Category: Max

The Daring Young Man

This morning, after waking me up by crawling into bed with us and proceeding to kick me in the calves for about twenty minutes as he tried to use my legs as a blanket and dragging me downstairs, I was sitting on the couch, and Max was doing his Max thing. Max‘s “thing” includes drawing, spelling one or more of the thirty words he knows how to spell, jumping off the couch, singing, asking lots of questions about what just happened and making up songs that usually contain just two syllables repeated over and over and over to a tune he makes up as he goes.

Hopefully, I’ve set the scene properly for you. So, I’m watching something on TV, and Max is running around. Suddenly, he stops in front of the couch, puts his arms half-cocked at his sides, elbows in, hands out and begins grunting. He’s straining his shoulders down, chin out and making a lot of noise. Now, I’ve never seen Max do this before. Max does some funny stuff, but this took the cake. So, I asked him what he was doing. Max stopped grunting, turned to me with a look of indignation that I didn’t know what he was doing and said, “I’m trying to fly, daddy,” and went back to grunting.

He gave up on the grunting after a few seconds, and decided that the best way to get airborne was to jump off the couch, which he did several dozen times, flapping his arms madly between the couch and the ground. The couch is not a great height off the ground, so he got maybe two flaps in before he landed loudly on the floor, slapped the ground with his hands and started all over again.

He’s gonna fly some day, I swear.

I’m not the only one who thinks he’s brilliant. My sister tells a cute little story about my boy. He’s so smart, it’s scary. We’ve talked to enough people about his spelling and other reading-like capabilities that we know he’s really reading now. The scary part is, he’s really reading. He’s figured it out himself, mostly, which is the scariest part. He’s the best.

He was so cute this morning. I should have taken a picture. He ran into our room in his little running shorts wearing the funny blue cowboy hat Jen got him and singing. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and he was just too cute for words.

More later on more stuff…

I just like the word. I’m not really. I’m not even sorry that I haven’t been posting. I’ve been steadily busy on a host of important projects and thinking about a redesign. If my scanner was plugged in, I’d post some doodles. I’m thinking of abandoning my stolen spaceman and doing my own. Astronauts with pointed sticks are a ton of fun to draw, and I’m trying to find the right mix of POW and whimsy while retaining the general look of my current spaceman. All of those goals combined with my under-used drawing skills will make for an interesting combination. Maybe I’ll let Max design it.

I think I’ve hit my stride again. I’m not stressed out, even though the workload is pretty crazy. I’m just chugging along turning out some really good stuff. I’ve written my first real API for public consumption, a ton of frontends for a myriad of products and basically kicked a lot of ass in the past two weeks. I fit in nicely in my little group up here on the fourth floor, in my poffice with a door.

No Segue, just news… And now on to Max and his amazingness. This week, he wrote Jen a birthday card that actually said “Happy Birthday, Mommy”. I’m not sure how much help he had with it from Grandma, but he’s getting really good with his letters and numbers. He writes the 5 – 10 words he knows over and over again, just for fun. He’ll sit down and go through a legal pad writing out numbers and letters in different colors, as happy as he could be. It’s fun to watch.

Max has also started making up games. His current is the Oh no, I’m falling… aaaaaahhh game. He’ll take all the cushions off the couch and put them on the floor around the couch. Then, he’ll sit or stand on the couch and in a high pitched voice (higher pitched than normal anyway) will start going on and on about how he’s falling, oh no, and then go “aaaaaahh” and roll off the couch on to the cushions. It’s all very entertaining.

To wrap up, life is good. Now, back to work.

I went down to the basement this morning to get a clean shirt. As I was heading back up the stairs, I hear a loud, plaintive “KEV-IIiiiiin!!!” from the top of the stairs. I thought for a split second that Max had gotten stuck in the garbage disposal or something. But no, it was worse – much worse. My wife appeared at the top of the stairs, hands on hips, grim expression on her face and said, “Max stole my last caramel egg!!!” Relieved that he hadn’t done anything horrible or disfiguring, I snickered and made my way up the stairs. My toddler son was sitting in the armchair, smile on his now sticky, chocolatey face, half-eaten caramel egg in his hand. My wife glared, and then laughed, then in her frustration said, “Now I have to wait until next Easter to get more!!” Yes dear, you do. But wasn’t the look on his face totally worth it?

In other Max news, he’s reading and spelling now. Yes, he’s two and a half, and he keeps picking up new words and I’m not sure how. We encourage him, but definitely aren’t forcing him. He loves to count, practice his letters and numbers and read stories. He brought Jen a piece of paper this morning (don’t get me started on how much paper this kid goes through) and said, “This spells ‘no’” and sure enough, he had put “no” on his paper. For longer words, he knows all the letters, but when writing, they take a decidedly abstract, Paul Klee-ish look to them. He made a Mother’s Day card for Jen that said, “I love you Mommy”, but it ended up more like “I mo o lo mm v y u e”. The letters were all there, just in a new order.

There’s more going on with my favorite toddler, but I need to get back to work. Maybe I’ll get Jen to start posting here too… sweetie?