life with max: eight months in.
I can’t believe that this little chubbabub is approaching the nine month mark. What have I been doing the last nine months?! Time is just flying like everyone said it would. Totally crayyyy zee.
Also, let’s get this out of the way early: no, I still don’t feel like I have it together whatsoever. And I don’t know if I ever will! I should just add a bunch more babies to the mix right? That will help.
Max is still such a happy little bug. Sometimes Eddie and I just can’t BELIEVE how happy he is all the time. Especially since we can both be maniacs. Max is so chill and relaxed and goes along with whatever. How is he our kid?!
Oh but he totally knows how to really throw a tantrum now if he doesn’t get what he wants. It’s kind of hilarious. Just five seconds ago I took the Apple TV remote from him (how did he manage to grab it AGAIN?!) and he screamed bloody murder. Then he plopped down and crawled over to rip apart a magazine. He loves all remotes, phones, papers that crinkle and boxes.
Here’s what is currently going on with the little love muffin:
He never stops moving. Like never ever stops. If he’s not crawling or sliding on his belly then he is standing whenever he can and bouncing and dancing. He is starting to stand unattended (is that the right word?!) but I have no idea if he will start walking soon. He walks up and down the tables and chairs and couches, but I feel like he could do this for another month or two (or longer?) before taking steps on his own.
A few weeks ago he started clapping his hands (I don’t know if he learned this from us or just figured it out?) and will crawl to a mirror, sit in front of it and look at himself and clap. He also STARTS games of peek-a-boo which kills me. Like he will crawl behind the couch, then peek around and look at me. Then sit back so he can’t see me and laugh hysterically.
I die.
Everywhere we go – and I mean everywhere – people think he is a girl. It cracks me up. Eddie didn’t believe me at first (it really started happening two months or so ago) and then once he experienced it, he also couldn’t stop laughing. I don’t know if it’s the curls on his head or what.
I don’t correct anyone because I don’t mind, I just think it’s so funny. It must be the gingery mop!
Eating is going so well. I give him whatever we are eating (within reason, of course) for dinner and he loves it. There is a lot less throwing and much more consuming these days. His favorite is pasta with sauce and broccoli. Oh my gosh and watermelon. He LOVES watermelon!
I’m psychotic and am so afraid that he is going to grow up hating veggies and green things like I did. So I’ve really upped our greens game. I always give him some sort of our greens at lunch and dinner. For breakfast, we do a lot of scrambled egg yolks (you guys gave me this idea in the comments of my previous post!), berries, a baby pancake (I made these with bananas and blueberries, they were a hit) or mini organic blueberry waffles. Also baby avocado toasts. He still absolutely loathes purees, but the last few days I’ve given him some bites of yogurt and he takes them. He seems to really love it, so I started stuffing raspberries with a little yogurt and dipping strawberries in yogurt. Also adding a teeeeny sprinkle of cinnamon. Still won’t eat purees off a spoon consistently or off his high chair tray either. He just very wants real food he can feed himself!
OH! And what I’ve done with the purees that I made early on that he has no interest in: defrost them and use them as a “sauce” for pasta. Mixed with a little milk and tossed with a whole grain rotini and veggies.
He is still nursing like a crazy man. He loves it and would probably gladly nurse every two hours (at least for a few minutes) if I let him. He still climbs up me the minute he wants any sort of comfort, which we find pretty funny.
I can never take this giddy little smile that he does below when he is super excited. He does this a bunch after we read (he looooooves books), when he first wakes up and when Eddie gets home.
Speaking of Eddie, every night they play a bunch of games after dinner and before bedtime. Eddie crawls in and out of rooms and Max follows him while giggling the entire time. Max has this thing for doors (he is obsessed with opening and closing them, then screams if he can’t get it back open) and they just chase each other from room to room. It’s the best part of the night.
Sleep is slightly better. He seems to be starting to sleep longer stretches at night – like some 5 or 6 hours stretches. Not every night, but fairly often. Yes, that is LONG for him. And now that I said that, we will probably be awake five times tonight.
