Max Isaac L's online diary (December 1995-March 1996)

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!

Tuesday, March 26th

Here are three quick and funny Max stories in the meantime.

Sangeeta, a friend of Lisa's from medical school, was visiting with her spouse Michael a week or so ago. Sangeeta introduced Michael to Max by saying, ``He has the same name as your Dad.'' Max replied, ``Dada?''

The next day I was explaining to Lisa's parents why Max says ``na na'' instead of ``banana.'' I said, ``Basically, Max doesn't use any words with more than 2 syllables.'' Max replied, ``ba ba ba ba!''

Recently, I was lying on my back on the floor, and my sweatshirt hiked up a little revealing my bare belly. Max walked over to me and said, ``cakn cakn cakn!'' while tickling my belly.

What's new with me?! (3/16/96)

Saturday, March 16th

Yesterday was very special. Max and I returned to ``Discovery Zone'' with Lauren, Molly, Anne, and Jonah. All the kids had a great time. Molly went up and down a sliding board all by herself. Jonah walked around the entire place at record speeds. Max enjoyed sitting in the ``ball pit'' and pushing the balls around with his hands and his chest. The kids enjoyed playing with each other as well. Max and Molly held hands and played ``Ring around the Rosie'' with Max falling down at the end. Molly chased around an older girl causing Lauren to lament not being able to make an older sister for Molly. I don't think I can quite capture the excitement of the day, but, when we got home, Max needed a 3 hour and 12 minute nap to recover!

In other news, Max made his second two-block tower recently; he plays with his little activity center and can press the push button, flip the wide switch, but can't turn the dial switch or the rotary dial; he pulls the string on his musical dog to hear the song; he sticks out his tongue without saying ``bleh.''

Friday, March 15th

Max is indeed walking (jogging now), as you guessed. His talking is steadily improving. Today he revised his pronunciation of ``egg'' from ``eg-GAH'' to simply ``egg'' and ``up'' from ``up-PAH'' to ``up.'' A few days ago his word for ``banana'' changed from ``bah-bah'' to ``neh-neh'' (a little better). No, he hasn't learned the quadratic formula yet, but I have been playing some simple math-like games with him. I make the sound ``cha'' some number of times (between one and five) and he echoes it back to me. He consistently gets it right if I do two, three, or four ``cha''s. Five is still a bit beyond him. I've tried the same game with younger babies and I haven't met any that could go beyond two. I'm not entirely sure this is a ``math'' skill, but it's probably good for something.

Thursday, March 14th

Lisa in the process of finishing up residency (Ob/Gyn). (Her first year of residency was when I was at CMU.) Carrying Max for as long as she did under the stress she was under was no mean feat. After Max was born, Lisa stayed home for the 3 months he was in the hospital and then for 2 more months after he got home. Eventually she was told to she needed to go back to work and at that point (a little over a year ago), I took over.

I've been home with Max almost every day; we go to playgroup and Gymboree and even swimming lessons last fall. It's been a pretty amazing experience. I worked on my thesis during nap time and left Max with a babysitter for a few hours each week so I could go to school to catch some meetings, use the printers and visit the library. Max is such a great baby that I was able to finish my dissertation pretty on time without too much stress.

Max is turning out to be a great little guy, so staying home with me hasn't broken him. And it's been great fun for me!

Tuesday, March 12th

Max is doing great and seems to be feeling much better. He has been acting a little funny lately when waking up from his afternoon nap (thrashing and fussing for about 20 minutes), so I'll be watching him closely.

Max can play an auditory repetation game up to about 4 (I say ``la la la,'' he says ``la la la''...). I wouldn't call it counting, though.

Max likes it when I juggle, and sometimes picks up my clubs and shakes them in the air. It's pretty cute.

Wednesday, February 28th

This is a non-traditional entry.

Well, I finished my disseration and successfully defended it. I ended up buying Max a very cool Tonka truck to thank him for letting me do the work I had to do.

Max had his ``18 month'' checkup today. He is actually 19 months from birth and 16 months adjusted age. The pediatrician said a few things that were a little hard to hear: Max's ear may always look funny, he may never grow to be full size, his hypospadius repair doesn't look great, we shouldn't give him a bottle to help put him to sleep. Still, I think the pediatrician was pretty impressed with how nicely Max is developing. He asked me about Max's vocabulary, so tonight, Lisa and I sat down to try to document it. We decided to break things down into categories that correspond to his level of comprehension.

