Baby Turd

Who here has picked up a baby turd with their hands? Well, say hello to your newest member. Yesterday, while changing a dirty one, the dirty one fell out while rolling up the diaper. Leaving dada feeling alone and scared as he looked around frantically for Nicole. But alas, she was no where to be found. She was unable to hear my cries for help. So I took the "matter" into my own hand. Am I a good father? Yes. But a hero? Yeah, probably. I just did what needed to be done.


Other news, yes, we had a predicament earlier this week. Several spiders have been spotted around the house. 1 under maddox's crib, 1 under his changing pad and a couple in the hallway around his room. Some said brown recluse, but I'm no biology major. Really the only thing I am when it comes to spiders is a wuss major. I don't like them. They don't like me. But now that I'm a dad, and a husband, certain things are expected of me. So I killed them. I also called pest control services , and the price range for their mercenary services came in around $600 for Orkin and about the same for their local competition. No joke. So, for the record, I'm also a cheap-ass... so we sacrificed a little safety and well being by me taking matters into my own hands. I went to Lowe's and bought some stuff and already have found 2 spiders dead and no traces of their buddies anywhere. Scoreboard: Cody 4, Spiders 0. Deal with it spiders!


Maddox news, he's gotten so big. Almost 1 year old now. Where has the time gone? Here's a quick hit of his likes and dislikes.


LIKES:

1. Socks (preferably mine)
2. Cars. He likes to push them all around the house.
3. Balls. He can actually throw the balls to me know. He's been able to for the past few weeks. He's an animal. So far, he can throw a ball at about 2 miles/hour, but I expect this to increase with time.
4. Swinging with dada or mama on a big boy swing. (Infant swing works too, but he likes it if we are with him.)
5. Sliding down the slide with dada or mama, then climbing back up the slide on his own.
6. Funny faces Nicole and I make at him.
7. Cheese crackers.
8. Handing us toys and grunting.
9. Being on my shoulders while I'm moving around.

DISLIKES:

1. Being left at daycare.
2. Falling face first onto a hard surface (at daycare). Get it together Children's Choice!
3. Fear of failure? Really, he's been great lately, so I'm out of dislikes so this one and the following ones are just fluff.
4. Fear itself.
5. Monsters.
6. New York Yankees.
7. Man-eating sharks.
8. Disappointment.
9. Gas prices.

That's all for now. Here's an update on the pictures. Hang in there... there's a lot of them.

Banana Max

Here's Maddox man-handling a banana for dinner. Like I said in my previous post, Nicole and I think it's really funny, but we are his parents, so we would.

Dada Day

Hey all. Didn't have a chance to post on Sunday, because we were living the dream. Sunday after church we went out for lunch and Sunday night was my niece Molly's 3rd birthday party. So it was an event filled day to say the least. Nicole was asking me what were my favorite things about being a dad, so I've compiled a list.

Favs:

1. Maddox crawling on me while playing. Not sure why, but it is one of the best feelings in the world. Especially when there's no good reason for him to be crawling on you. All his toys may be on the other side of the room, but for some reason, he's got to take a route the leads right over my neck.
2. Maddox smiling when he sees me come home after work. Occasionally I'll get a squeal and an arm flap from the sheer excitement of it all. And honestly, how often does this happen to you in life? Most people (including Nicole), give me the "Oh great look" when seeing me. Or the "Look at this guy" look. Thanks for breaking the mold Max.
3. Max reaching for me to hold him.
4. Making him giggle is one of my new passions. For those that know my son, he's an easy smiler, but a hard laugher. You have to work for it if you want him to laugh. He appreciates the effort with smiles, but a giggle is hard to come by.
5. Watching him grow up. It's bitter sweet. I don't know where the time went, but I truly love seeing him accomplish even the most mundane things. Oh, he grunts when he's pooping now? I LOVE HIM!
6. Maddox kissing/biting. He's got one form of love, and that is in the form of a wet kiss-bite. Feel the teeth, feel the love.
7. Him pretending to feed me, only to snatch his hand back and eat whatever he was teasing me with, right in front of my face.
8. The spontaneous river dance like kicking while changing a diaper is just about as funny as it gets. Naked, with a shirt on, flat on his back, but yet kicking his legs like he's dancing on hot coals. Truly greatness.
9. This will sound weird, but sometimes I'm kind of happy he wakes up at night and I get to rock him back to sleep. 1.) because I'm so good at it. and 2.) because working does not leave enough time in the day for me and my son. I miss him some days.
10. Some days, he's most content with me holding him. He'll dig his hands into my collar and hold on, then just stare out at the world and take it all in. I think this may be the best. What a son we've got.
11. Seeing Nicole as a mother. She's pretty much like everything else she does in life, she's a bulldog. She's a really good one. I'm proud of her and happy that Maddox will get to have her as a mama.

