The Brown's July visit

Last week Ellie and the kids came up to Grandma's for the week and we were lucky enough to get to spend a lot of time together. Once Emma got over a little stomach bug the poor thing got as soon as they got up here, they had a great time playing with Max! He just loves his cousins and they seem to be quite fond of him too.
Of course Aunt Ellie got tons of great pictures as usual!!!


I love Max's face in this one, what a ham!

Otherwise we're doing well. Max is just a riot lately. He's crawling ALL over the place and loving it. And while we have to watch him a lot it is kind of nice that he is free to do what he wants now. He's eating a lot and, not to jinx myself, but we may have even worked out a nap schedule. We're usually down to just 2 a day now, one shorter one in the morning around 9:30am and then a nice long one in the afternoon around 1:30pm. For the most part it seems to be working for him. Of course he makes himself so tired these days! His latest trick is dancing!!! He just loves it, its a riot. He's not too picky about the music. We'll put on random comcast music channels but he'll also dance to the tune in is "George in the box" as well. Quite the personality!!!

Now, if only his poor teeth will come in so his little mouth and ear feel better...

9 months and baseball!

9 month visit stats: 28inches long (43%) and 18,9lbs (20%). Its actually really sad to know my chunkster is in the 20% for weight..... no wonder childhood obesity is so high!

Wow, what a trip the 8 month has been. It seems like he learned something new every day.

1) Said his first word "mama". At first it was just babble but he is referring to me sometimes. We're working hard on dada but no real "d" sounds yet.

2) He learned to sit AND pull himself up to a standing position.

3) One day short of 9 months and he learned to crawl. He was getting around pretty well but ended up crawling backwards when he was trying to go forwards. This is really a nice treat (I only say because he's not fast yet) but he can get to what he wants and is so content to play for a while.

Of course every day is a new random trick he comes up with, always finds a way to ammuse us! He still has no teeth but we were told at the Dr's that we can really introduce just about any food to him so we'll start on that. Since we got back from our trip I'm going to start weening him too. He's only nursing in the morning now and I'm just pumping 2 times a day so we're dipping into the gallons of frozen milk in the freezer. It seems to be working ok so far. We've also skipped a feeding and just do one late afternoon (instead of one mid afternoon and evening) so our main goal now is to take only one longer afternoon nap (he has been taking one just after lunch and another before dinner). He did it on Thursday but then Friday was another story. Since he's able to move around so well getting him settled has been a whole new struggle we're dealing with, even at night which we've never had an issue with. So we work through it as we go...

For mom-mom's birthday we went to see a minor league baseball game Friday night. Of course our minor league team happens to be with the Nationals but they were playing the Reading Phillies so we couldn't root for the home team this time. He was soo good, made it till about the 7th inning before he passed out!

MN 4th of July....A Swanson family reunion!

Four generations of Swanson men!

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

94 claps for 94 years...

Bike parade for the 4th

First plane ride. He was asleep both times before take off and woke about 20 mins left on each flight. That was plenty of time for a mobile baby to be awake on our laps and not be banging the seat in front of us.

First dip in the lake:

Hanging on the dock with dad:

Boat heading out for water balloon boat war!

Max with his cousins:

First boat ride:


Learning how to drive:



By the second time, he was a pro!

Check out this move!

Chillin on the boat:

He had his first beach experience. He loved the sand and then he did finally try to eat the wet sand. I think I'm glad we don't have a beach vaca planned this summer.... what a mess!

Nate with Grandpa:Daddy and Max checking out the lake:

Floating cousins:

Back from MN

Just real quick.... it will be days until I get the pictures up and going but I wanted to drop a quick note (and share an awesome picture I stole from Ellie's blog) but we had a great trip! It was a true Swanson family reunion and we had a blast. The weather was great and everyone had a good time. Max did great on the airplane, mostly sleeping which was very lucky because the 20 minutes or so he was awake each way was long enough! Max got to drive a boat, made his first beach trip and did a great job entertaining all his cousins and aunts and uncles. The Swansons are a truly great bunch and wonderful hosts!

Many more pictures to come but here is Ellie's family shot: