After all the excitement of the delivery, things started to slow down a little. Max is getting much more sleep than we have, but we're just happy that he's healthy and eating well. We have him on a good schedule, and I'm getting used to dealing with the concentrated evil coming out of his back end. Why doesn't anyone ever tell me about these things?

New photos after the jump.

We have hundreds of pictures. Seriously, hundreds. Pictures with family, pictures with mom, pictures with dad, pictures with doctor...tons of pictures. Picking just one would be completely impossible, right? I mean, who would even try to accomplish such a task? Just one photo, out of all the ones you've taken, that you want to post...

Well...

After a little bit of a scare at the hospital (jaundice is no fun), we got to head home on Saturday. Max has recovered nicely, taking on a nice rosy glow and gaining back half of his lost weight before his pediatric appointment on Monday. Since then, it's been a nonstop routine of eat, sleep, poop, sleep, thank grandparents, sleep, eat, poop, thank grandparents again, sleep, sleep, sleep, wake up at 2am and not sleep, poop...you get the picture.

Speaking of pictures...

Another week has passed, and Max has gone through just a few more visits to the doctor. After some poking and prodding, the pediatrician gave him an A+. Apparently Max is in the 90th percentile for height, 25th for weight, and 50th for his head size. So I guess he's tall, skinny, and has an average sized head. I can live with that.

A few days later, we returned to the hospital for his two-week screening. Aside from a case of hiccups, he managed to make it through the whole thing without a peep. I guess he didn't inherit his father's aversion to needles.

I've been adapting (poorly) to being back at work, while Christy tries to figure out what to do all day while I'm gone. In the rush of all this routine, we seem to have cut back a little on the photo snapping, but we still managed to get a few in this week...

Looks like we're going to adopt a weekly posting schedule, with updates on Sunday evening until further notice. We'll probably have a few one-offs in the middle of the week, but this will at least give you a sure thing each week.

This week was an opportunity for me to take a little more time off work to spend with our new family member. It's been a nice blend of rest, relaxation, and constant pooping. We're both getting pretty used to managing things, though I know Christy is still pretty tired from having to get up every 2-3 hours throughout the night.

Despite our dedication to keeping him house-bound for a full month, we wound up having to take him out a few times this week. He seemed to take his trip to the photographer fairly well, aside from being very upset by all the flashing. Despite the fact that he slept almost the entire time, we managed to get a few good pictures for our Christmas card/baby announcement.

Tonight we had a good visit with Max's grandparents (on Christy's side), who braved illness and bitter cold (for Texas) to drop by. Even though they didn't get a chance to hold him, they still managed to spoil him with a wonderful ornament to commemorate his first Christmas. Thanks again!

Shiny!

Onward to photoland...

This week brought good news and bad news.

On the not so good news front, Max's Great Grandmother passed away this week. Her contagious smile, boundless love, and tireless dedication to her family will be forever missed. Whenever I think about her, I can't help but remember something about my childhood that I will cherish. Giant Christmas trees, ride-on train sets, GrowaFrog kits (they still exist!), Celebration in the Oaks...we'll miss you, Granddolly, and we'll make sure to tell Max all about you.

In better news, Max's one-month checkup went perfectly. He's still holding on to an average weight (he weighs 9 1/2 pounds now) and head size, but he's running in the 95th percentile for height (now 23 inches) so I guess he's going to be tall like his mom and dad. He had to suffer through his Hep B shot, but it really didn't seem to bother him at all. Just a little fuss and then total calm.

Gotta love his endurance.

Max got a chance to visit his grandparents in their fancy-shmancy new living space, which (we can only assume) they've been working on all year just for him. It was a bit of a shock seeing the house torn asunder, but everything looks great. There's now even more space for all these grandkids to find trouble...I hear they've already discovered the wonders of sliding around on the hardwood with socks on. Ahhh, the classics.

In addition to being able to see everyone, Max got another early gift from the family in the form of a new ornament from Brandy and Adreanna. Thanks, girls! It looks great on our tree, and we'll always enjoy putting it up so Max can remember how much all of his family loves him.

More tree bling from the family. Very cute.

More family photos after the jump...

Everyone is completely worn out at the moment, so a full blog post isn't in the cards. We did manage to get some pictures put out there, though. Look to the right for the new ones. We'll do a full update a little later in the week (after all this Christmas madness dies down a little).

Enjoy the holiday, everyone!

When Max was born, there were a million things we could capture with the video camera. Hanging out with the grandparents, making faces at the hospital, riding home in the car...then we got home and everything was just work, work, work. It felt like it would be a bit silly to fill our web hosting space with videos of him sleeping, pooping, and eating.

Recently, though, he started doing stuff. Fun stuff.

Amazingly enough, we've gone completely off of our regular posting schedule. We keep trying to make these happen on Sunday, but then we sit on the couch and we get sleepy and...well, at least we're posting semi-weekly.

Over the last week, Christy went back to work (luckily, at home full-time), Max started smiling more frequently, and I found out how to turn off the water main (more on this at the bottom of the post). Max also went in for his 2 month visit...

After Max's appointment last week, he decided to give us a bit of a scare. Thankfully, after a few days of being very lethargic (not that we could complain about a baby that sleeps more often) and congested, he's back to his normal self. He's been having quite the week, with lots of trips into the outlands and lots of visits from outlanders. We had a chance to see little Mikey again (who has a new haircut that makes him look 35) as well as some meddlers from the Wyatt clan that were passively instrumental in our initial meeting. A quick visit from Nancy (Christy's friend) later, and we brought our weekend to a close.

So...why "Smiley Boy"? Well, Max is getting some more of his social faces and he's becoming quite the happy baby. We'll let the pictures and the video speak for themselves...

This week, we finally got a chance to indulge our greedy side and keep Max all to ourselves. It wasn't a big week, but a good one just the same. Max has two best friends now named Ceiling Fan and Tasty Fist. He relentlessly chews/sucks on one while intently watching the other. The question of which he does with which is left as an exercise to the reader.

We also had a few firsts this week.

It's not Sunday, but we can't always make the deadline. To make up for it, we've provided an abundance of photos and even some video for your viewing pleasure.

Another month has passed, and Max is growing by leaps and bounds. He's almost mastered control of his neck, and is spending a lot more time cooing and smiling at us. It's been a pretty eventful week, with a visit to the doctor, crib sleeping, and a visit from the northern grandparents.

Time flies when you're alternating between work, travel, baby care, cooking, cleaning, and taking pictures. The last two weeks have been quite a blur.

Max was sleeping through the night without much trouble...until Friday. Now he's getting up at least twice during the night.

So...yeah. Tired.

When Christy and I went on our first date together, she accidentally rear-ended an unsuspecting motorist in a low-speed collision. The situation turned into something so absurd that we ended up laughing about it over lunch at Chuy's.

This week was pretty much like that.

We really didn't do much this week. There was a small outing to wish Aunt Tammy a happy 29th birthday, a few trips to the grocery store, a little cooking, a little cleaning...but beyond that, nada.

Yet all three of us are completely exhausted. I was going to start this post last night but I passed out in a bowl of sorbet instead.

As of Sunday, Max is five months old. Time seems to be both dragging and speeding along like crazy for us! This week has been quite the adventure, complete with new faces, new accessories, and even new foods...

This has been a very eventful week for all of us! Max got a visit from Mimi and Pa-Paw over the weekend, and then a visit with Nan just yesterday. There's been a change in our furniture, a change in our sleeping habits, and some serious changes to our schedule.

As promised in the last blog post (Saturday is still technically "later this week"), we have a new video for our loyal readers.

It's been quite the week for little Max. He has all sorts of new things happening in his world, and he certainly seems to be enjoying them...for the most part.

Once again, I must remind our readers that it's Saturday, so still technically "later this week". Here's that video I promised.

Apparently some people are a little impatient about certain videos making their way to the web. Some people might not realize that there might be certain technical difficulties that might require a little extra time to get those videos online. Those people might live in The Woodlands. They might have a tendency to be ignored by their children on occasion for being a bit verbose. I'm not going to name names here (John Larkin), but in the future perhaps these people might want to consider that I'm not a bloody jukebox...