Not so Favs:

1. Getting pee-finger.
2. Nicole and I have a game going currently. Whomever gets peed on last, is it. Currently I'm it. And I don't like it.
3. Making baby cry. This can be accomplished by either dropping things on baby's head, or dropping baby on baby's head. This is followed shortly by a crinkled up bottom lip and a look of betrayal from Maddox. Easily the worst feeling in the world. Worse than that, he's telling on me now. He can be completely calm, then Nicole will come in and ask what happened, and it starts all over again. Like he's intentionally hamming it up for Nicole so she'll know what I did.
4. The inconvenient pooper. Sometimes poop shows up at all the wrong times. Lunch dates with family, while trying to buy a car at a dealership, etc.
5. Watching Maddox eat. He's eats like a cobra. Everything in his mouth at once, choking it down.
6. Max in daycare. Even though it's good for him to socialize, I still don't like it.
7. Sick babies. They give you the betrayal look 24/7 until they feel better. And telling them "Hey, this isn't my fault.", doesn't help at all.
8. Lastly, so I can end with more favs than non-favs... I don't like seeing Maddox grow up. It's happening too fast, and I don't like it.

Once YouTube get's their act together, I'll post a cool video of Maddox eating, so we can all see how big he's gotten. Nicole and I find it really funny, but I'm sure it's only funny because we are his parents. Till then, love you guys.

Being Pork Chop

The picture above is the face of our baby Maddox demonstrating that he is indeed a "Pork Chop". I know everyone was wondering about the nickname, but, I think the picture captures it all. This face is really why we started calling him "Pork Chop". It may not make sense at first, but just stare long enough, and it will come. Maddox has had quite a few nicknames to date, but this one seems like it will stick for awhile. At least until he does something strange to garner a new one.

To bring everybody up to speed, Maddox has been saying "Da-da" quite a lot lately. Well, this past week he added "ma-ma" to his list of words, as well as "ba-ba" and "nan-na". So, if we are keeping score, here is his current vocabulary:

• Da-da
• Ma-ma
• Ba-ba
• Nan-na
• uh, uh, uhhhhhhh!
• Bear sound (ahhh)
• A squeel sound
• All of the above 5 times louder than normal
• rasberry (not the actual word, but the noise your tongue makes when it just out of your mouth and sprays spit at everybody).

He's practically a literary genius. I'm not really bragging, but it's true. We all know it.

So, other than the words, he's moving around quite a bit better. He crawled all the way from his bedroom to the sun room where all his toys are. He's standing up on everything now as well. He used to just stand up on me when he played, but now, if it is stable enough to allow him to make it all the way up, he'll stand up on it. If it isn't stable enough, he'll fall over trying, then get pissed when he's stuck on one of his toys and can't get back upright. Sure, he cries, but I don't think the cries are cries of frustration so much as cries of disappointment that his toy has let him down. He has high expectations for all of us, really. His expectations of me are really going to take a ding when he figures out that his da-da: (a.) loves A&M so much that he was actually watching women's softball this past weekend to cheer on A&M (b.) admits to going to the movie theatre to watch a/few Star Trek movies while in junior high school and (c.) met his mother on the internetz. Oh, and (d.) has knowingly worn a black and a brown sock simultaneously because he was tired of looking for a "match", which is really subjective. I found a match that worked for me, okay?

