Dear Maxwell.

Dear MaxJack,

There really is no way to prepare someone for just how much they will love their child.  Especially if it's their first.  I wasn't ready for how much of an impact you were going to have on me physically, and emotionally.  I think about you nearly every minute that I am gone.  When you were sick for the first time ever this past week, I wanted to carry your sickness for you.

This weekend actually felt refreshing.  With all the nice weather we've been having, we got to spend a lot of time outside, and took you on a walk to Lake Phalen with the dogs. You crashed ladies' night and tagged along as Papa and explored Stillwater for a couple hours.  You nursed by the St. Croix, and had your first tiny taste of a chocolate banana malt.  I got a bonus day with you yesterday while Grandmama was home sick, and it was lovely to stay connected with you. We took the morning to snuggle and play.  I figured out how to take a shower with you playing in the tub.  We snacked on whole wheat toast and guacamole.  In the afternoon, we took a drive downtown and met Papa for lunch, and then you and I went shopping in the downtown Target (the lobby smelled like vomit, by the way...).

Having you as a part of my life has renewed my outlook on the world (in both good and bad ways), and has helped me really realize what is important.  Here are the things that I find especially endearing at the moment:

• The way you give us open-mouthed kisses
• How you love to share your food with us
• Your two little front teeth poking out when you smile
• The big belly laughs when we tickle your tummy
• Walking into your room to see you standing at the end of the crib, nearest the door, watching for one of us to come in and pick you up
• When you crawl to us when you want to be comforted
• How fast you can crawl when you're on a mission- seriously, you put your head down and charge to where ever you have determined you need to be

• You light up whenever you see the dogs
• Listening to you sing in the car
• Watching you eat big-people food
• Your ability to walk using the push walker
• How strong you've become!

• Playing hide and go seek- Mama or Papa walk quickly out of the room, and call your name.  We hear the pitterpat of your hands and feet coming down the hall that signal to us that you understand that it's time to come find us
• Your fascination with everything in the world.
• Watching your hair flowing in the wind
• The way you talk all the time

• You've been mastering the art of blowing raspberries
• Your soft chunky rolls.  Weighing in at 20lbs 4oz, you are roughly in the 50th percentile for weight.  It's hard to believe you were every such a skinny little guy for the first 6 months of your life.
• How you wave now!  
• Seeing the expression on your face as you experience things for the first time (and second, and third!)

Maxwell Jacob,  I love you with an unceasing enormity that you will never quite understand until you are raising your first child.

I will love you forever.

Mama

Video Dump :)

Ready for some cute videos??  It's been awhile since I've embedded any videos we've taken of Max, so enjoy!

8 Months

Milestones/Accomplishments: This month, we became an expert at crawling and at pulling up.  We are firmly in the 6th Leap according to Wonder Weeks.  He has learned that Mama and Papa can walk away, and he doesn't like that. I'm not going to lie, it is one of the most adorable things to turn around and hear him whining plus the pit pat of his hands and knees hitting the floor as he crawls to find us when we leave the room for a moment.  He crawls up to us, and pulls up using our legs to stay close.  While I wish he would recognize that we always come back, I love that he has put it upon himself to find us, and that it shows how much he loves/relies on us.

Eating:  Max has picked up the habit of grunting/groaning/yelling pretty intensely when he wants what's on our plate, so eating our own food has become increasingly more difficult when he demands what we have.  He still loves pouches (especially the Greek yogurt ones), but loves getting bits of what we're having even more.  At Easter, he enjoyed broccoli/cheese egg bake, and ham.  Almost everything winds up in his mouth, and he seems to be able to sense when something in our hand might be edible.  On Saturday, we had dinner with the Lorenz/Lewis family after Ade's baptism, and I had a brownie in my hand, and Max on my hip.  Without me realizing it at first, Max managed to grab a couple pinches of brownie and shovel them into his mouth before I could anything.  Surprise- my kid loves brownies.  When I took it away from him, he made it very known that he wanted more.  The watermelon that followed those extra sugary bites was tart in comparison to the brownie, so we got to see him make the funny sour baby face.