Apparently I said I was going to do a blog post the day after the last thing we posted. I'd blame the lack of updates on fatigue or lack of time, but I'd be lying if I said that. Really, we've just been held captive by the evil brainchild of a very famous Hollywood type. During the last week we may or may not have even had a baby in the house. All I know is that we knocked over a lot of big towers. The rest is sort of hazy. We'll just use this week as a clearing house for some videos and pictures that haven't made the blog yet.

Yep. Kisses. We're on the way to Seattle on Monday, so we thought we'd put together a quick update in case it's too crazy out there for us to put something up. We realized yesterday that we've barely taken any pictures this week, but we were able to remedy that pretty quickly.

We're still working on the video for Max's Seattlestravaganza. It'll hopefully be done by the end of the week. In the meantime, there's plenty to talk about. Max and I had a very, very exciting Father's Day Weekend.

We're still working on getting the video together for Max's Seattle trip. The current cut is about an hour long, but I think we can cut out some of the redundant parts from the first act, as I think we establish his character well enough by 15 minutes in.

While I was working on that in my entryway studio, Max hit another landmark. As of ten days ago, it's been seven months since Max turned our world crazy. To celebrate, I think we'll just inundate you with photos.

Despite the fact that we weren't able to join the family in Port Aransas (missed you guys!), we have had a fairly positive week. We've been very busy trying out some new things and Max certainly seems to be giving us a run for our money.

Okay, so we skipped a week. We've been very busy, leave us alone, there were ants, lots of them, some of them were on fire and had huge pointy fangs!

Yeah, bet you're sorry you were upset with us. You should have been concerned for our well being, but you're just selfish.

Seriously, sorry about missing an update. It's been a bit crazy the last two weeks, but we'll make up for it with a slew of videos and pictures this week. Starting...

After our 4th of July outing, we spent a good while just trying to recover. We had an ant infestation to deal with (which is as of yet unresolved) which resulted in a full-on clean out of most of our kitchen. Max, of course, was completely unfazed by any of this. He's continued working on crawling, but doesn't quite have it down yet. While working on that, of of course, he's provided us with some more photo ops.

I finally sat down and did the legwork to get our collection of Seattle videos online. We spent an awful lot of time shooting video out there, but I was able to pare it down to the bare essentials for the viewing public. Expect a Collector's Edition DVD next year sometime (with bloopers!).

Bet you didn't think we could do it, did you. "Four blog posts in one week?" you said. "Not a chance!" you said...or at least I imagine you might say if you sounded like the voice in my head. All I have to say to you is...well, actually, all I have to say right now is, "I'm sleepy." 10pm is apparently very late for an aging dad such as myself, so I'll get on with it.

Max turned 8 months old on Sunday, which of course meant that we had to do a new round of photos to show everyone how he's growing. This time around we've included a little bonus.

After last week's barrage of posts, we're finally back on our regular posting schedule. Even with all the posting we still managed to miss out on a few of the events over the last week, plus some new stuff had to go and happen over the weekend so we have to cover that, too. Blogging is hard work, I tells ya.

Onward!

As promised, today we'll be posting a video we took yesterday. What could it be? Eating? Nope. Playing? Nope. Sleeping in a weird position? Nah. Working on a doomsday device? Maybe.

You'll just have to look and see.

Max has had quite a week for himself. He's continued to pursue his goal of pressing a few more teeth through his gums (four so far). He perfected the art of sticking his tongue out at people. He nearly perfected his middle finger, which he's been showing to everyone whether we like it or not. He spent hours and hours in the car. He spent hours and hours in The Woodlands with his four cousins.

Like I said, quite a week. That's also why we had a little delay in our blogging this round. Luckily it was only delayed for a day this time. I think we'll just let the photos speak for themselves from here on out.

This week was very much of a "coming down" sort of affair. We always need a little time to recover when we've taken a long weekend trip, and this one was no different. Luckily, we're finally getting back to normal around here. The ant poison is gone (along with the ants), the kitchen is sort of back in order, and the house is (mostly) clean. With everything (kind of) in order, we...or should I say, Christy...were even able to take a nice day away on the weekend.

