Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Max rolled over...oh yes he did!

yesterday while doing our daily "tummy time" Max flipped himself over from his tummy over to his back.
It was so impressive really. It's a milestone and I hear it's necessary for him to learn to walk - so that's good news that he is learning this new trick.



on to some photos from the last week:

this one is just showing off a onsie that was painted by someone at my baby shower. We had each person there paint one for Max. It took him a while to fit into them because he was so small when he was born...but now - he's rockin it.
And those cute leggings were knitted by my friend Amy. they are SO dang cute!!!




Here is a photo Jerry took that's one of my favorites. Both of my kids near me.
Pretty girl has been sleeping like that for YEARS and I'm so glad she hasn't stopped since her "baby brother" came home.



this was taken 2 days ago at a park in Pasadena. It was 101 degrees out and we were a bit crabby because of the heat.




Every other Friday Max's grandparents - Dee Dee and Richie come over to visit him.
Here are two photos of them - one of Grandma Dee Dee feeding Max and the other was an epic moment of Grandpa Richie sweeping. um...I've actually never seen him sweep in my life - so I HAD to take a photo of it.
He swept the entire house for me. It was so sweet of him.





The other day a friend of mine said " his Down syndrome characteristics are showing more these days"
um...ok. So I didn't realize it at the time - but I didn't like that. He son is sick all the time and it would be like me saying " your son looks more sickly now then he did a month ago ". I mean really? Do you want to really say that to someone who has a baby who has Ds?? I'm certain she didn't mean to do harm. But it gave me another F***ing opportunity for growth. And offers me another situation to express to others what works and what doesn't for parents of a child.
In general - I don't think any parent wants any friend of there's to point out things that may seem different.

And as far as Max goes I just think/ know he is beautiful.
I think hearing this from others just makes me feel bad. And there's more to life then pointing out what it is that makes Max different. How about noticing what is wonderful about him???

I know I will have to deal with this for the rest of my life and Max's life so I figure I might as well start to be his Advocate now - when he is young and get that muscle flexing in his honor!

GO MAX GO!!!!!

We love you and think you are perfect just the way you are and we think you are beautiful. You are following your own markers, growth charts, milestone markers, etc and I love that about you.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

We just love to look at your pictures of Max. Having professional photographers for parents I'm sure helps a bit, but he is just a perfect angel. I love every bit of "how he looks". Steve and I melt and Akiva jumps out of our arms to try and grab him. Lev, well, he's not that into babies but even he says "yes, he is cute" when I am oohing and ahhing and he comes running. True, he would rather look at dinosaurs, but heh, his 30 minutes on the screen is OVER and I can do what I want. LOL His character is evident. Quite.
Congrats on rolling over, that is a significant accomplishment at his age!
Interested to hear your review of the Jenny McCarthy book.
Something that helped us when we were making these decisions was the on-line class by Sherri Nakken called "Childhood Diseases, reality, care and treatment"
http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/childdiseaseclass.htm
She has other classes and information, but this one in particular was good and different to me in that, just making the decisions to vaccinate or not is not enough and we still are going to worry either way (!) so we better know what the real deal is in terms of what are we vaccinating against. This helped us to make what we felt were more informed choices in terms of doing the whole cost benefit analysis that our logical brains craved.
She's definitely anti-vaccine, but still a wealth of info.
Much much love to you. Loved the picks of your mom and dad as well. So sweet.
~Claire

Nicki D. said...

OMG!!!! Max has a fabulous new trick!!! I wanna see it!! What a proud moment it must have been for you and him! How totally exciting.

And I love how big he looks in DeeDee's arms. He's a big boy now.

If I were there I would give him a big kiss right on his cheek!
xoxon

MC said...

rolling over is HUGE! :)

it's probably not that he looks "more downs" but that his "uniquely Max" features are coming out. Matilda's face changed so much in those early months, and she looks so different now than she did then. he looks darn cute to me!!

i love checking in on your journey--it's not ever going to be a boring one, that's for sure. your little dude will keep you on your toes, just like all babies do. :)

Katye said...

Great job on the rollover! Go MAX!

I love seeing the photos of your parents. They are the perfect doting grandparents. Ours start arriving in 2 weeks through May and June. We might also take a trip down to Sacramento to get the baby into the Great-grandmother's arms and see the 2.5 tons of family BP has down there. Perhaps a coordinated trip? I can never remember how far Sac is from LA. I am sure it's AGES, bah.

Keep on rocking the advocate role there girl, it suits you. It will be a challenge for everyone to shift their mindset from seeing (commenting on) pathology to focusing on the perfectness of what is there regardless of difference. As I recall, variety is the spice of life! Life would be way less spicy without all these babies!

Viva la Spice!