Sleeping: Sleeping on his own is overrated.  Sleeping on people (especially Mama) is where it's at.  Max will still sleep no longer than a 3-4 hour stretch on his own in the crib.  Once his head hits the sheets, his eyes will fly open, and then starts over the routine of rocking, singing, shushing.  Since Max still nurses, it's been easier to just let him join us in bed part way through the night.  We have also learned that when his napping schedule sucks, his overnight sleeping sucks as well.  The last two days have caused him to not nap at his regular time, which then leads to a fitful sleep for everyone.  I'm really hoping that my mom has managed to get him to nap well today so that we get better sleep tonight.

Discoveries: Max has discovered that he can make even more noises and sounds.  These include the grunts when hulking out over food and the high pitch sounds that he makes when he's excited.  "Dada" is one of his favorite things to say, and he says it over and over and over. "Mmm" with pursed lips is another common sound he makes.  This is often times made when he's upset, but it seems to be directed toward me.  He's also started singing in the car!  At first we thought that he was just getting upset, but then we realized that he would do the long "aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" when music was playing.

One of my favorite stories from this week happened at Ade's baptism.  Lily's Lewis cousins were all there, and Max was playing on the floor of the church while we were waiting for the baptism to start.  The kids were all running around, and a couple of the Lewis cousins got close to Max.  Lily saw this happen, and then ran over to Max, put her body between Max and the Lewis cousin, and refused to let them play with him!  At one point, she even turned to one of the cousins and told her, "Max says Bye!"  It's fun to see how protective she is of Baby Mahksh.  I hope that they stay close as they grow up.  My sisters and I used to be really close with our cousins growing up, so it was like have instant best friends.  I'm excited for the day that there are more Kleinberg cousins as well, but my sisters are allowed to take their time on having babies :)

Spring Break!

Max turns 8 months on Saturday!  8 months just seems so old for our little man, but then when I see him with younger babies, I am reminded of how far he has come during the last 34 weeks of his life.

Since last week, we survived our week without Luke while he was traveling for work.  It definitely wasn't easy, but for the most part, Maxwell is a fairly mild-mannered little boy, so I just made sure to make the most of being close to him ever moment I was home.  Honestly, the most difficult part was trying to make sure that my needy dogs were cared for, loved, and given attention as well.  Lucy and Kale were probably even more excited about Luke's homecoming than Max and I were!

This week is spring break.  Normally, I wouldn't have really found the time to update, but I still have to teach night school tonight, so since enrollment is down, I can continue to take some time to write while my students work.  Since I am off from work all week, I have decided to treat this week as a bit of a staycation, and give  Max a chance to experience a few of the fun things we have to offer around the Twin Cities.  I am thrilled that I am able to spend this week with my son.  I've missed spending every day with him.  It saddens me to think that on any given weekday, I only get to spend about 4 hours with him after getting home from work before starting the bedtime routine.  We still co-sleep after his first wake-up (sometime starting around 9 or 10pm, while some nights it's closer to midnight), and it's mostly for selfish reasons.  As a nursing mother, it is SO much easier for me to just flop out the boob and let Max dream-feed when he stirs instead of having to wake up, walk downstairs, get him out of the crib, fight to stay awake while feeding him, put him back down, and find my way back to bed.  The other selfish reason is that I miss him a lot during the day.  I like having him near.  Luke has even admitted on nights where we've attempted to have him sleep in the crib that he misses him when he's not in bed with us.  In order to make things a bit more comfortable for all of us, we are going to attempt the IKEA hack where we'll adapt the IKEA crib to become a co-sleeper crib that will bump right up next to my side of the bed. I'll update on how it's going once we get that project completed!

Anywho... that  co-sleeping part got a bit long, and I shared more about it than I had planned... I always feel like I need to defend or be embarrassed about the fact that Max is in bed with us more often than not.

Back to the staycation:  This wbreak has been fantastic so far.  On Saturday, I had a baby shower to attend, so I dropped Luke and Max off at Luke's parents' house for a few hours.  Max had a blast playing with his cousin Lily, and then enjoyed going out to dinner.  The next morning, we had a playdate set up for Max, Irene, and Emmett. It was fun to see all of the babies from my high school friends so far!  Emma's baby will be joining us sometime in May, so once she arrives, it'll be nice to have them all meet up again.  Crazy to think that we all will be experiencing first days of kindergarten, prom, graduation, etc., all around the same time.  We'll all be able to lean on one another as we ride through the emotional roller coaster of motherhood.

Luke took Monday and Tuesday of this week off, so were able to meet with a lawyer to finalize our wills/health directives/powers of attorney.  It's a pretty huge weight lifted off our shoulders.  Should something happen to the both of us, it makes me feel good to know that we have a legal document stating where Max should go, and who will be the trustee for the estate. After the depressing discussion of events upon the occurrence of our deaths, we booked it down to the Mall of America to take Max to SEA LIFE.  He really enjoyed seeing the fish moving around.  The jelly fish exhibit was a big hit, and he did very well going through the different parts of the aquarium.  I forgot how expensive that place is- next time we'll make sure to get some discounted tickets, but it was worth it because they gave us passes to use another time because the ray pool was closed.  We'll definitely be taking advantage of that!

I'm looking forward to the rest of this week (we've got big plans to go to the MN Zoo again, dye eggs, celebrate cousin Ade's baptism, spend time with family on Easter), and getting into the homestretch to the end of the school year!

***I'm going to attempt to post once more this week with Max's 8 Month Update (though, let's be honest... there's a good chance that won't get posted until next week)***

A Day in the Life...

This week, I'm getting a taste of what it might be like to be a single working mother.  Well, a single working mother who knows that she only needs to endure this for 4 days...

Luke is out of town (lucky guy is travelling through Florida and Georgia), so this is the first time I have had to be 100% responsible for the well-being and life of my child while working.  Luke travelled once before since Maxwell was born, but that was back when Max was only about 6 weeks old.  At that point in his life, I could place him on a blanket on the floor or on his play mat, leave the room for a couple minutes, and expect him to have not squirmed off the blanket.  Now, I can't leave the little man alone for more than 30 seconds before he's getting himself into trouble!  Back in September, we spent hours cuddling on the couch, still getting the hang of nursing and learning about each other.  I had Netflix on constantly, and made it through more seasons (plural!) of Sons of Anarchy during those 4 days than I would like to admit... I could make dinner easily, and eat over him as he ate and slept.  I was home all day, so I didn't have to get ready for anything.  I never had to put on real clothes and make myself look presentable, and a quick trip to Target for some real-world experiences and a decaf latte didn't require any more energy than the brain power it cost to dress myself in yoga pants and a sweatshirt.  This time around?  Definitely not so easy.

I wish I had done a post like this back during those first 6 weeks.  The days of my maternity leave have gotten pretty hazy, and I regret not writing down more.

A day in the life

The 5am-7am edition

5am- Alarm goes off.  Max had finally just fallen back to sleep about 20 minutes ago after 30 minutes of attempting to get comfortable. He used to be a log, and not move from the moment we brought him upstairs to the moment it was time to get up.  As long as he was right at the boob, he'd stir enough to get me to help him latch, and then he snack and fall back to sleep. Now?  He flops all over the place and whines in his sleep.  I try to offer the boob, but he refuses.  Sometimes the paci helps.  Sometimes, he just wants to sit up, and then lay sideways on my stomach. Maybe tomorrow he'll sleep through the night.

5:05- Head downstairs, make sure the coffee pot is ready to brew, turn on sound machine and soothing projector light.  Change Max's diaper if there wasn't a middle of the night diaper change.

5:10- Make sure pump is ready- grab parts if they are still on the drying rack.  Begin pumping.  Start the 20 minute countdown.

5:11-5:31- Pump while simultaneously nursing Max from the other side.  Hope that he falls back into a deep sleep (at least long enough to let me have enough time to get ready, please?!).  Max has picked up a new habit of attempting to kick the pump off my breast.  Hope that I don't spill any milk. Suffer through silent jealousy as I hear Luke wake up and get out of bed to shower at about 5:20/5:30.  That extra half hour of sleep would be amazing...