That’s how it goes, right?
Since he is moving so much, I find myself taking fewer pictures. I hate it!! I’m really trying to be better because I want to document things, obviously. Also, what are you new moms doing with photos – are you printing them out (if so, from where) and making photo albums? I’ve never been much of a scrapbook/album person, but I want printed photos, even if I stick them in a box. I always loved looking at photos when I was a kid so I definitely want some tangible ones.
In the next few days I’m going to share what’s in our diaper bag (is this interesting or just, blah?) and which one I’m using (I love it!) – as well as our nine month baby favorites. Thanks for loving this little monkey!
62 Comments on “life with max: eight months in.”
First, Max is just the CUTEST, most HANDSOME baby. Next, I love these posts! I also love the posts about what you are loving — we are expecting our first baby in November and you always have the best recommendations for products, so share away! What diaper bag ARE you loving?
Hi Jessica!
I don’t have a little one yet, but I’ve found that if you hold down the photo snap button on an iphone (and maybe other phones? I’m not sure..) it will take photos in rapid succession which could be useful to capture your little moving man.
As for photos, my coworker has been making photo albums with an apple app of sorts with photos of her son: http://www.apple.com/ca/mac/print-products/ She puts them together every 6 months or so and they have turned out really great!
I think “unassisted” is the word you’re looking for?
I definitely want to hear about your baby bag!!
And print photos or photo books for sure!
yes it totally is the word! thank you – mom brain.
remember when you announced you were pregnant, like.. YESTERDAY and now you have a 9MONTH OLD. what the H!? hes adorable!!! i cant take it. i also love these posts, they’re getting me excited for our own little babe!
I KNOW. why is it flying? so freaking excited for you guys.
Oh, I love the idea of using purees for sauces! My daughter (almost 10 months) is finally starting to get over purees and wants real food and I still have so much stuffed in the freezer. For photos, we empty our phones on an external drive and my husband also picks some out and prints them for her baby book and for albums. We don’t scrapbook, but he writes little details next to each picture. I die of the sweetness.
My youngest son was the same way about purees and baby food. When he was 8-9 months old, he started ,slowly, self feeding whatever we ate and hasn’t stopped eating since. He’s 3 now and isn’t anywhere near as picky, as his old brother, who ate baby food until he was close to a year old.
When it comes to pictures, I downloaded the Snapfish app, they give me 100 free 4×6 prints per month, for a year, as long as they’re ordered from my phone. I rarely printed pictures of my boys before, and now it’s a major undertaking trying to get them printed and organized. I recommend printing and making photo books now, while everything is fresh in your mind.
P.S. Max is so adorable that it makes my ovaries hurt!
Yes, please post what’s in the bag! Also, have you checked out Artifact Uprising for photo books and prints? AMAZING. Not cheap, but the finished product is gorg. Worth a look.
i LOVE artifact uprising, i bought eddie a father’s day gift there. it’s the coolest site!
Are you crazy?! We LOOOVE these baby updates! I cannot wait to hear about the diaper bag AND the nine month favourites. Bring it on!!!
just when I think that little guy could not possibly get any cuter… !!!!!
Yes, please keep sharing Max things! I’m the only one of my friends with a baby right now, so I have no one to gush over all the silly little cute things she does, and these updates make me feel like I’ve got a friend to talk baby with!
I recently bought a Canon Selphy cp910 photo printer and put all of my pictures in a Project Life album. Super quick and easy. I found myself being lazy about pictures and my (as of yesterday) 10 month old son. Buying that small photo printer has helped a ton!
ooooh interesting. this may bet he stupidest question but does it run out of ink often? what kind of ink??
Jessica,
Just a quick book recommendation for Max; “Time for Bed”by Mem Fox. It was one of our favorites.
thanks amber!!
How is he growing so fast?!
