Max Isaac L's online diary (August 1995-November 1995)

This diary is pulled together from updates that my dad sent to his friends about my progress. Don't just read --- send him a note!

The entries here are arranged from most recent to least recent. That way you can find out the latest news easily!

Wednesday, November 29th

Max is doing well. There are signs that he's slowly gearing up to walk (standing for longer and longer periods), and his vocabulary continues to grow (his most easily identifiable words are ``bottle'', ``cracker'', ``dada'', and ``balloon'', though none of the sound exactly the way a grown up would say them--- they sounds more like ``Bah-TN'', ``cra-kN'', ``yah yah'', and ``b-b-b-b-bloo''). He definitely understands a lot of different phrases and requests though, so it's getting to be more fun to just hang around and chat with him (admittedly, the possible subject area is limited).

Well, we braved the snow. Not sure how much we got, but it was on the order of an inch or so. Max isn't walking yet, but he's been standing for longer and longer periods voluntarily. Max ate some snow today, but was otherwise unimpressed with the stuff.

Tuesday, November 28th

Remember when we heard that talk about the grey parrot (Alex?) that could respond to all sorts of verbal questions? One of the things I remember our colleagues complaining about was that the parrot tended to answer questions with 80 percept reliability and they couldn't understand why, if the parrot was really understanding, it would consistently be inconsistent. I think I have more insight into this now. Max also seems to do his verbal comprehension tricks roughly 80 percent of the time.

But what a set of tricks he's doing! Now I can say things to him like ``Where's Mickey Mouse?'' and he'll scamper around the room looking for the stuffed animal. He'll crawl over, grab the doll, and drag it back to me. He correctly distinguishes between ``Bring me the doggie'' and ``What does a doggie say?'' (We've got an English sheepdog stuffed animal that he just adores.)

On the ``output'' side, his pronunciation is getting a bit clearer so that I can distinguish between some of the different ``ba ba'' words. He reliably uses ``ba ba'' to mean book (and probably several other things), and demands to be read to often. He even will throw mini tantrums sometimes if I'm not responding quickly enough to his request. He'll now turn pages when I ask him to, as long as I hold the book in a way that the next page is easy to grab. We have one book that involves lifting up little flaps to see what's underneath and he's getting very good at that.

He's anticipating correct responses to situations better, including lifting his hands up when I need to slide his high-chair tray into place, and putting his arms and legs into his clothes. He's been picking on some of the other babies when he seems them. He seems more aggressive to the girls than the boys, but that might just be coincidence.

Walking-wise, nothing much has happened since you saw him take those 2 or 3 steps from Lisa to me at Leslie's house. He has repeated that sort of thing maybe twice. Yesterday I found him free standing a bit more than he does on an average day. He needs to start walking soon: the next Gymboree semester starts in just a little over a month and walking is a prereq. Gosh, what if he doesn't make the cut???

What's new with me?! (11/27/95)

Tuesday, November 21st

Here's a brief Max update. He's doing well, though he's been congested for about a week. Took him to the Discovery Zone (indoor playground) yesterday and he (and I) had a blast. Very economical, too. Here are some recent stimulus-response tricks he's mastered:

Monday, October 30th

This isn't an official entry, because I didn't email it to anyone. Even so, I thought it was important to include it.

Some stuff he's doing: Moos in response to ``What does a cow say?'', wiggles nose in response to ``What does a bunny say?'' Taught him to pant in response to ``What does a puppy say?'' but this seemed to erase his ability to answer questions about bunnies. He seems to respond properly to ``Where's Daddy's nose?'' and ``Where's Daddy's hair?'' Loves to climb around on the couch cushions. When he's thirsty, he points to his bottle and says ``Bah-TN.'' All his previous other words have blended to become ``bah bah.''

A few weekends ago, we were in NYC for Andy's 30th birthday. We left early to drive home and took a napkin full of chocolate-chip cookies with us. We took a brief stop on the way to the car, and Lisa noticed that Max had a cookie in his hands and was happily eating away. It turned out that he pulled the napkin out of the diaper bag, got a cookie, and situated himself to have a little snack. It was pretty funny.

He comes over and gives a kiss (sometimes with the ``mwahh'' noise) on request. I've been working on teaching him ``hands up!'' and he seemed to finally understand last night when his grandmom asked him to do it. The other night he finally started clapping his hands.

Surgery:

Tuesday, October 24th

Well, I'm also sad right now because Max is still hurting from his surgery. He got his bandages off just now and it made him cry. And changing his diaper alone is a real challenge right now because of all the tubes and gauze and tape...

Friday, October 20th

Max is sleeping off some of the anesthesia. The surgery seemed to go quite well.

What's new with me?! (10/6/95)

Friday, October 6th

It's pretty amazing being home with Max all the time. He's now within a week or two of walking---he can walk with one hand held and he stood unassisted today for 10 straight seconds (a new record). He seems to be imitating words (``Lambchop!'') and understanding simple requests (``May I have the banana, please?''), but I haven't done the necessary experiments to be sure. In any event, he's very happy and (This email message was interrupted by a power failure. Max seemed a little nervous about it, but in retrospect I think was because he was afraid that I was going to put him to bed while he was still hungry.) His behavior is getting more and more sophisticated.

Let's see, aside from that, Max was unfazed by his first Yom Kippur. I thought he would get confused when he tried to feed me a piece of banana at breakfast and I refused it. We took him to services and the temple was set up with closed-circuit TV so we could feed Max lunch from a separate room and still watch the service.