Things he can name

Momma, Dadda, Grandma (baba, bapa), Grandpa (bapa), cookie, cracker (cackn), pickle (gahkn), brocolli (gackn, bakcn), cheese (keez), keys (keez), bottle (botn), banana (baba), ball (bleh), balloon (bblun-ah), egg (eh-gah), pasta (papa), pizza (papa), berries (baba), crayon (cackn), dog (eh-eh), jelly (yeh-yeh), bear (buh), cat (buh), dust buster (brroom), car, truck (eeeehhhhh) toys and real ones, book (baba), bunny (sniffs), flower (sniffs), piccolo (cahkn), bulb (baba), bib (buh), Grover (rohver), Big Bird (bih-bih), pots and pans (eh-gah), Max (mah), Jennifer (na na, na na na), tongue (bleh), lion (aaahh), cow (moo), chicken (gahkn) both food and animal, duck (khh khh), snow (poo), Pearl (poo), apple (bah pah), Gymbo (baba)

Things he can point to given their name

computer, window, nose, hair, toes, mouth, teeth, eyes, cheeks, belly, X's belly (etc.), Ernie (etc.), Molly, Jonah, window, tree, hair, xylophone, shoes, feet, wagon, floor

Names he can repeat

yellow (yeh-yeh), blue (boo) sometimes, Ph.D. (aytch-tee), Cookie Monster (cakn), Who knew? (ooh rooh), Unsinkable Molly Brown song (ba baba bah bah bah bah bah), truck backing up sound, tick tock song, oh boy (ah bah), uh oh (uh uh), up (uh-pah), backpack (ba-pa), shampoo (heh PAH), (doesn't say finger anymore)

Things he can do on request

march, jump, reach for ceiling, get the X, kiss X (sometimes), make nice to X, kick, drink from cup (sloppily), how big is Max? (baah bah), knock (hand open), hammer (with hand), yes? (nods), no? (shakes head), I don't know (shrugs and purses lips), cry (makes sad face and says ``ehh''), rock, blow kiss, wave hello and goodbye, peek-a-boo, roll over, ready for snuffle? (lays down to be tickled), dance, pounce, talk on telephone (hand to ear), smell X, clap hands, sit, lay kehpie, brush hair, brush teeth, hands up, yawn (eeh), give X to Y

Wednesday, February 14th

His favorite activity lately is climbing onto things (short tables, toy chests, low chairs) and standing up on them. I guess he likes the perspective it gives him. He also seems to like when I carry him in a way that lets his feet dangle against the ground. He's really fun to have around.

Sunday, February 11th

His walking is getting more and more natural. He still looks like a little monkey when he trots along, but at least he does it without any visible effort. Yesterday, he began experimenting with walking backwards. I had tried to get him to learn about walking backwards a month or so ago by saying ``Max, walk backwards,'' while pushing him off balance slightly with my fingers on his chest. Unfortunately, he made the wrong association and simply poked his tummy whenever I asked him to walk backwards. Last night, though, he seemed genuinely interested in the walking backwards part.

He's also getting very tricky with climbing and balance; he enjoys finding things to stand and sit on. Some examples include throw pillows, a short ``writing'' desk toy, and his wicker toychest. It always looks dangerous when he puts himself on one of these perches, but the look on his is so proud that I can't bring myself to make a big deal about it. Of course, I'll kick myself the first time he gets hurt, but I hope it won't come to that.

Verbally, he's made very very slow progress over the past few months. The only ``new'' word that I've noticed lately is that he has started to say ``burr'' (with his lips puckered out) for bear instead of ``ba ba,'' like he had been doing. This is especially important because he uses ``ba ba'' as a catch-all word for anything that starts with a ``B'' (banana, bunny, book, etc.). He's starting to understand compound phrases a bit better---I can ask him to go to his room and bring back a toy, for example. He did one funny thing a few days ago in which I said ``Dada kiss Max's head'' and then kissed his head, then I said ``Max kiss Dada's hand?'' and he thought for a moment and thrust his hand toward my face. Interesting. It is likely that word ordering isn't carrying much information to him at this point.

Last little thing to mention is something he started doing yesterday. Lisa had him out of the house all day (they went to Mystic aquarium) and I was home working. Max was happy to see me when he got back, and he walked over to where I was working on the computer, put his chin on my leg and smiled up at me. I hope he stays sweet like this forever!

Oh yeah, also, he had his first bout of throwing up (sorry for mentioning it). He was so sad, but afterwards we got him cleaned up and he felt better and went to sleep in my and Lisa's arms with a smile on his face.

Saturday, February 3rd

He's doing great! Some of his more recent tricks include pretending his toys are ``dust busters'' (he just loves those things), and saying ``Grover'' with his lips puckered out (``ROW-foo'').

What's new with me?! (2/3/96)

Sunday, January 21st

Lisa, Max, and I just returned from a trip to NJ. We saw a close friend of Lisa's who is now roughly 25 weeks pregnant. I found it weird to think that her baby (still inside) is bigger than Max was when he was born. Lisa's friend's pregnancy is progressing very normally and it is likely that she'll have no problems at all. While we are very, very happy for her, I can't help feeling sort of envious. Lisa enjoyed being pregnant and I couldn't wait to feel Max kick from inside her belly. (Hmm, that's a dangling particle, if I ever saw one.) Maybe next time.