Max still doesn't quite have the whole crawling thing down, but he did manage to pull himself up to standing this evening. It was quite impressive, though he hasn't managed to repeat the performance yet. I'm sure he'll be cruising before we know it. I fear he'll be walking soon...the end is nigh!

It's hard to believe it, but we're now a little past nine months into Max's life. It's hard to remember what it was like before he came along. We like to think it was serene, with rainbows and chocolate waterfalls and long nights of sleep. Not that we'd trade, but mmmm...sleep.

We're fresh off a weekend in Houston, which means we're too tired to do much more than just post a bunch of photos.

It seems like we always take a week to recover from the long car trips that take us to and from Houston. Max even seems out of sorts for a few days after we get back. I guess when you combine a four hour drive with a weekend of fun with all your cousins, then top it off with another four hour drive...yeah, sleepy.

We did manage to post the photos from the weekend, but neglected to provide a post or a link to let you know that they were there. Consider yourself notified.

We're back to normal now, fortunately. Unfortunately, that means that Max is back on the road to Dangerville, population him.

Unfortunately, I still haven't had a chance to get all of that video together. Maybe sometime later this week. Max has had a somewhat uneventful time this week, but we did manage to snap some good photos and had a good time with our visit to Sherman for Mimi's birthday.

Well, sort of. We didn't leave town and we didn't have a giant project to finish. We finally had a weekend where it was just Christy, Max, and I. It was still crazy, of course, but it wouldn't be life with Max if it wasn't.

We've had ourselves yet another eventful week in Max's life. His cruising is improving, but not so much that he was able to avoid injuring himself (thrice) this week. His crawling is pretty much perfect (much to our chagrin). His face...well, it seems to be doing this new thing.

Christy's feeling under the weather and it's been a crazy day for both of us. Since we don't have time for a full-on blog post, I thought everyone might enjoy a nice break...and a video.

Looks like this week has been pretty jam packed as well, which meant we didn't quite get this done before the weekend. Late last week (well, week before last, I guess) we had a special visitor among us and Max got even more opportunities to get out of the house.

I'm sure I don't need to remind anyone at all that Saturday is still technically part of the same week. Hopefully we'll be a little better about getting these up on weekdays, but we'll have to see.

Looks like Saturday is going to be our fall-back scheduled date for these things. Still during the week, says I! Luckily, Max seems to be doing new and amusing things each week, so we should be able to keep up.

It doesn't feel like Friday. Not even a little.

Amazingly enough, I was able to find time after our visit to Sherman to get a couple of videos uploaded. Neither of these are as timely as the last few videos have been, but it's always good to delve into the archives a little ways.

Nice to actually get a blog entry in on time after being off schedule for so long. This has been an interesting week for Max, though we don't have a whole lot of pictures to prove it.

Max had such an exciting week last week that we didn't even get a chance to post a new video. Not only did he celebrate his first Halloween, he learned an entirely new trick.

We've proven once again that we can't keep up a regular posting schedule. I think we're going to have to just tack on videos to the post o' the week if we want to get them out there at all. I guess we'll see how that works out today.

Max's week was actually fairly quiet (as evidenced by the small Flickr set), but that's mostly because we've been trying to keep things easy for us while we prep for the big event.

Here we are, back at home after another crazy weekend. This one wasn't quite so bad, as we weren't planning the party and took a few days off work to take the edge off all the driving. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves at Max's birthday party, and we were able to throw a little Max time into the ceaseless grandchild time-lover that is his Nan. There was also cake. So we had that going for us.

As we were looking through the pictures for this week, it occurred to us that we didn't actually do a whole lot. Blogging tends to be difficult in lull weeks like this, but I'll try to do my best.

Now that Max has found himself in the lull between his birthday and Christmas, he's settling into a pretty usual routine and not doing much new stuff.

Okay, that's a lie. He's unstoppable. We have no idea what's coming every day.

It's been a very weird week for all of us in the Larkin household. Some things have changed, some things...well, they'll never change.

