everyday i get closer to being able to handle the bad driver jokes.

most everyone has heard my story by now, but i haven't shown very many people the pictures. here is what's left of the back end of my car. :(

our little eskimo!

in his never-ending quest to prove that he looks cute in everything, max has to show off by looking completely adorable in both his fall jacket and his winter coat.

introduction to another ISU sport.

max attended his first ISU men's basketball game with brian, me, and my parents. as you can see in the pictures, he was only interested in the jumbo-tron. (that's what he's staring at instead of the camera in each picture.) and, of course, he fully relaxed and took a nap for about 1/3 of the game.

monkey max

again/still, i can't figure out how to post pictures and text on the same blog. someday i'll figure that out though, because i'd love to give some commentary along side some of the posted pictures.

anyway...halloween was pretty low-key for us (and delayed; we didn't dress max up until three days after the actual holiday), but i couldn't pass up the opportunity to put max in a cute, little costume. in keeping with his ever-developing personality, he was pretty laid back about the whole thing. i figured he wouldn't like a cap with ginormous monkey ears and a split banana on his head, but it turned out that he didn't appear to even notice its existance. we took him around to visit various, interested family members, and then went home and went to bed fairly early (which made the extra hour from daylight savings all the more fabulous!).

all in all, it was a good first halloween for mr. max.

part three (in reverse order)

pretend this is all one blog.

i'm not exactly sure why i chose a friday to attempt to update my blog (it's by far the busiest day at the coffee shop). not only did it just take me over two hours to upload a handful of pictures, but also blogger is now giving me an error message whenever i try to upload the rest of the ones that i wanted to post. AND i couldn't figure out how to get text into the last post.

either i'm stupid, or this website hates me. or maybe both. OR maybe neither. anyway...i'll attempt to add some more pictures later, because now that max is smiling i have some *super* cute ones to share!

i'm starting to dislike blogger.com.

smiles and (fake) bow ties.

fyi, i'm still REALLY not understanding this blogger site.

this past weekend we participated in the des moines ALS walk in memory of my grandpa johannsen. it was a little hot, but we still had a nice walk. not that max even knows he was there; he once again slept through an entire event, minus the two seconds he woke up (when the stroller stopped moving), and i happened to get a picture of us. we went to my grandma johannsen's afterwards for lunch, and max very much enjoyed all the attention he got from my grandma and my aunts and uncles. i'm always impressed with anyone who can earn his eye contact over a ceiling fan!

later that evening brian, max, and i went to jason schippers' wedding. max got to wear his super fancy tuxedo onesie. (which he later, in the privacy of our own home, managed to almost ruin during a very, very explosive diaper incident.) i had to work pretty hard to make it happen, but max barely made any noise at all during the wedding, and then he (of course) slept through the entire reception. but really, a nice time was had by all.

i tried to post some pictures of max smiling, but i still haven't captured the expression really well. although each day he smiles more and more, so it's only a matter of time before i actually press the button at the appropriate time. currently the thing that makes him smile the most is his mobile animal friends, although he's pretty happy in general right after he eats in the evening, so we can usually get a few smiles out of him then, too. overall though, max is proving to be a pretty serious little boy. he often looks like he's deep in thought, with his eyebrows knitted together fiercely. it's VERY cute.

i know i had more i wanted to say, but i really do need to get back to work. cold weather is good for coffee shop business (but bad for blogging time!).

quick update

i still don't understand how to control the placement of these pictures. someday...

anyway, time continues to fly by. it seems like everyday max does something new and (obviously) cute. he's lifting his head, "talking" to his mobile animal friends, sorta-kinda smiling, and, saving the best for last, sleeping through the night. these are all the kinds of things that i swore i'd never care about, but it turns out that i do. i love max, and i love just about every tiny thing that he does. i don't know if this means that deep down inside every woman there's a maternal instinct or what, but i really thought i'd be the last person to think and act and feel this way. but i really couldn't be happier right now.

i'm short on time, but just a quick explanation of the pictures that i assume will appear above this text. i'm positive that they're out of order. deal with it. :)

1. max is starting to semi-enjoy his baths. i say "semi" because he no longer screams through the entire process. i found that the trick was to fill the tub about a quarter full of warm water. he appears to like sitting in the warm water as opposed to just being sponged down with it. i suppose most of us do, so it only makes good sense. (seriously, i'm going to write a book for mothers like me some day.)