5:31- Release myself from the pump, and (on a good morning) lay Max in the crib.  This should buy me at least 10-20 minutes before he wakes up.
**If Max is awake, I do the following with one arm/hand until Luke gets out of the bathroom**

5:32- Clean up pump parts, put milk in fridge, pull out lunches, make sure the coffee is actually brewing, double check bottles for the day, pull out pouches/containers of solids for my mom to feed Max.

5:45- Run upstairs to get dressed, find clean clothes pile, make sure there is no spit up/poop/drool on the outfit.  Look in the mirror, sigh at my soft mom belly, decide that I hate every piece of clothing I own (nothing does anything to help the pouch look better), but realize that I have no time to change, or anything better to change into. Maybe I should rejoin Weight Watchers next week... they are adaptable for nursing mothers... maybe next week.
**If I have Max, usually I plop him in front of the sliding mirrors in the bedroom so that he can flirt with himself.  It's a race to see if I can get dressed before he becomes interested in trying to fling himself down the stairs.  I dance like a crazy person while getting dressed to help keep him entertained**

5:55- Brush teeth, throw hair into a ponytail, put on deodorant, decide I look acceptable, and wonder if there will ever be a day that I wear make-up to work again.

5:57- Mom will be here within 5 minutes.  Within 5 minutes, I need to be ready to quietly, but sternly tell the dogs to shut the hell up.  Every.Single.Morning.  They know that my mom is coming.  I think the anticipation makes their excitement even worse.

5:58- Dogs THINK that they hear her car pull up.  Kale woofs, Lucy woofs and books it to the front window.  Tell the dogs to get back, come get a treat. Wonder if a shock collar would work to keep them from barking.  Remind myself that I do not agree with shock collars and would judge the ever-loving shit out of myself if I ever tried to use one on my dogs.

6:03- Mom actually pulls up in front of the house.  Luke has got the dogs calmed down enough, we use our bodies to physically block the dogs from charging and and knocking over my mom out of excitement and love.  Remind mom to bend her knees! Perhaps we should get them back into obedience classes... who am I kidding... there's no time!

6:05- Mom is settled in and the dogs have calmed down enough to finish their breakfast.
**If Max wasn't up already, this is about the time we hear him start to cry**

6:05:30- Go into Max's room, and can't help but smile when I see that he's pulled himself up using the crib rails, and is waiting for one of us to come get him.  Pick up his warm little body, give him a few quick kisses and head to the kitchen.

6:09- Chat with mom about the weather, traffic, how Max slept that night, interesting gossipy tidbits from the family while making sure I have my entire lunch, have my pump parts packed in my tote bag, and pour coffee.  I should buy a larger thermos... I'll probably end up stopping at the gas station to get another coffee to make it through the day.

6:15- Make sure mom has everything she needs to get her through the day- show her the solids she can give him.

6:20- head out the door.  Stop.  Where's my god damn phone?  Every single freaking day.  Oh, it's in my pocket.  Or in my pumping tote.  Or in my work bag. Got it!  Run out to the car, and start the commute to work, listen to KDWB like I have been since 2009 (I'm a teacher- I should listen to something more educational.  I like MPR, but it's too early to use my brain...)

6:55- Stop at gas station for coffee... and who am I kidding, I'll grab a donut.  This is why I'm a bit squishy in the middle. Blerg.  But I'm so dang hungry.

7:00- Arrive at school, go into my room, lock the door, pump for 30 minutes, get ready to start my day.

7 months, 2 weeks

Every once and awhile, I struggle.  Today, I felt as though I have broken my child.  Luke made a comment about how we need to figure out a way to get Max to nap without either nursing or a bottle.  I don't know what else he tried, but it made me wonder if I have damaged my child's ability to sleep?  Max then nursed to sleep (I felt a tinge of guilt the whole time), and I felt the need to prove that he didn't need to sleep on me.  Of course, as soon as I put him down in the crib, he woke up and wanted to cuddle.  I cried silently while he snuggled, thinking over whether or not I've made bad parenting choices for the last 7.5 months.  After having a good sob, I realized that I've done the best I can, and that's exactly what Max needs.