Now that we're finally (really) finally certainly absolutely done with all of our Christmas shopping, it's time to sit down and write out a lengthy post on all the things that Max has been doing this week.

For the first time since Max was born, we took a short break from baby blogging. To make up for the time off, we decided to drive all over the place, take him to a gym, search for a day care, and create an improbable list of tasks to be completed during what was supposed to be a nice, relaxing vacation.

This has been a very eventful week in the Larkin household and beyond. We tried to pass the time in the usual manner (throwing things around, hammering on toys, and just generally running around creating havoc), but there was sort of an ominous event looming before us. For the first time, Max was going to be away from us for a little longer than we're both used to.

Why are we posting late this week? Well, it feels like Friday of next week, even though it's only Thursday. Max has decided to issue his punishment for our decision to place him in day care.

We came, we saw, we sniffled, we whined...well, I did. Max and Christy did okay. Barring a horror movie-style last-minute reappearance of our localized plague, we should be out of the woods at this point. Max is back in day care, Christy and I are recovering, and things are finally sliding back to normal. Of course, Max's version of normal is sort of a flexible concept.

Seeing as we skipped a week recently, I thought I'd go ahead and make this a week of videos. I'll post one today, Wednesday, and Friday so everyone can see some of Max's recent antics. I'll even toss up some photos from our weekend with Nan (though we didn't get many...too busy having fun!) when I have some time.

According to our blog software, this will be the 100th post we've made on this blog. In that many posts, we've run through the full gamut of this process. From relief to excitement to anticipation to arrival, then right on through to the outright exhaustion we're currently dealing with.

Took some one-off photos and couldn't resist sharing them.

After a crazy posting week like the last one, we were bound to fall a little behind. Max had a whirlwind weekend, with a visit from his grandparents up north followed by a last-minute decision to head downtown for a little sightseeing.

Oddly enough, we really haven't done much since our last post (hence missing our deadline this week). As such, all we really have for you is a brief bout of health complaints along with some photos and video. At least we aren't posting the cat...yet.

Max is finally feeling better this week after what seems like the fifth or sixth sickness (say that five times fast) this year. Day care has turned him into a constant plague carrier, but thankfully he's getting less and less fussy about the whole process from stuffy to recovery. Having recovered fully from my back issues, we were able to spend a little fun time with Max this week (he even got a visit from Nan and Papa!).

Some say that a blog will have reached its ultimate end when the author runs out of things to talk about and, instead of posting a real entry, posts a photo of a cat. This puts us in a bit of a bind. Max likes cats. We've posted pictures of him and the cat before. Cats, to Max, are extremely exciting. Upon sighting one, he will typically squeal with delight, causing our cat to depart the area as immediately as possible. Luckily for Max, some cats are not as skittish.

We haven't taken a whole lot of photos this week (save for a few of Max finger painting, but we'll post those later), and it's really been more of a recovery week anyway. Even if we were to talk about our weekend, it would only really include the tale of our now-alphabetized spice rack. Riveting though that might be, I think people would rather hear about Max's Easter with his cousins and second cousins once removed (had to look that up...hat tip to genealogy.com).

The last few months we've been piling up a stack of videos that we never quite got around to pulling off the camera and putting on the blog. Well, we finally sat down and got them all processed, so we'll be posting them all this week.

Enjoy!

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. Max is dealing with a bout of pinkeye, which is of course happening just before we head down to Houston for the weekend. We just started his eyedrops tonight and the doc says he shouldn't be contagious after the first day or two (so the cousins should be safe). Seeing as that's not really a very entertaining story, we'll go on with the videos!

With videos taking over the blog last week (and Max dealing with his eye gunk), we didn't get a chance to do a proper update of the various happenings. Max has been very busy lately, so I guess we'll just take it from the top.

That's what this weekend was. Totally, completely, 100% wall-to-wall crazy. There were grandparents, animals, space ships, slides, and giant robots. This, of course, is why we haven't posted this week's entry until today.

The additional day for last weekend meant we got to cram a little more in there without feeling completely worn out by the end of it. We had a much more subdued time than recent weeks, with a chance to enjoy some of our more local fare.