Okay, on to the likes and dislikes for this installment:

Likes

1. Cars. He is really into cars right now. Pushes them all around the house.
2. Choking hazards, in his mouth or hand, but preferably in his mouth.
3. Dancing. He dances to all music, even the "in your head, to your own beat" kind. Oh, and he does have rhythm, at least to the music we can hear.
4. Holding da-da or ma-ma's hand while they are driving.
5. Fruit roll-ups.

Dislikes

1. Head hitting the side of the bathtub, more than once.
2. Being tired.
3. Da-da walking a way when we drops him off at daycare. This is seriously the worst part of being a parent. Today he made me hold him while I filled out the appropriate paperwork. I was able sneak out after distracting him by a pointy, spikey rubber ball. But usually, he's on me like a spider monkey.
4. Carrots.
5. Not being allowed to roll-over on the changing pad.

Here's the updated photos for everybody. Hope you enjoy. Love you guys.

Maddox Mantooth

Sorry for the long time between posts again. There's a nice ebb and flow to my work life and home life. I'm always busy with one, then not busy with either for a few days, then busy again. At least it has rhythm to it though. So much has happened in the past few weeks. I'm starting to realize a rhythm with babies also. It's starting to seem like every 2 or 3 weeks, I wake up and find that Maddox is almost a completely different baby, doing and saying different things. I'm sure he is making little advances every day that go unnoticed, it's probably just that I'm still trying to cope with the changes he made over the last 2 weeks. Maybe I'm just always trying to catch up to where he is currently, maybe this is the case for all parents... maybe that's why their babies never grow up. I know this is the case for my parents. I still get reminded to put gas in my car!!

So here are some of Maddox's achievements to date (or at least the ones I know about). He crawls much faster than he used to. He can pull himself up on chairs, toys and parents. He can't quite stand on his own, but if he has something to brace him, he can stand. He definitely knows now that things have an order to them. Like he has certain toys (blocks) that go in a specific red box. If you put something in there that isn't supposed to be there, he takes it out for you. He'll put stuff in there on occasion, but only for a second or two before he pulls it out, because it obviously doesn't belong. And most importantly, he is cutting 4 top teeth at the same time. He's practically a shark.

One of the biggest achievements to date is that this past week he has started to talk to us, as in have conversations with us. Except that most of the talking, outside of the grunting that he does, is done with his hands. It usually goes like this (and I'll sub in what it looks like he's wanting to say, so you can get the gist of it):

Max: "Uh." (both hands open, palms up, like "I'm sitting down. Why am I sitting down".)
Parents: "Hi. What's going on?"
Max: "Uhhh." (hands out, palms still up, "Uh, why am I sitting down?")
Parents: "Hi, how are you?"
Max: "UH. Uh." (hands still out but moving up and down with palms up, "I should be being held right now. But instead, I'm sitting. Why is that?")
Parents: "Wow. Look at you."
Max: "UHHHHHHHH" (hands doing the same, "Am I speaking a different language, or are you a complete idiot? Which is it? I'm waiting....")
Parents: "Oh. How are you?"
Max: "Uh, uh". ("Seriously?")

So that's a little glimpse of the happenings lately. I'll try to catch it on video sometime for everybody. You can make your own assumptions about what it is he is trying to say. But whatever it is, he's pretty emphatic about it.

Here's a quick list of his likes and dislikes at the moment:

Likes:

1. Juice.
2. Oyster crackers.
3. Finger puppets from Ikea.
4. Crawling on daddy while he plays.
5. Pulling a Hispanic girl's hair at day care. (Her mom fixes it for her everyday before taking her to daycare, and Maddox loves it!")
6. Grinding his 2 bottom teeth together with is top tooth that just came in. For the record, it makes the worst sound ever, which is why I think he likes to do it. It's literally like nails on a chalk board.
7. Bath time.