2. i'm starting to put max in pj's at night. before i was just attempting to change him every 24 hours. but now that he's starting to get what nighttime is for, i'm trying to get him in some kind of bedtime routine. also, brian has hairy legs.

3. max and brian were both baptized this past sunday. i actually straightened my hair and put in my contacts for the event. in attendance were: my aunt kay & uncle rick, my grandma johannsen, my parents, kathy, and pete & ruth. it was good. God is good.

4. & 5. max is cute. sometimes i just like to take pictures to prove that statement.

good thing he has thunder thighs!

max had his two month doctor's appointment yesterday. i really hadn't anticipated how difficult it would be for me to watch him get his immunizations. i liked it about 17 times less than i thought i would. i actually cried just a little bit in response to his crying. thankfully he was easily calmed, and before we even left the doctor's office he was perfectly content to look around the room quietly while i made the co-pay and scheduled his next appointment.

just fyi, he now weighs 11 pounds, 6 ounces, which means he's gained 5 pounds since birth. pretty impressive if you ask me! he went from being in the 7th percentile for his weight (based on age) to the 50th percentile. he's also currently in the 40th percentile for height (which is also impressive considering the fact that i'm almost a midget). i forgot to ask him what percentage he is for cuteness, but i'm fairly certain that it's 100%.

max was pretty fussy for awhile last night (although he slept from 10pm until 5:15 this morning!!!), and he has a little fever today. i've only (ha!) allowed myself to call the sitter twice today. i feel so fortunate that we found someone who brian and i both like and trust. it's hard to be away from max when i know that he's a little sick and uncomfortable, but at least i know he's with someone who is giving him attention and is taking care of him.

anyway, i'm including some pictures of his chubby, little legs post-injections. (he got three! *sad face*) i'm also posting pictures of him right after the appointment (totally zonked out) and then 10pm last night (totally wide awake). i can tell that i've been a combo of sick and busy lately, because i have very little in the picture department to share right now. but here's what i DO have.....

it took me a long time to figure out what 8 times 7 was. apparently motherhood doesn't help math skills.

i can't believe how quickly time is going! max turned eight weeks old on monday, and it's weird how the 56 days has gone by so incredibly fast, although at the same time i can barely remember what life was like before we had a baby to take care of and love. brian and i were reflecting on my pregnancy last night, and even that is hard to remember (yet i somehow manage to conjur up the bad stuff just enough to compolain about it!). it's totally cliche, but what all women kept telling me throughout my pregnancy is true: it was all totally worth it. every swollen-foot, nauseous, back-aching minute of it. i really didn't know i was capable of loving someone this much so quickly. it's so amazing.

anyway, since i last posted a blog we've attended yet another (horribly depressing) iowa state football game. max actually woke up for the second half of this one. and i think the highlight of the entire outing was when grandpa tom sternly told a guy in our section to stop smoking. (i don't know when i became the paranoid mother who doesn't want her baby within a mile radius of second hand smoke, but i'm totally that mother.) i thought possibly a fight was going to break out, or at least words were going to be exchanged, but instead the guy just discreetly put out his cigarette.

so here are some more pictures. they're mostly of the game (and our tame version of tailgaiting beforehand) and there are, as always, a few random ones because i just can't go more than a day without documenting his cuteness.

oh, and p.s., the picture of what appears to be taken of the UNI side line is actually supposed to be a picture of brian. if you click on the large version you'll see a blurry guy with a neon green vest. that's brian. :) he had the very cool and important job of taking the headphones to the referee if there was a replay.