5 months, 4 weeks

Over the last couple of months, my enrollment for night school had been waaaay down, allowing me to more easily update this blog and how things are going with Max.  Last week, I had an influx of new students, and a lot of them are pretty needy, so my posts may be shorter as I work with getting them acclimated to the courses they are taking, and build up their confidence to get through a chunk of work before needing my help.  I'll continue to update while on my 20 minute pumping break!

Max is now 25 weeks old.  Next week, my baby will be 6 months old.  It's been almost a year since we first got to see our little man on the ultrasound screen.  It was a surreal moment.  Yes, we had heard his heartbeat with the doppler by this point, but to actually see him squirming around, looking like a real little person was astounding.  During that visit, we learned that he was healthy and that our chances of him having Down Syndrome or Trisomy 18 were 1 in 10,000 (basically the best odds they can give anyone).  Now our squirmy baby is SO close to crawling, it's still hard for me to really believe that Luke and I made him, and that he grew so much in the 40 weeks he was couped up inside me.

I've been uploading videos off my phone (apparently being a new parent means that you use up all the space on your phone regularly, so you need to upload everything to the cloud frequently!), and thought I'd share a few recent ones of Max:

The last week has been pretty eventful in Max's life.  On Saturday, Luke and I were supposed to have our first baby-free date since October.  Granny was going to babysit, and since we didn't want Grandpa Lorenz to miss out on seeing Max, we brought in him to Byerly's to see Gampa at work.  Max is at the developmental stage right now where he doesn't give away his smiles to strangers as freely as he used to.  Now, he looks at them with a bit of concern while he tries to figure out who they are.  He was a bit wary of Gampa at first, but then warmed up to him right away, so it was nice to see Max hanging out in his lap, looking at him as he talked, playing with the wrapper of his breakfast sandwich... It warms my heart to see Max interact positively with his family.

Then, just as we were about to leave to go drop Maxwell off with Granny, she called to let us know that we needed to get over there ASAP so that we could drive her to Becca's house.  We had been on Lewis Baby Watch for the last few weeks, ever since she was placed on bed rest.  At just over 36 weeks, we were no longer nervous about the arrival of our newest niece.  At 36 weeks, developmentally, she would require little to no medical interventions.  It was go time.  I had a feeling that this was going to happen.  I had been emailing with a friend the day before, and I had mentioned that I thought that there was a good chance that our date would be canceled anyway, and low and behold, it did get canceled!  We picked up Katy to take her to Becca's so we could watch Lily while waiting for their friend to arrive.  By the time we got to the Lewis house, we saw Mike and Becca tearing out of the neighborhood, and we saw their friend's car in the driveway, meaning that Lily was taken care of.  Since Luke's mom didn't have a car, we drove her to the hospital.

Little did we know, that despite being only 5 minutes behind them, by the time we got to the hospital, our newest niece would already be born.  Adeline Marjorie made a fast and exciting entrance into the world- she apparently feels the need to keep up with her big sister already!  We had no intention to have Max meet his little cousin so soon, but since we were already at the hospital, we took advantage of the fact that we didn't have anywhere to be, and hung around until we had a chance to say hi to Becca, and meet Baby Ade for the first time. We are so happy that they got to bring Ade home yesterday, and that they all got to leave the hospital together, rather than spending weeks in the NICU.  Once they are all settled in, and the influx of visitors dies down, we'll take Max to go see Lily and Adeline at home.

On Sunday, Max got to see his friend, Penny again!  The last time we got our babies together was back in September.  Penny is about 3 weeks older than Max, so it was fun to see how much they have both grown since her last visit.  I'll have to add photos from this meeting later, as they are all on Luke's phone.

One of my all-time favorite photos!

First time sitting in a restaurant high chair (At Key's Cafe)

Sitting up in the bath

He absolutely LOVES frozen bananas in his mesh feeder

Hop on Pop?

His chins crack me up!

So happy

Awesome sweatshirt

Sleeping habits have been a bit better lately, though we do end up co-sleeping at some point during the night.  He at least has been spending the first part of the night in either the crib or the pack 'n play.  For foods, MaxJack recently tried pears for the first time, and love them!  We also reintroduced sweet potatoes, and he likes those as well (not as much as banana or pears, but he'll still eat the entire tablespoon- though a decent amount of it winds up on his face or hands).  It's cute- when he eats he likes to shove his little fingers in his mouth at the same time.  He has also learned that slapping his palms against my skin (mainly my chest) makes an awesome thwap sound.  It's cute right now, but I'm sure I'll have to put a stop to it, and stop laughing at it so that he doesn't think that hitting is an acceptable thing. For now, we'll allow it as he explores cause and effect!

Winter walks

Blue-eyed boy

What does one do with their best friend? Chew on their face, of course!

As bittersweet as it is, I enjoy seeing his day to day changes, and catching new quirks before they disappear!

