Max Isaac L's online diary (May 1995-July 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!

Monday, July 31st

I know I promised to retire this mailing list and I know that many of you have been following Max's progress over this year but as a proud papa, I couldn't resist sending just one more update.

We just celebrated Max's first birthday at his grandmother's house in NJ. Max fed himself some cake, helped open his presents, and all in all acted like a normal 9-12 month old. The guests sat around and watched Max crawl from person to person while making little motorboat sounds and pull himself to standing on anything that stayed still. We also talked about how different things are this July compared to last July. If we only knew how well things would turn out, we would have saved ourselves so much worrying. It was a very special day.

He's now about 17 pounds, having now completed his 4th weight doubling since birth (two in the hospital, two since he's home). He's still a bit small for a 9-month old (his ``adjusted'' age) but his bright eyes and alert expression make people completely oblivious to his special status.

Anyhow, enough kvelling. I just wanted to mark the occassion in a matter fitting the electronic community in which I spend so much of my life.

Yours, Michael

P.S. Max's neonatalogist said that when Max goes to Yale (or wherever) they will co-author a paper on his remarkable development. So it's not just his parents who are impressed! :-)

Monday, July 31st

Last week was pretty exciting for us. Lisa had her first vacation in a year and we took Max with us. The first few days were spent at my cousins' house in Westchester County, NY by the lake. Max loved my cousin's cooking and had a ball in the lake. He enjoyed meeting my extended family. Next the three of us spent 4 days at the beach in NJ. I played with Max in the ocean and he got a great tan. At the end of the 4 days, Max got some sort of virus and ran a fever and got very kvetchy. We took him to Lisa's parents (as planned) with a stop off to Lisa's ex-pediatrician. Max was already feeling better so Lisa and I left for 2 days with just the two of us. It was nice but way too short. We then returned to Lisa's parents' house and celebrated Max's first birthday with our closest relatives. Everyone enjoyed seeing how wonderfully he is developing. We returned home on Sunday and Lisa is on call today (Monday) so we're right back into the swing of things.

Some (perhaps) amusing anecdotes from the trip.

What's new with me?! (7/29/95)

Thursday, July 20th

I'm so sleepy---Max only let me sleep in 1.5 hour blocks last night. And just woke up again... man. I don't know what the deal is. Actually, Max just got some of his hairs cut yesterday, so he looks even older.

Max is doing very very well! I have continued to keep up a running diary (entries about once or week) giving updates on his progress so you can always take a peek there for a ``Max fix.'' He hasn't been weighed in a while but I'm guessing he's over 17 pounds. He's crawling and climbing over everything. The last few days he's been having trouble sleeping and we think it might be because he's getting ready to sprout some teeth and it's making his gums hurt. We're nearing the first anniversary of his birth in about a week. I tend to think of him as being 8 1/2 months old though, because that's where he is developmentally.

Not sure what else to report. I'm finding stay-at-home parenthood to be very challenging and I'm working myself extra hard to be a good dad and a good grad student. It's wearing me down but I'm still in the race at the moment. All three of us (Lisa included) are going to Long Beach Island, NJ next week for our first little family vacation. We all need it. Lisa needs the break from work and I need a break from watching Max alone. I'm looking forward to it.

Thursday, July 13th

Just got back from my first academic conference since Max was born. It was weird being away from him for 6 days and I missed him terribly. It was also weird interacting with professional people, some of whom definitely thought that raising a baby was a waste of my time. I couldn't help feeling that taking care of Max is making it hard for me to keep up in such a highly competitive field. But it's making me more of a real person and I know deep down that it's the right thing to do.

Wednesday, June 28th

(This isn't an official entry since I never sent it to anyone my email. However, I thought it was funny.)

Today, Max and I had an extreme day! First, we went to our first ``play group'' which consisted of about 10 women and me and our babies. It was nice to hang out with other babies and primary care-givers, but it was hard to participate in some of the discussions like ``my husband is such a jerk sometimes'' and ``my breasts did weird things when I was pregnant.''

After play group, Max and I drove through Roger William's Park, site of the barefoot water skiing event in ESPN's Extreme Games. Then we drove to College Hill in Providence and walked down the hill where the Street Luge event had just completed. We finally arrived at the Riverwalk downtown and watched some of the bungee jumping. Lastly we walked back to our car up a very steep hill. What a day!

What's new with me?! (6/19/95)

Monday, June 19th

Yesterday was Father's Day. Lisa was on call so Max and I spent the day together. We went to a pet store to look at the fish but Max was more interested in the doggie squeeze toys that were on display. We went out to lunch at Chili's and Max ate some of my side order of pasta salad all by himself using his hands. That was very cute. We next swung by Ben and Jerry's and Max got me an ice cream cone (Ben and Jerry's offers free cones on Father's Day to people that can prove they are fathers.) Our last stop was at the hospital to visit Lisa and Max's first home, the Special Care Nursery. The nurses remembered him and were very impressed with his progress.

The last week has seen an explosion of new tricks for Max. He is crawling around quite a bit. Tonight, for the first time, he crawled a distance of 4 Max lengths to get to one of his favorite toys. He has been enjoying an electronic drumstick that makes simulated drum sounds when he bangs it. He can stand almost indefinitely while holding onto furniture and is able to pull himself to standing on the couch and several other pieces of furniture. He has traveled about 2 or 3 Max widths while standing holding the back of the couch (just to reach the pull string for the blinds) and tonight in his crib, he pulled himself to standing and then walked sideways from one side of the crib to the other while clinging to the side rail.

Also today he walked a total of 14 steps while holding onto a little stroller-type toy. Though he's been working on it for about a week, tonight he finally figured out how to push himself to sitting from a crawling position. He has been feeding himself Cherios, though not very accurately since once he grabs the little o's, the best he can do is put his whole fist into his mouth. He discovered the ``l'' position of his tongue today and practiced it over and over. He doesn't make the ``l'' noise but he looks pretty funny when he does that with his tongue. He has been babbling something that sounds like ``mbwaah mbwaah mbwaah mbwaah.''

Anyhow, I guess these are all pretty standard baby tricks but I'm amazed at how fast he's picking things up. All of these just started this week and most of them began tonight. Looks like maybe Max is going to be ok after all. What a guy!

Wednesday, June 14th

Max has picked up a few new tricks in the last few days. He fed himself a strawberry slice for lunch today, he just pulled himself from sitting in his crib to standing up holding the railing, last night he started multisyllabic babbling, he can do little ``soldier crawls'' inching forward on his belly, and he has gotten very good at hitting the button on his music box with his hands to make it play songs.

What's new with me?! (6/13/95)

Monday, June 12th

Max is getting very active. He loves to hold my hands and walk around the room. Sometimes he walks so fast it's practically a jog! He's starting to make sounds that are a bit more language-like, such as ``heeeyyy!'' There is some indication that he's learning the imitation game where he'll repeat sounds that I make at him. However, it's still too soon to tell. Everyone here is excited that he's begun reaching for people. For instance, when my sister came to help out last week, the first thing Max did when she picked him up was that he turned to face me and reached with both his arms towards me. I was afraid Jill would be offended but she thought it was adorable.

I took him to the hospital to visit Lisa at work yesterday. The ER nurses thought he was very cute, especially when he started playing with his feet. They thought he looked mostly like Lisa, though lately Lisa has said that she can see more of me in him. We've taken Max to the local pool twice now. He enjoys walking around on the pool deck and the grass but the humidity makes him cranky (and sleepy). He likes seeing the other kids there and enjoys interacting with them.

What's new with me?! (5/30/95)

Tuesday, May 30th

Max is doing well. We had his preemie follow-up appointment and the doctor though he was doing very well. He's 15 pounds, 7.2 ounces and 10th percentile in weight and head circumference. He's still only 5th percentile in length, but it is normal for length to lag for awhile.

Developmentally, he's solidly at at least a 6 month level with some skills at the 7 or 8 month level. The doctor thought this was very good (though I have to admit that I was a little sad to learn that he's not solidly at 7 months). Our next appointment with her is April 1996 when he's 18 months old(!).

One interesting development from over the weekend is that Max can now roll from his back to his front (very impressive). He even did it at the checkup. He prefers rolling over his left shoulder when he's going front to back or back to front. The good news is that he doesn't roll from one end of the apartment to the other yet. The bad news is that the doctor was concerned that he's preferring one side to the other. She was also concerned because he prefers touching things with his right hand to his left. She thinks I should make an effort to get him to be more balanced.

Monday, May 15th

Max has been very portable lately and we've taken him to Stony Brook Long Island overnight (via ferry!), Newport for a weekend, shopping with my parents, and occassional lunches with friends. I bought him a bouncy chair saucer thing this weekend and he loves to play in it. So mostly things are just cruising normally. Lisa has finished oncology (7 weeks of hell for all of us) and still hates work but is getting more time at home and more occassional moments of enjoyment in the hospital. I took Max to the hospital last week and all the nurses in the Special Care Nursery remembered him and were happy to see him doing so well. He also served as an inspiration for some of the parents that have babies there now.

Monday, May 8th

Lisa and I just took a very nice trip with Max. We spent 2 days in Newport and stayed in a little room with a mini kitchen. We walked around the town with him in his stroller or in a ``Snugli'' and he really enjoyed having both of us around and going for walks outside. He seemed to like the ocean but most of all he seems to be a people watcher. Highlights of the weekend include: going out to dinner and feeding him lemon and tomato (he really loved the lemon), watching him laugh when we were listening and dancing to live music (I think the bass tickles his tummy), and turning his stroller into a carriage when he needed to nap after lunch (I didn't even know it would do that and it just came to me).

Monday, May 1st

This was a major weekend for Max, development-wise. Lisa's parents were here through most of these things so they found it pretty exciting too. New stuff he does on his belly: he can push himself backwards onto a hands-and-knees position as if he were going to crawl; instead of crawling he ``revs'' himself up by rocking back and forth without going anywhere; he lunges at his favorite toys flat on his belly with one hand extended forward; and he rolls over (finally) from his belly to his back. From a sitting position: he can sit by himself (unassisted) almost indefinitely; he'll play a sort of ``catch'' with a soft rolling ball; he made a squeak-toy (little piglet) squeak for the first time. While being held by one person, he put out his hands to another as if to say ``I want to be with you now.'' In his carrier seat: he sits himself up; he wriggles and has now fallen out of the seat twice; he can hold his bottle long enough to drink several ounces at a time and can remove it from his mouth and put it back in as long as he doesn't lose his grip; he can watch himself drop a toy and then will look down for the dropped toy; he'll play with sheets of paper (in fact, the paper I wrote this list on is being destroyed as I type). As far as eating is concerned: he's begun to eat small solid foods like Cherios; I've finally weaned him from the red nipples we were given when we left the special care nursery; and he's down to three meals a day (8am, 2pm, and 6pm). In his tub he has started trying to grab at dripping water.

There's one more new thing, although it happened sometime last week. I was working in the morning close to his breakfast time and he was still asleep (I thought). I vaguely heard the sound of music playing from far away. I went over to his room and found that he was lying on his back with his left foot positioned over the ``play'' button of an electronic music box. Each time the music stopped, he would kick his foot until it bumped the button and the music would start. It was really cute and funny. I ran to grab our video camera, and by the time I set it up to tape him... he was still doing it! So I taped him playing this game and then showed it to Lisa when she got home.