleeps.

 And this is the most common way he sleeps; it's either with both hands tucked underneath him (must be a way of comforting him) or one hand tucked under and one thumb in his mouth.

 He knows how to get in, but not out.

 Max is becoming a very picky eater and will rarely willingly eat vegetables anymore. He'll usually just complain throughout the whole dinner until we give him something good to eat. If we're lucky, once he clears away the good stuff and he's still hungry, he'll start eating the veggies. This is him loving cherries.

 We officially moved him up to a bigger car seat. He still had two pounds and one inch to go with his infant car seat, but we've had this new one for so long that I just wanted to install it. Plus, as you could see at the top of this post, he's pretty much outgrown his infant seat anyway.

 The only downside to this new car seat is that with it rear-facing, it takes up SO MUCH SPACE and the front seat has to be scooted up soooooo much that there isn't any leg room at all!

 Our local grocery store has this old fashion tractor thing outside that little kids can play on. I guess we never really noticed it until now (or never realized what it was for), but Max had such a good time driving it!

We love this little guy more than words can express!

Strawberry Picking

There are tons of farms around here where you can just go and pick your own fruits and veggies.  One farm in particular was having a Strawberry Celebration today where they had music, rides, and strawberries galore, just ripe for the picking!  We almost turned around and went home though because we stopped at three farms on the way that had strawberry signs up, but none of them were doing what they call "U-pick" that day (for strawberries anyway).  The website, unfortunately, didn't list the name of the individual farm we were looking for and it was so HOT today, we almost didn't see it being worth the trouble of finding.  It turned out it was the furthest farm in the series.  So we get there and see this HUGE field of strawberries:

We were still a little skeptical, but we took the tractor ride to the end of the farm and started seeing strawberries everywhere.  Once we started picking, we got really excited.

 On the tractor ride.  You can see Max's new teeth! Well, new tooth.  I right one is just barely poking through.

Max did really well, despite it being, no kidding, the hottest day we've had all summer.  It was around 91 degrees and the sun was just beating down on us. 

Bryan and his hot self going for the dig.

You can't tell as much in the picture, but poor Max's face was all red from the heat.  Thank goodness I put sunscreen on us before we went out.  (If you think his is red, you should have seen mine...and then you should have seen Bryan's...his was normal...h the perks of being a full-blooded Spaniard). Oh, and another view of Max's new teeth/tooth.

Our "stash".  We only picked a little over a pound's worth, but we wanted to get Max out of the sun and we ourselves were sweating like pigs out there.  We did feel kind of pathetic because everyone was walking around with their boxes completely full.  Also, we realized how picky we must have been being because all these other people had deformed, super tiny, yellowing ones in addition to the bright red, juicy ones like we have.  I think I think nest time I want to find a farm with a bigger picking variety and get a few fresh onions and other stuff too.  Oh yeah, these are seriously THE BEST strawberries I have had in my entire life!!  I don;t usually like them because of their bitterness, but the are so sweet it's like they were made with sugar!

9 Months

9 month stats

Weight:  20lbs 1oz - 50th percentile

Height:  28" - 50th percentile

Head:  45cm - 50th percentile

My baby boy is perfectly proportioned all around.  Max is doing fantastic and I seriously don't think I can love him any more than I do now (though I think that pretty much every single day).  We had his doctor's appointment and though Max has dropped in weight percentile, the doctor said that's normal around this time and will be that way until he's full on eating normal table foods like the rest of us.  He didn't need shots! YAY! But he did have to get pricked to check his iron (he didn't even notice!) which is good. A few things about Max:

-  He LOVES balls and will chase them around the apartment all day long.

-  He loves being chased by us.

