Yes, it gets a little graphic from here...I'll try to keep it reasonable.

Max is four months old as of Thursday! With age comes wisdom. Wisdom and gross medical anomalies.

For me, it started with a phone call on Wednesday. Max was emitting small amounts of blood from an orifice that's not supposed to do that during its normal operations. I immediately headed home so we could get him to the doctor. After a cursory glance at the origin of smelly evil, the doctor told us it might just be a small cut that was causing the problem...but we needed to run some tests.

Some poop tests.

We were handed three vials.

"Fill each of these to the red line and bring them back to us," they said.

"No problem," we replied without realizing the horrors that awaited us.

Babies poop a lot, so it shouldn't have been a problem, right?

Wrong.

Diapers are absorbent, and the problems Max has been having resulted in the near-instant absorption of all sample-worthy hazardous materials. Attempts to create a barrier with saran wrap or wax paper were abject failures. We spent two days rushing Max to his changing table at the slightest sound in the hopes that we just might get enough to reach all of those red lines, and wound up finally getting there.

Except one of the vials spilled...

We got a new vial, and finally figured out a perfect method that involved plastic spoons and voodoo. We obtained the sample with ease, and thanked Max for providing it.

He responded by smiling, peeing everywhere, and providing enough samples to fill fifty of those vials. We were so happy that we were done with the sampling process that we both burst into uncontrollable laughter.

...and that's the story of how Max got his first bath in a bathtub.

Thankfully, things were uphill from there. We had a very good visit to Sherman and (despite some weird feeding and sleep schedule changes), Max seems to be in good spirits about the whole thing. Christy has temporarily switched to a no-dairy diet to try and fix things, and we'll know more about his issues by the end of next week.

Max loves these blocks, especially the ones with the cow and the sheep on them.

He also loves his new tummy time mat. Look how excited he is about it!

Burp cloths: functional and tasty!

Max spent a good while talking to his Mimi and Pa-Paw this weekend.

I gotta teach him not to spike the camera. Directors hate that.

The following series of photos tells an important story about Max's tenuous friendship with monkeys.

Hi everyone, this is my monkey friend. He and I like to play and...

ARRRRMMM NUM NUM MONKEY BRAINS MMMM NUM NUM!

Oh, hi! I was just hanging out with...my monkey friend...and...behaving normally...

Num num monkey ear mmmm

We can never take him to the zoo.

See you next week!