Mama's Gonna Buy You a Mockingbird ...

"Hush, Little Baby" has always been Max's favorite song. As you might imagine, I've "bought" hundreds and hundreds of mockingbirds over the last year. I sang that lullaby to Max before he was born. I sang it to him through the portholes of his isolette. I sang it to him when we kangarooed and when I was finally able to rock him to sleep. I sang it to him when he was colicky and when he was teething. It always calmed him down, even when nothing else would and when I sing it to him now he always smiles. So, since I needed a title for my new blog, "Buying Mockingbirds" seemed appropriate.

As you can see, I'm moving Max's tale to a new location. The Care Pages were wonderful, but I think we're ready for something a little more versatile. You can still read our updates here and I'll still mail out update notifications (if anyone doesn't want to receive notifications any more, just follow the unsubscribe instructions in the notification email). I'm still going to house the majority of the photos on a separate site, although I'm moving those too. They're going to migrate over to Flickr, which is a nifty photo site that offers some convenient features. To visit the photo site, use the preceding link or go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/evenfamily/ -- you can also click on any of the small photos below to see a larger version and go to the photo site.

Max is officially 10 months old! At his (belated) 9-month well-baby exam last week, he weighed in at 18 1/2 pounds and 27 inches long. That's almost seven times his birth weight and almost double the length. He's not a little baby any more! His checkup went well -- the doctor thought he looked great. Since he's bigger and eating more solid food now, we took him off the Zantac for a couple of weeks to see how he does. Max's pediatrician talked me into giving him the flu shot (they had a thimerosol-free shot available) and I'm still checking with the insurance company to see if they will cover RSV shots. The pediatrician said he's probably still more vulnerable to viruses and whatnot than your average baby, but since he hasn't been sick yet (*knock on wood*), we don't have any frame of reference to judge his body's virus coping abilities. We'll have to lay a bit low during cold and flu season and continue with our manic handwashing regime.

Max now has six teeth and is doing well with solid food -- he really loves to eat. As of last week, he's having two meals of solid food a day. So far, he likes everything we've put him front of him, but bananas seem to be a particular favorite. We've been making our own baby food, which is really easy and fun.

Max has figured out his own method of pseudo crawling, which we've dubbed his "inchworming." He gets up on his hands and knees, flings himself forward in a mad belly flop, then pulls himself back up on his hands and knees and repeats the process until he gets where he wants to go. He's enjoying his newfound mobility -- he particularly likes inchworming over to wherever the dog is sleeping and attempting to pull out her hair. He also thinks it's fun to slap his hands on the kitchen floor. Today he started trying to pull himself up on his crib rail, so we had to move the mattress down to a lower level. It was awfully cute seeing him with his two hands on the rail and his little eyes peering over the edge.

And, last but not least, Max celebrated his first Halloween this week! I've been planning his Halloween costume since his NICU days -- he was Max, King of All Wild Things from Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are." Since he was too little to go trick-or-treating, Max and I sat out on the porch and handed out candy. We took all three kids out last week and picked out pumpkins, then took them home and carved them. Although Mom carved Max's pumpkin for him, Micaela and Connor both designed and carved their own pumpkins this year. We made the traditional roasted pumpkin seeds (Connor's favorite), then made our traditional Halloween "ghostie" desserts (basically, pudding, Cool Whip, and crushed oreos).

I hope everyone enjoys the new site -- comments and feedback are welcome! I still have some tweaking to do, but at least it's functional.