-  He's really good at entertaining himself, which makes me feel like a lazy mom sometimes, but hey, if he's happy! (PS. I do spend lots of time playing with him too though)

-  His language is pretty behind. He's very vocal, but doesn't babble, so we have to take him in to get a hearing and a speech test. Though, just as we expressed our concerns to the doctor, that day he started saying "bleh" which is a huge improvement from him usual "huh". Bryan and I think since he's developed physically so quickly (bearing weight on his legs, rolling, crawling, standing earlier than typical) that his language has just kind of lagged behind because of it.

-  Bryan's inclusion in this post "He's the best in the world!".

-  His two front middle teeth are finally coming in.  It's been about a week though and they still haven't cut through.  Hopefully it happens soon.

-  He loves outings.  He doesn't care where we go, he just loves observing the world.

-  He loves to go swimming despite it being pretty cold sometimes.

-  He loves swinging in the swing and just kicks his feet like crazy pretty much the whole time.

-  He turns toward music any time it's on.  He won't pay any attention to the tv usually, but when music comes on the tv, he instantly turns towards it and won't turn away until it's over.

-  He LOVES to give us kisses. Anytime we ask for one, he always gives it (unless he's really distracted).  When I go to put him down for a nap while I'm singing to him, he'll often just kiss me over and over again even though he's already half asleep.

-  He also loves being kissed and will just let us kiss him over and over again.

-  He still loves any and every food, but I think he's getting sick of me feeding him all the time and would rather do it himself.  The problem is, he only knows how to feed himself finger foods.  I tried giving him the spoon and the bowl, but he hasn't figured out that the spoon needs to go in the bowl and then to his mouth.  I think he's just used to food magically being on the spoon already when he grabs it.

We loves our baby so much and can't imagine our lives without him.  Thank goodness he's going to be with us forever!!

 I discovered these foam letter stick to Max's wet skin.  Bryan thought this was mean of me to do.  I thought it was cute :)

 This was a GREASY meal!  I wish I had a picture of the other side of his head where he kept touching with his greasy hands.  It was gross.

 Max had an allergic reaction and got all red and swollen around his mouth.  The culprit?  Honey.  We know he's not allowed any, but Bryan fed him some graham crackers, not realizing there was honey in them.  Max didn't care one bit.

 At the awesome Cat Tails Zoo where they have tons of tigers mostly and a bunch of other big cats...and one bear.  All of their cages are as close to you as this white tiger's cage.

 Abuela and Grandpa

 Our Dodgers jerseys before we headed to Seattle to see some Dodgers vs Mariners games.  Funny note, Max's very first baseball/Dodger game and he saw a no hitter...against the Dodgers.

 Papa and Grandma Jones

 I feel like I should caption all the photos now since I did all the previous ones...

 How much he grew after all the grandparents left (about 4 weeks).  Don't worry, we lowered the crib before we put him to sleep in it again.

 Father's day. I love these guys :)

 Pictures of Max's fangs. 

 First time swimming!!

 All he did was splash the whole time and enjoyed hanging on the side of the pool.

 I heard complaining and came and found Max INSIDE the bottom oven drawer. Luckily it doesn't heat up when the oven's on because I was actually cooking something...though door was a bit hot.  I felt bad about that.  I also felt really bad because he was complaining/whining/on the verge of crying.  When he saw me, he got happy because he knew I would get him out.  Instead I ran and got the camera and he started crying again.  Then smiled when I pointed the camera at him.  Silly boy.

 My attempt to let him feed himself...I think he enjoyed it.

 He always insists on playing in his car seat when we pull it out.

 After enjoying himself and kicking like crazy in the swing, he just curled up in it and was seriously going to fall asleep even though his nap was an hour and half away.

 Max's hair after swimming.  Usually it just naturally falls flat on his head so I thought this was cute.

 His mountain of destruction.  He's figured out it's more fun to empty all 3 bottom shelves rather than just the one shelf he's been sticking to.

 Proud of himself.

 Another quiet time where I turn and he's being naughty.  He's learned how to open his cereal with his bottom teeth.

Max NEVER sleeps on his back, so I thought I would capture this rare, cute moment.