Dislikes:

1. Carrots.
2. Bedtime.
3. Not getting to play with his sippy cup at dinner.
4. Not being allowed to put choking hazards in his mouth.
5. Hunger.
6. Being gradually weened.
7. Sleeping in his own bed when our bed is so close.
8. Cutting 4 teeth at the same time.

Here's some pics:

Who wants a flip-flop?

What a difference a few days make. Maddox is now crawling, as you could see from the last post. He is saying da-da a lot. Even ba-ba. Ma-ma is not even in the picture. So, a quick look at the scoreboard will reveal Cody 1, Nicole 0. I know, I know... she's not acknowledging the fact he's saying da-da, but it's okay. The score is what it is. Also, he's pulling himself up on things. Mainly me while I lay on the floor while he plays. He is pulling himself up so much that we had to lower his bed down in the crib, so he doesn't fall out. Because that would be what he would do. Whatever it takes to get him in our bed at night, he'll do. At this point in his life, I'd call this is passion. That and rubber duckies. Technically he has time for 2 passions, and as his parents, we are committed to letting him pursue his passions, so we encourage him, so, whatever. Basically he isn't a baby any more. He's turning into a boy and I'm left wondering where the last 9 months went. What was I doing the whole time!

In other news, Nicole and I have decided to take a child and infant CPR class. Mostly because of 2 things:

The first, when he eats, I can barely keep myself together. I know he's technically 9 months old, but in my mind, he just started eating cheerios a few weeks ago. So every little cough or any random pause in breathing, while he eats drives me insane. "Is he choking... when's he going to breath. Nicole, let him finish that bite. He's got too many cheerios in his mouth. Wait, let him eat. How did he get so many cheerios in there!! I can't take it! I'm freakin' out here!". It really is agony. Hopefully I'll get myself together before his first date with a girl, otherwise he's going to have "issues" later in life.

The second, I am coordinated about a lot of things, but when it becomes baby time, I'm a complete spaz. Take a look at my track record. Who here has dropped a remote on a sleeping baby's head? (ME). Who here has dropped a baby face first into his car seat? (That's me). Who here has almost dislocated a baby finger while putting a shirt on? (Definitely me). And also, let's get this out in the open. Sweeping a baby's mouth is a myth. It doesn't work. Here's what happens when I do it. Fat finger jammed into the mouth of a baby that is partially choking on an object visible only to babies, results in said object being jammed further down the throat of a baby. It is easily the most terrifying thing that has happened to me. Max found a piece of plastic on the floor... how he found it I will never now... but he was choking on it. I go to sweep his mouth, because in theory, I've heard it works. And the situation gets worse. Fast forward to the end and I'm taking him to Nicole, who is in the shower, and I'm all... "He's choking on something and I can't get it out!!!!". She saved the day. Apparently the water in the shower forced him to swallow it like a pill. Good job Nicoles!

So long story short, I'm taking a class. Will it help me? I really hope so, but I'm skeptical. The one thing I think it will help with, I bet it will take the edge off when it comes time to help baby. I'll be less apprehensive. I might get so cavalier that I sweep his mouth for no reason at all. If he even cringes at peas, I'll have them out of there so fast!

Okay, so here are his current likes and dislikes:

Likes:

1. Flip-flops (Mine or Nicole's). He likes to eat them.
2. Nana's face. He likes to eat it also.
3. Other baby's pacifiers. Preferably tied around other baby's neck. It's kind of like a delivery.
4. Climbing on me while he plays.
5. The monkey in his crib. (Kyle Fields)
6. Rolling over on the changing pad.

Dislikes:

1. Bed time. His long time nemesis.
2. When his face meets the plastic part of his car seat.
3. Waking up in his own bed.
4. Not being allowed to roll-over on the changing pad.

Falling Down on the Job

Here's some older photo's that I should have posted by now. A lot of these are at the Dallas Arboreteum during the whole "Dallas Blooms" fiasco. Sorry for the delay... but I did bring video of Max crawling, so we'll call it even.