5 months, 2 weeks

I'm officially at the point where I can't remember how many weeks old Max is!  So, for simplicity sake, I'm going to go by #month,#week (in that month). I'm pretty sure we're in week 23 now, but to know for sure would require me to go back, check my last post, and then return to this entry- and we all know that's a bit much :)

The biggest thing to be going on in Maxwell's world is that he is one step away from crawling!  You can't leave that boy anywhere, and expect him to be where you set him down.  He rolls and scoots all over the place, and now, he gets up on all four and rocks himself.  He ends up crawling backwards at this point, but soon he'll be moving forward!  Luke and I have no idea where to start with the whole "baby proofing" thing, so we better get on it soon...

Max is becoming more and more fun each day.  Yesterday, when I got home from work, the second I walked into the house, he was all smiles and gaspy laughs for me, and he clearly recognizes who I am.  He loves playing with the baby in the mirror even more, now that he has realized that he can swat at the mirror and touch hands with that magical handsome baby.  He LOVES that baby in the mirror, and seeing him light up while playing with his reflection is the only time I have any regrets about him not being in daycare.  I worry that he is missing out on that type of socialization.

Another change in our world is the introduction of the Baby Merlin Magic Sleep Suit.  While it doesn't help Max sleep through the night, it has made transferring him into the crib after being nursed to sleep a whole heck of a lot easier.  He doesn't startle himself awake, and force me to start the whole process over again.  It has also helped to use our electric blanket to pre-warm the crib mattress for him, so that makes the transition easier as well.

Yesterday, I made Max's next doctor appointment for the first week of February.  How can it be that we are already at the point of counting down to his six month check?  While I really enjoy that he is growing and learning new things, and becoming much more entertaining to be around, I find myself already getting nostalgic.  Yesterday, as I held him while he was napping, I just started to cry when I realized that these days are truly numbered.  While breastfeeding has been one of the hardest things I've ever done, I'm really going to miss the closeness and the snuggles.  One day, he won't want to be snuggled or carried around all the time.  One day, he's going to be a high schooler who is too cool for mom.  One day, he's going to be a grown man, with a family of his own, and I will no longer need to take care of him anymore.  Oh, man, I'm getting teary thinking about this- need to stop so my students aren't concerned when I come back in from my pumping break...

I love my little man with all the parts of my heart that I never even knew that I had.  

5 months

It's hard- I don't really know what to write tonight.  I'm struggling being back at work, and after my two week break from school, I learned that I would definitely rather be home with Max, experiencing everything he does and being there to take care of him, than deal with my students lately.  I really wish were able to afford for me to stay home for the year, and I find myself extremely jealous of those who took off more time than I did.  Oh, well.  There really isn't anything that I can do about that, but whine for a moment.

Over the last two weeks, Max has celebrated his first Christmas Eve with the Lorenz side of the family, Christmas Day with my family, and he has experienced his first New Year, as we celebrated the end of 2014, and the start to a fresh 2015. We also watched our little chunk turn 5 months old on January 4.  How is my baby nearly 1/2 year old already?

He tried his first solid foods (his doctor said we could try tastes of things if he seemed really interested), and so far he has hated avocado and sweet potato, but he LOVES bananas.  We might try applesauce next, but there really isn't any hurry, because we are going to start feeding him substantial amounts for another couple of months.  Eventually, we'll have him taste avocado and sweet potato again.  Along with trying out solids, he has been enjoying sitting in his high chair and throwing his toys off the tray.  He can sit up unassisted, and will scoot around the room by rolling or sliding his body to the side to get to where he wants to be.  The dogs are still his favorite thing in the whole world.

I don't have easy access to my photos at the moment, but if you are interested in checking out where I dump a good portion of my phone pictures, you can go to the following site:
https://maxwelljacoblorenz.shutterfly.com/
password: max

One other thing that I wanted to make sure to mention tonight is that Luke and I found out that his oldest friend, Aly, is pregnant!  She has had quite the journey and out of all the people in the world, she is the one I've been rooting for and thinking of the most.  They had been trying since 2012, and after numerous doctors appointments, unexplained infertility diagnosis, rounds of clomid and IUI, they are finally going to be blessed with the child they want so badly.  They were told that their only shot at having a child was going to be IVF, so they took a break from all the fertility drugs, and miraculously got pregnant!  We are so excited for them, and they deserve every bit of happiness that this baby will bring into their lives.  Luke and I might have to plan Max's first trip to Texas for next summer to visit Baby G after his/her arrival!

My apologies for this scattered post- you'd think I'd be better at doing these things on the fly, but I am tired, and also ecstatic that I get to stay home from work tomorrow (school was canceled due to extreme windchill)...

Updated: Here are the outtakes from our 5 month photo session!  Getting a squirmy baby to sit or lay still for a photo is definitely getting more difficult :)