Mother's day

Our new apartment has a strawberry farm less than 1/2 a mile from it. It's small but Wei Yan suggested we do this for Mother's day. Max did really well and happily obliged my choice of berries for Max to "pick" and put in his basket. Only $1.40/lb so I might be stopping by again since it's so close when I am in the mood for some fresh strawberries. They weren't as good as some of the ones I've had in California, but vine ripe vs. stuff in the store was a nice thing.

 

 

My favorite pic of the day:

 

That afternoon after nap, Max ate about a pound of strawberries. After a few of Max's recent idea to eat the outsides of all the strawberries and leave a whitish slobbery mess, I figured out that if I cut them in 1/2 or 1/3s then he'll eat the whole thing (yay!)

Happy Birthday to Me!

Max likes singing "Happy Birthday" but right now it's "Happy Birthday to we" - or me most of the time. He did sing Happy Bithday to mommy though, so he knows when it counts. Here is us at the Pit in downtown Raleigh - we didn't get a group photo of the whole group, but I didn't forget all who came out to help me celebrate this year.

 

Max's sense of humor

So Max has a bit of a funny side. We'll often here him tell us stuff, only to wait a few seconds before saying, "Nooooooooo!" - for some reason he's also gotten into the habit of giving "stank eye" while doing this. Here in this video he jokes with me about his tray being mom's tray amongst other things:

NC zoo

Good Friday, Max's day care was closed, so we decided to head to the zoo - apparently so did everyone else, cuz it was packed. We hit traffic 5 miles before the entrance, but despite that we had a great day. Here are what Max keeps calling "saurs" (dinosaurs):

 

And Max's favorite activity was the chalk wall & washing the chalk away with wet paint brushes. His vocabulary is growing daily, the 2nd picture was Max showing us what "chock" is.

 

 

Gong Hei Fat Choi

So we missed the family picture on Christmas, but with family around for Chinese New Year I made sure we got a picture of the 3 of us. Happy year of the....uh, tiger?

 

Christmas photos

Please with a big smile:

And a picture with almost the whole Overman side - except Wei Yan wasn't in the picture. Sadly we forgot to take a picture of just Wei Yan, Max and I - but it would help if Wei Yan weren't sick every Christmas!

Way behind on posts

Seems like a common thing is that when there is a gap in communication, it usually means folks are not so eager to share bad news. Partially true in this case. When we were in Baltimore and in Greenville it was easier to update folks using facebook or phone conversation. Folks are a little better now that the shock has worn off a bit and we all understand what things need to be taken care of, but it's hard to believe it's been almost 3 months since Wei Yan's father passed away now. Here's his obituary.

Good Health

So we've had a rough week. Wei Yan's dad is still in the hospital following some complications from a surgery. He's in critical condition and making some improvements. He still has a long way to go, but we are encouraged by the doctors' updates and keeping him in our thoughts and prayers.
Max & I got sick while Wei Yan was gone so not much to report on that - we survived him being gone. I've gotten some meds and feel better already. While dad was away, I didn't fill Max's days with much fun - just TV and books. Here was a gift dad brought Max - and he sure likes it! Looking forward to many more smiles from our little guy to brighten our day.

Halloween

 

Thanks to Auntie CC who got creative and made Max's costume this year from scratch! :-) Max didn't go trick or treating, but we did go to a get together at a neighbors house, so he got to check out all the other costumes.

October 2009

Here are some recent photos of Max I took.



And here is a picture of Max when Daddy came home after work one day. THIS is why both of us like pick up way better than drop off.


Here at the farm across the street from his day care. It is a real farm, but they cater to the holiday stuff mostly. We'll have to go back because even though he did NOT want any of the pumpkins (we left empty handed, but all the little pumpkins were sold out), he was NOT happy about leaving the tractors. With Cars and Finding Nemo are his 2 favorite movies now, his favorite games are lining up his cars, WWF wrestling with his stuffed "Mo Mo" (Nemo) and tractor tipping (like "May may" Mater from Cars).