I use Mpix to print all of my photos of Casper–both instagrams and the few dslr ones I’ve taken. They’re really good quality AND the best thing (in my opinion) is that they have an app where you can order prints from your phone. It makes it much more likely for me to actually print things. It’s amazing. I am putting together a book of all of the instagrams I took of him his first year using one of their templates, too. I printed a book for my mom of our wedding (she randomly asked for one last year at Christmas even though we’ve been married for 5years) and it turned out great.
awesome!! thanks girl!
I usually get a coupon code for a free Shutterfly album every year or so, so we put all of our kiddo’s pictures in those. The first year, I split them up into the first 6 months and the last 6 months (there were SO MANY pictures!). Then, I’ve been a little more selective for the yearly albums, weeding out the redundant shots. It’s an easy way to get them off of our phones/cameras, and into something tangible that doesn’t take up an exorbitant amount of space!
this is what my BFF does. i have a shutterfly account so i should probably try it.
Shutterfly is also having a promotion using the code FREETREAT !! 8×8 inch photo book for free or larger ones starting at $4. Just FYI! :) Love the photos of Max, he is adorable!
My favorite photo company for iPhone pics is social print studio. They have tons of options and the quality is amazing!
My favorite photo company for iPhone pics is social print studio. They have tons of options and the quality is amazing! Plus, I have a thing for square photos. Max is super cute!
For photos, I would recommend shutterfly. They send coupons all the time so you can get good deals. You can also use them to make photobooks, which my sister uses for her girls all the time. Again, you get lots of coupons and you can make them as gifts for relatives without having to scrapbook anything. I personally love the postalpix app. It prints your instagram photos in a 4×4 format which I love!
Max is a cutey! I want to set him up with my niece whose 11 months :)
How do you feed him pasta? Small little bites? I want to try it with my guy (who is also almost 9 months – I think he and Max were born like 3 days apart – can they be baby friends?) but am terrified of choking. He too loves to eat anything he can get his chubby little hands on. He loves peas, chickpeas, chicken, mashed potatoes…just about anything. I tried broccoli and he doesn’t love it…eek! Thanks for sharing, I love reading these posts so much!
hi!! have you tried/read anything on baby led weaning? when you start, you give them bigger pieces so they can hold onto things (mostly of fruit/potatoes/etc). i give him spiral pasta (i read that was the easiest to grip) and overcook it a bit so it’s mushier than we would eat it. like most other things he picks it up, takes a bit and spits out little bits that may be too large. it’s really quite soft and i don’t worry about choking with it.
i’m really scared to give him chickpeas tho!! you haven’t had any choking incidents?? do you cut them in half?? so funny how we all wonder about different foods!
also p.s. i absolutely LOVE your name.
YAY! A BABY POST! Love his little self.
Sorry if someone has already mentioned this, but what about starting him an email account, where you send pics and funny things he does/says? Then when he’s big enough he will have like a virtual scrapbook online!
kate! this is SUCH a cool idea. i have never heard of anything like this. love it!
I just love these updates. Thank you for sharing these snippets of your life (and his absolutely adorable face!) with us :)
Came across this today and thought you might like it for printing and having photos around:
http://www.artifactuprising.com/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=Facebook-ACQ-Recent_Travel_Pro
:)
Hi! My sister-in-law uses mypix.com to order her daughter’s photos – the quality is really good and they are super cheap! max is adorable as can be!!
What a cutie!! We are a few weeks behind Max, my babe just turned 8 months on the 30th.
With his pictures, I’ve been making monthly snapfish books. I am so happy I’ve been doing this and it’s amazing to see the difference since his first book. I make sure I add text regarding firsts each month as well. I also print them…ALL. It’s bad. Once he gets over the 1 year mark I may do yearly books. Haven’t decided yet.
Max is just the cutest! What a sweetie! I make my kids Shutterfly albums for each of their first few years. I like that I can include text about misc things (favorite books, places we visited, new traditions, silly behaviors etc.). My 4 year old loves sitting down and looking through his books from when he was a baby.
He is so stinkin’ cute! I love reading your updates, because our first little is 6 months old, so it’s kind of like a “preview” of what’s ahead. One question for you: have you guys moved up to the convertible car seat yet? If so, which one did you pick?