No, Max may not sleep in his crib for more than 4 hours in a night. I may bring him into bed when he wakes up after 10pm. Max gets to nurse whenever he wants, and naps the best on one of us.  He might use my boob as his lovey, but none of this is going to be long lasting.

Over this week, Max has started adding more and more ounces of solids to his daily routine!  On average, he is sucking down between 7-9.5 ounces of solid food a day.  He went from not really caring whether or not he ate anything other than breastmilk to going absolutely nuts over it.  He tried greek yogurt mixed with apple/strawberry/beets, and gave us a lovely surprise in his diaper (who would have known that beets would cause his poop to come out bright red!). He also enjoys the broccoli/pears/peas combo pouch. Tonight, he tried a couple smushed black beans, and really liked them.  It's been fun to let him try tastes of the foods we have on our plates at dinner time!

Anyway, that's about all I have for this week.  My night school is on spring break, so I quick threw this all together, so I apologize for how out of sorts this post is.  It more of an emotional dump....

7 months, 1 week

It's been a strange, roller coaster of a week in the Lorenz household-

Pretty much everyone who reads this know that Luke works for a large Fortune 500 company that houses its HQ in Minneapolis (think red & khaki), and if you've been keeping up with the local news, you know that today they announced that they were laying off 1,700 people from their Mpls and Brooklyn Park HQ campuses.  Last week, we found out that big layoffs were imminent, but we didn't know just how close to home this would hit.  Luke has survived other massive layoffs over the years, but this one has been the most terrifying for our family. He had to watch all of his upper management get laid off throughout the last few work days, not knowing what his future was with the company.  He spend the majority of the weekend updating his resume and his LinkedIn profile.  We would joke about how it was our last weekend with any money to cope with the stress of potentially being down to just my income until Luke could find something else.

Fortunately, we found out today that Luke's position is safe (for now), but who knows what will actually be in store for his team.  Any continued positive thoughts regarding Luke's employment would be greatly appreciated.

While having the stress of not knowing whether or not Luke would have a job by the end of today was difficult, Max and the lovely weather made things tolerable.  Through all of this, Max has made us smile, and has helped relieve tension.  Despite losing an hour of sleep on Sunday due to DST, having more sunlight at the end of the day has improved our dispositions, and has allowed us make sure we get more walks in.  Our dogs have been a bit stir crazy, so it's been a relief to either wear Max or throw him in the stroller while we walk.  I can't even begin to describe how much I have missed walking.  right before Max was born, and until I went back to work, I was walking at least 3 miles a day.  When it got dark and cold out, it became very difficult to motivate myself to move around.  Now, I'm back to walking, and I've signed up for Zumba on Saturdays!

Another positive thing from this week is that my dad has had a chance to see Max much more frequently.  He's been over the last two mornings to switch vehicles with my mom, so it melts my heart to see the pictures my mom takes of him reading to Max, and the stories she tells me of him feeding him his pear/cinnamon oatmeal, or giving him his bottle.  My dad never had a son to raise, so I'm happy that I've been able to give him the chance to help raise his grandson.

I can't actually think of many new developments in Max's world from this past week.  He's now working on mastering the art of pulling up on EVERYTHING.  He's learned that if he puts his palms on a glass surface, he can lean into it and manage to still "pull" himself up vs trying to pull himself up using a wall.  He also has started to enter the world of separation anxiety, especially when it comes down to sleeping in his crib.  Little man doesn't realize it, but in just a couple of weeks, it will be spring break, and we are going to make a real attempt at sleep training.  He sleeps great when he's in bed with us, curled up in the crook of my arm, sometimes from 7pm-5am (with one or two dream-feeds), but the bed is quite full with him, us, and the 180lbs worth of dog that weasel their way in nearly every night.

Max attended a staff meeting last week for my night school, and he did a great job being passed around to all of my coworkers, and even spent some time being held by my boss while he finished his presentation.  The only time he made a peep was to alert me that his diaper was wet, and when he was hungry.  I was very proud of him!

I'll try to do a photo dump sometime this week, so be on the look out for a picture post soon!

Enjoy the lovely weather this week!