Wednesday, January 17th

Max is doing very well. He was fairly indifferent to the snow, although I think he enjoyed watching it fall one day when we were outside in it. He doesn't like when I put on his snow suit, though; I think it's a bit confining for him. We're about to have Max's final Olin Mills picture taken today. I got email from a stranger yesterday, who said that the picture of Max on the home page made him cry. The stranger said that he had been watching Max's web page last year, lost track of it, and then rediscovered it to find that Max was growing up beautifully. It was very touching.

Friday, January 12th

Because of Max's challenging beginning, he is eligible for the state's Early Intervention program. It's a service that try to identify deficits as quickly as possible, so that the kids can get the help they need to be productive members of society. When we first started out in the program, we had a developmental evaluation that found him slightly delayed for his adjusted age. We were concerned that a slight malformation of his thumb would cause him problems later, and we discovered that an infection on one ear (associated with the strawberry birthmark he has there) was making it so that he refused to turn his head in one direction. Anyhow, the results of the first evaluation were concerning.

We stayed in the program, and I believe a second mini-evaluation at 4 1/2 months showed that he was catching up with his standing, but still needed work on sitting and rolling. Recently, at 12-13 months, he experienced a burst of development (walking, talking, responding to requests, etc.) so I was very excited at his 14 1/2 month evaluation that he would do very well. Apparently, the major deficit they discovered at this evaluation was ball throwing. Most babies his age can catch a rolling ball and either roll or throw it back. Max and I don't play that game at all, and so he flunked that part of the test. So we've got homework again, but it doesn't seem nearly as serious as the earlier stuff. In fact, he scored well enough in related areas that the ball throwing simply brought him down to the low part of the average range for gross motor skills---no significant delay.

The high point of the evaluation was the cognitive test. Max was able to accomplish three tasks that most babies his age can't do. The first involved placing circular and square puzzle pieces into their correct places. He did the circle very easily, but needed to be encouraged to get the square into place. The next task was to find a way to get to a toy that was behind a piece of plexiglass. Max put his hands on the plexiglass (something he had never experienced before), then found the edge and pulled it open like a door. Once the toy was exposed, he didn't bother to go after it; I guess it wasn't enough of a challenge at that point. The third task went like this. The evaluator (a school psychologist) placed a small toy in her hand and made a fist around it. She then put both hands behind her back briefly and then brought them back for Max to see. Max then reached out and touched the hand that had the toy in it. She repeated this 3 times, switching hands each time. He got 3 for 3. The psychologist was very impressed.

From what I've seen at home, he might have gotten a bit lucky on the test, but I'm willing to believe that he's a smart little guy. In spite of meeting the program's requirements in 4 ways (spent time on a ventilator, more than 2 months in the hospital, birthweight under 3 pounds, born more than 2 months early), the Early Intervention people feel he no longer needs to be part of their program. Yay! I feel like I should throw him a little graduation party. Jacelyn's invited, of course.

Wednesday, January 10th

Max is doing very well, I think. I had him in today for an evaluation. Apparently his development is perfectly normal for a 14.5 month old (the age he should be). The only category in which he was outside the normal range was in cognitive skills (problem solving, short term memory) in which he was slightly above the norm. So we're pleased that he seems to have survived his difficult beginning totally intact.

What's new with me?! (1/5/96)

Thursday, January 4th

This is not an official entry because I haven't emailed it to anyone. However, no one would want to receive a message like this anyway!

Max's tricks (1/4/95)

Today he learned to say ``ma ma'' and he means it!

Monday, December 11th

As of a day or so ago, Max is walking! In addition, he has figured out how to stand up by pushing off the floor. I'm told that this is usually a much later development, so it is likely that Max was ready to walk weeks ago. He was probably holding off until he fully recovered from his surgery.

Psycholinguistically, he's making some serious strides. He has words for: bottle, cracker, crayon, Dad, Mom, balloon, hairbrush, baby, purple, pasta, pizza, keys, cheese, and a few other things. I don't remember whether or not this is common, but he seems to be in a ``homophone'' stage; in that he gives several words that he uses differently the same pronunciation. Some of the pairs are fairly reasonable (cheese and keys are both ``KEE kee'' or ``KO kee'', pasta and pizza are both ``PA pa''), others are less so (crayons and crackers are both ``KA kn''), and others are just unforunate (Mom and Dad are both ``da da'').

In any event, he seems to be right on track, for which I'm very glad. It means I haven't ruined him yet!

What's new with me?! (12/8/95)

Friday, December 8th

We're doing ok. Max has a great personality! He enjoys my stupid jokes and prat falls and funny faces. He likes being tickled and wrestled. The big news is that he started walking yesterday! It's hardly perfected, but he can get around pretty well. It's adorable.

Surgery-wise, on Tuesday we had the last followup appointment from his recent urological surgery. The surgeon seemed very impressed with Max's healing, so it looks like we're totally in the clear. There are no more surgeries scheduled or anticipated!

I don't have an official definition of walking, but I would say that he started walking last night. Very exciting!