I know you love your Orbit stuff, + I think we might change over to that for baby #2 (whenever that happens), but we currently have the UppaBaby infant seat + stroller system. I don’t think they make a convertible seat, but I know Orbit does – was just wondering how people like that one.
Also, I’d love to see a “what’s in the diaper bag?” post, because although I feel like I’m always well-equipped, I also feel like mine weighs a thousand pounds. Because I’m slightly neurotic, I do things that likely aren’t necessary, like carry 6 extra diapers in there at all times (hey, at least it’s down from the 8 I used to carry!).
Please do post about diaper bag and contents, it’s a mystery to me to what you really need. I just ordered a bag and worried it’s too small but maybe not. Excited to hear your thoughts!
Sweet post. Love reading your mom tales and fawning over your photos… which is weird coming from a childless 30 year old. Alas, he is so sweet!
xo
mt
Yes yes YES to a diaper bag post. I’m constantly either heavily over-prepared or woefully under-prepared (perhaps this is inevitable?) and love to see what other parents carry around with them.
Also: baby pancakes? More details, please. Is it really just as simple as banana and blueberries? My babe is 7 1/2 months and so far all we’ve done is purees, but I really want to start letting him try to feed himself.
i’m going to have to make them again before sharing the real recipe because i just threw things together! but i used oat flour (ground oats), mashed bananas, a little baking soda, pinch of cinnamon and breastmilk (can totally use regular milk or formula too). then dropped in blueberries while cooking. i will try to nail down the amounts in the next few days!
I downloaded the groovebook app… you can print 100 photos a month and they come bound in a cute look-book style in the mail. Only 2.99/month and you can order more than one if you want. I love it!
Hey! I also have an 8 month old who hates purees!! How did you make the pancake? I’m always looking for new things to give him even though I’m horribly neurotic and afraid he’s going to choke on everything!
Anyway, pretty sure Cody and Max could be best friends. He still wakes every 2-3 hours, nurses like crazy, hates purees, and is the happiest little toot I’ve ever seen!
Love the baby updates! So cute!
For photos I use chatbooks. It’s an app on my iPhone. It’s super easy. You can also print any Instagram photos and make books with them. They start out at $6 for each book. I do one every month to get the pictures printed off my phone. It’s one of the best I found so far. Hope this helps.
Pictures…now that my 8 and 4 year olds are at school my goal before December is to print an iPhoto book and a CD for each child (1/year)…right now all my pictures are sitting in iPhoto barely sorted. Let the craziness begin! Would love to hear ideas!
I found the number of pictures to be too over-whelming to print and/or share with family/friends, so what I do now is once a year usually around October or November I will take the best of the past 12 months pictures and make a small 5×7 photo book on Shutterfly, and I’ll have 3 copies of the book made – one for me, and one to give to grandparents on both sides as a Christmas present.
What a gorgeous little hunk of love! I love him so much! He’s a DOLL. People call Camille a little boy, too, so don’t worry. It’s probably because I don’t put those huge frilly bows on her head or dress her in head-to-toe hot pink. I like a modest little bebe. With BANANA PANTS. He’s the cutest!
Whatever you end up doing with all the iPhone photos, let me know! I’ve got a ton to print, too.
I’m all about scrapbooking and photobooks, but recently I’ve started printing pictures because I realized that when I was little a. I loved looking through them and b. I liked to take them out for class projects and things–can’t do that with a photobook/scrapbook!
You can try Social Print Studio and print the regular squares for instagram pictures (50 cents each)
My 10 month old is all over the place and I’m so nervous to put him in the bath tub! We still put him in the baby bath tub inside the big bath tub. Do you do anything to make sure he doesn’t slip?
i was afraid too! we HAD to make the switch because max wouldn’t stay still in our baby bath (which was for the sink). we haven’t had any issues with slipping, and we have this mat: http://www.amazon.com/Kushies-Baby-Piece-Squirter-Marine/dp/B0089Z6DS6
our issue in the last week though has been that he refuses to sit!! he just wants to stand and jump the entire time he is in the tub, so now i AM worried about slipping. we’ve had to both be present and give him like a 10 second bath because he throws a fit if he isn’t standing and dancing and kicking and splashing. ha!