Monday, September 25th

We're celebrating Max's first Rosh Hashana. He's enjoying eating turkey and listening to everyone do the prayers. He's having a great time with his grandparents (Lisa's parents) and he's even giving them kisses on demand. His kisses are improving in that he used to kiss people open mouthed (more of a bite or suck on the cheek) and now he keeps his lips closed. Eventually he'll learn to make the little kissy noise. His walking is improving and now he can move around fairly well holding just one of our hands. He also is beginning to understand how to make block towers, which so far has amounted to using one block to squash another (the top block never stays balanced). He has crawled completely down and up our stairs (about 15 steps), though he doesn't understand how to get himself in position to back down. Last piece of news is that our Tuesday babysitter (the one who let him drop off the changing table) called yesterday to quit. She doesn't understand why I wasn't more thrilled with her so she decided she didn't need the job after all. Stings a little, but it's probably for the best.

Monday, September 18th

Swimming lessons are going fine. They are fairly unstructured. The biggest visible effect that I've seen so far is that he really enjoys splashing. This makes pooltime fun but bathtime quite messy.

Let's see... since I'll probably paste this into his diary, what else is up? I didn't have any bananas in the house this morning and he (I believe) specifically asked for one at breakfast. I can't be sure but I think he said ``na-un?'', which seems to be his word for banana. In other news, he's getting pretty good at one-handed walking; he will imitate short pitch sequences (``HA-ha'') as long as they are descending; he hands things over to us and sometimes shows us things he is playing with; he jumped off the couch headfirst today and landed squarely on his head---didn't bother him at all but I'm going to try to keep him from doing that in the future; he imitating a very cute head-bobbing thing yesterday. There's something more interesting that these but I'm blocking. Oh well.

Saturday, September 16th

Let's see, here's some of his latest stuff. We've had to remove several more low shelves of books because he's into everything now. He's figured out how to open our handleless kitchen cabinets. He's getting better at imitating word sounds (``mama'', ``dada'', ``yum''), and every morning, when I bring him his banana (he eats a whole one every day), he says a word that means ``banana'' (and almost sounds like it). He likes to point at things, usually with his whole arm but sometimes with his pointing finger. He's getting very good at getting up and down on things, though he doesn't seem to want to go backwards off the couch and bed anymore. Swimming lessons and Gymboree are going pretty well (we're into week number 2). Max and I hosted playgroup at our house on Wednesday and that went pretty well---he thought it was pretty funny to have all those babies here. We just had our third set of professional photos taken, and the proofs should be ready next week. His two (almost three) teeth are pretty cute. We almost lost our new babysitter to an unfortunate incident (involving dropping Max) that is hopefully resolved now. His nap schedule has been disrupted and I'm worried that he may have shifted to only needing one nap per day---I just put him down for his second nap and we'll see what happens.

Wednesday, September 13th

I'm bummin' right now because Max's new babysitter quit, citing her belief that I didn't adequately prepare her for the job. I got the message by email late last night and couldn't go back to sleep for several hours. Sigh.

What's new with me?! (9/1/95)

Friday, September 1st

Max and I are visiting NJ at the moment. Lisa will be visiting us and interviewing for jobs while she's down here. At the moment, I am visiting the company that's putting me through grad school and Max is hanging out with Lisa's parents and having a grand old time.

Lately, I've been letting him play with the computer. We have a program called ``baby smash'' that makes shapes and sound effects when he bangs on the keyboard. He seems to like that. He also likes to grab the mouse and click away like mad. When he figures out how to delete the links to his home page, I'll think seriously about shutting it down.

Monday, August 28th

Max is 13 months old, 10 months adjusted age, and he's doing great. Some recent milestones: he ate his first peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he says ``Dada'' quite frequently (he hasn't gotten the ``m'' sound down yet), he licks his lips and makes a popping sound (very cute), he has made a clean dismount from the couch in which he turns and crawls backwards off the edge and puts his feet on the ground, he can knock over small towers of blocks on cue (even if the cue is ``Max, don't knock over the blocks...''), he discovered peek-a-boo and covers his face with a small towel to initiate the play, he crawled through a padded tunnel today when he and I went to visit a Gymboree class. That's about it. His verbalizations are sounding more and more like language and he might be imitating some words but it's hard to tell. In any event, he's working hard and having a great time.

Saturday, August 19th

Max is doing great. His first tooth (bottom, right of center) is now visible to the unaided eye. There are signs that its nextdoor neighbor will be surfacing soon. He has begun participating in some very simple interactive games like ``feed Daddy the napkin'' and ``stand behind the couch and laugh at whoever is sitting there.'' He also recently met a small dog (a Westie) and was highly amused. He chased the dog around and began verbalizing quite expressively. He was so anxious to get at the dog that he even walked a short distance with only one of his hands held. Nothing like an exciting stimulus to hasten development.

Only other thing recently was that he climbed 5 steps in our house before deciding to have a seat and almost tumbling back down (I caught him). We'll try working on getting up and down from the couch before I'll let him do any serious stepping. Currently he prefers to dismount the couch face first (he's actually quite good at it) but I've begun encouraging him to climb down backwards. He understands how to do it once his feet are off but doesn't put himself in that position spontaneously.

Monday, August 7th

Things are going fairly well. We're coming off a very challenging week in which Lisa worked more than 100 hours. As you can imagine, it was pretty grueling for me also. I'm hoping that this week will be better and that I'll get at least a little time to work on my thesis.

Max, for his part, is doing quite well. He's learning to crawl up and down so he can almost mount and dismount from the couch, though not very gracefully. He's fairly cheerful though I think he's about to get his first tooth and that's making him sad some of the time. He's been getting up in the middle of the night for the last few weeks and I'll probably have to do something drastic soon, like let him cry himself back to sleep. That ought to be pretty rough.