Ready to go?

Had to happen sooner or later. Last week was filled with so much stress that we entirely forgot to put out a blog entry. We made the mistake of looking at our to-do list for Owen and kicked into overdrive to get ourselves a little farther along in the process. As such, I'll be catching up on two weeks ago tonight, then last week on Thursday.

Confused? Good. Let's move along.

As promised, we're catching up on our blog today. Last weekend, Max had a chance to head up to Sherman and visit all his family up there. I believe he got the full Sherman experience in during the trip.

Also, keep reading for those free DVDs I was talking about on Tuesday.

Max had himself a pretty entertaining week. Aside from being initiated into his day care circle of friends with a nice bite mark on his arm, he's been very busy with even more new activities to entertain us. His weekend was so busy that we'll have to break it out into two posts. Today I'll cover up to his play date with Mikey. Later in the week we'll talk about his trip up to Sherman. I'll try to get some videos out there for both.

Yet again I made the grave mistake of presuming that I might actually be able to post two blog entries in one week. What possessed me to make such ridiculous statements is beyond me. Probably sunspots or chemtrails behind commercial airliners or something. No matter. I've a second wind this evening thanks to a homemade blueberry muffin (stuff it, Betty Crocker) so I'll fill you in with a quick blurb on Sherman and crank out a few videos.

We had a bit of a laid back week this time around, compared to our adventures with ERs and killer whales. We certainly didn't mind. It let us get used to the idea of taking care of Max's injury and start some much needed work on Owen's nursery.

Looks like we went and missed another week of blog posting, which means there's a lot to catch up on. I guess we'll start from the beginning.

It's been quite the week for our little guys, with visits from grandparents from both sides and some animal visitors to boot. Blogs have taken a back seat to trying to keep up with these two, so it's nice to finally get a chance to churn one out.

We've been running regularly late on our blogs the last few weeks, and I keep promising again and again that I'm going to get these videos done. Guess what. They're done. We have enough of them to clog up the intertubes for an entire week, so that's exactly what we're going to do. Seven days, fourteen videos. Buckle up, buttercup.

The deluge continues. More videos coming at you.

Another day, another double-shot of motion picture fun from the boys.

Day four, and still going strong. This madness will not end until the week is through.

Friday, you say? The weekend draws near, but our resolve remains. The videos shall go on.

This is it. The week is ending, and the videos are drawing to a close. Don't say we never did anything for you.

Video week seems to have gone over well, and with the holiday coming up we're probably going to find ourselves away from our computers for a while. As such, we figured we'd give you a little taste of holiday cheer before you settle in and wait for Santa.

You know those movies with the zombies that shamble aimlessly around, murmuring and staring about with their sunken eyes? That's pretty much what it's been like around here since the end of December. Max got sick, I got sick, Owen got sick, I got sick again, Max got sick again, and Christy was pretty much sick through all of it. That's why it's been so long since we posted. We'll try to catch up with our ridiculous backlog this week, possibly doing multiple posts when we're not seeking out sweet, juicy braaaaaaaains.

We're almost entirely caught up on our blogging. We'll try to get two up this week and then we'll be back up to date on everything. Today we have a little New Year fun and a whole lot of change for the big guy.

Every so often, we get to the point where we just have to take care of things. Sometimes it's a bout of cleaning, sometimes it's catching up on the blog (last one!), sometimes a little boy's hair just gets a little too out of control.

As you may know already, we had ourselves a little weather event in North Texas this week. Over the course of a few days we saw plenty of snow that actually stuck to the ground, leaving us with an extremely excitable two year old.

An on time post! Hooray! We've been slacking off so much on the house that I actually found time to post the meager collection of photos we collected last week. The camera has sort of taken a back seat to things like cooking and cleaning and making sure the kids are happy. Weird, I know.

While we're talking about milestones, we should probably mention that Max turned two and a half a little over a week ago. He is now making sure to point that out whenever we ask him how old he is. It's been an interesting six months since his birthday, and it's amazing to think of all the changes he's gone through in that short amount of time.