You gotta get Sqooshies. They are basically reusable pouches/squeezers that zip lock on the bottom. I am also baby led weaning and I use them for yogurt or smoothies or soup. We also bought the ChooMe… Which is like a little top that is easier for babies to suck out of and also prevents the contents from just spilling out. Genius. Got them both on Amazon and it is a breakfast staple for us!
I bet it’s the curls causing Max to be mistaken for a girl… and the fact that he’s beautiful! Such a gorgeous baby! When my daughter was a baby, she didn’t have hardly any hair for the longest time, & I was pretty averse to the pink frilly dresses so I often got compliments on my “cute little boy”. I didn’t correct them either. ;)
Max is so stinking cute, I love his curly ginger hair! For photos, I’ve heard great things about the Snapfish app if you’re just talking about printing pics from your phone. You’ll get 100 free prints a month for a year, but I think it may cost like $9.99 to ship? For our first year, I received a $20 Shutterfly coupon in the free bags they give you when you set up a baby registry at Target. That also was great for getting prints as well. Shutterfly always has specials and discounts running plus it’ll give you an added back of your photos in case something happened to your phone or the cloud.
Hi there,
We also use MPIX for quality prints. My baby’s first birthday is in two weeks :( and I used it to print out her monthly photos for display and they came out great!
For instagram photos I use chatbooks. I really love that it just makes books and automatically ships once a month for $6. You can go in and edit the photos that are in each book too as well as apply a hashtag filter (#max) so that only those photos fill a book.
I am just now seeing these newest pictures of Max and hearing your loving stories. Every picture made me smile (like they always do), some even made me laugh. I really needed this right now as I lost my Honey (dog) on Sunday and I’ve been so sad (she was only 4 years old). Anyway, this really brought some light to my day, and as usual, he is just the cutest little love bug! Keep the pictures coming please!!!!
I print our pictures at CVS or Shutterfly and put them in fabric covered photo albums from Target. My parents made photo albums when we were kids and they are still so much fun to look through. i want my daughter to be able to see her infancy and childhood when she’s older
Max is soooo cute. I have to ask, where did you get the banana pants from?! I have a 4 month old son that could use a pair haha!
they are from freshly picked, but they were their spring line and are now sold out. :(
Sleep can be such a struggle! At 9 months he can definitely go through the night, but of course totally depends on if he can self-soothe….which is a lesson all in it’s own! If you ever have any sleep questions, I’m a Pediatric Sleep Consultant and can for sure answer any Q’s you have. But look at those eyes!! What a cutie!
Just catching up on your Max posts – I love that you’re enjoying him so much! I just read your previous post, and re. nursing – my daughter (who’s 14 months now) was still nursing 4x a day up until the week she turned one and then she totally dropped me on her own. I had been feeling like it was going to be impossible to wean when I was ready because I always nursed before naps and bed and I felt like nursing/sleeping were inextricably tied together – but she was all of a sudden ready to stop and just did it on her own. (I mean, I was kind of glad it was so easy and kind of sad that I didn’t, like, know it was our last time when it was the last time…and she might be our last baby so…waaaaah! But also, phew?) So…you just never know, and so I wouldn’t worry at all about nursing frequency. :o) Thank for sharing your sweet guy with us!
Cutest cutest baby ever! He’s so special, you and Eddie are really so blessed!!
That pic with him in the mirror!?? Just can’t get over it!
Thanks so much for sharing the updates with him because it is very personal after all.
I don’t have a child but I do think it would be helpful if I did to know what’s happening with the diaper bag! lol.
Hi Jessica! I love your Max posts. He is precious. I just started babyled weaning about 2 weeks ago with our 6 month old. When did Max start to “get” it? When did his pincher fingers start working? My son is so spastic still. What are some other green veggie options? How do you deal with the mess?
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