Peanut Butter Cookies

Sorry it's been forever since we've posted anything. It's been a busy few weeks. On Labor Day, Max wanted to try a peanut butter cookie. Just a few broken pieces left, but Max was very insistent after refusing cakes and other yummy things, so we thought we'd let him try. His face broke out in hives and these skin things don't show up well in pictures, but here's a pic of our little guy ~20 min after eating what amounted to less than 1 cookie:

 

We got him tested and he's allergic to peanuts, eggs and shellfish (shrimp & crab reacted and the other bivalves were pretty low). Max tested negative for ovo-mucoid, which means he is ok with egg so long as it's cooked long enough to break down the proteins, so no scrambled eggs or even hard boiled eggs - stuff should be baked at a high temperature for a signifant amount of time. By completely eliminating exposure, this should help Max grow out of it if he is going to, so we're going to keep our fingers crossed.

Mo Mo

Max has been having a tough time recently. First he got hives pretty
bad from a peanut butter cookie. Then he started the hyper reaction to
benadryl. He's been having some trouble with his 2nd year molar (all
his 1st molars are in) - so the sleeping has been all out of wack.
Here he is with his cow (the only stuffed animal he seems to care for
at all) and watching his most recent demand ("mo mo" = Nemo). Luckily
wei yan figured that one out at 2:30am last night, cuz Max was getting
really frustrated with me for not getting it.

This kid's got rhythm

So we're at that point where Max is really learning things my leaps and bounds. Recently, Max has been pointing to Wei Yan's iphone and saying "Ma" since the wallpaper image is a picture of Max. Yesterday, he turned on the phone, said Max like 3 times, turned on the music - which happened to be a Pearl Jam and started rocking out. I tried to get him to say it after me - the Max he yells out is not the way he normally says it, but it will do. This kid's got some rhythm! Oh, he also likes Pink and sadly Britney's circus song (which is banned from our radio, sorry buddy).

Yay for me!

So Max says "pu pu" for Supra now. And he knows who some people are or can at least figure it out by powers of deduction some of the time. Since we learned the hard way that pointing to oneself and saying "daddy" or "mommy" isn't the best way to teach Max who we are (ask him who Mommy or Daddy is & he'll point to himself) - Grandma tried to see who Max knew by asking him to give people puzzle pieces. Listen for "Supra" in the beginning too:

18 months old now!

Here is a picture of Max's "Stanky eye" (according to Auntie CC):

 

We had his 18 month check up today where he was 22lbs 4 oz (moving up to 8th percentile from 4th), 30-1/8" (4th percentile, but he was NOT happy about being forced to stretch out, so don't think that was very accurate) and 10th percentile in head circumference. Seems like each time he goes, his reaction to the shots gets worse. This time was a full out meltdown including 3 bandaids to help stop the bleeding on his finger prick (hemoglobin level to check his dairy/starch gluttony and lack of most other stuff isn't a problem). He ripped off all bandaids and was NOT having any of that. Luckily dad wore a red shirt today!

Sorry, been a little slow on the updates. Grandma was here for a week and I'll have to post some pics of that visit soon.

hehehe

yesterday, max came home from day care with this laugh:

we have no idea where this came from or how long it will stay.

Thank you

 

So while we were in Cali, we visited one of our friends and Max was playing with their daughter in their backyard. I heard some commotion & found Max had backed this little girl up against the wall and he was trying to claim all of (her) bubble wands. I scolded Max and since he's been having much trouble with the whole sharing concept, I tried for success by asking him to pick 2 and let the owner have the rest (assuming here that with 1 in each hand he could not protest too much). After he grabbed 2 (of her bubble wands, mind you) I told him, "say 'thank you'" - just as a passing comment and I heard a "do do" in a VERY loud, forced tone! ATTITUDE already??? And this since I wasn't really expecting him to say anything, cuz he's said a 2-syllable "do-do" a few times in a rising & falling pronounciation a few times a while back. These 2 survived their encounter with no hard feelings - how nice it is to be young enough to forget infractions in minutes!

all max's new tricks

Touch down part II

making uncle ryan proud!

1st flight down

We woke Max up at 4:30am this morning to catch our 6am flight. Knowing
he would not be happy about being awoken 3-4 hrs before he normally
does, we waited til the last min to get him up.

He was awake & fairly active the whole fight and then we touch down &
2 min taxiing then he is PASSED OUT! Now we're stuck waiting on the
tarmac, so guess it's a good time for a nap.