Max and Miles who, to Me, Will Always be Secretly Named "Gus"

The blog about Max and his little brother, Miles. Stunningly cute boys and future leaders of the rebel forces.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

Reasons 4,358, 5,791 and 6,121 I Love Max

He's a night owl. Back when Max first started in his big-boy bed, there were a few nights of trouble. By "trouble", I mean for a week or so, there was a lot of getting out of bed, footsteps to his door, door getting cracked, eye peeking through crack, door slamming shut when you got up to walk towards door, footsteps thumping across floor, and little boy body jumping back into big-boy bed. This was typically accompanied by an emptying of dresser drawers followed by some wailing and then sleep. Our reward for this was opening his door an hour or two later to find the boy curled up on the floor; his head on his pillow, no blanket and everything he could possibly reach strewn about like some crazy carpet.

After some talkings-to on our part and, I guess, maturing on Max's part, we've all come to a agreement: As long as he stays in his room, he's cool. After we put Max to bed, the boy almost immediately leaps out of bed, flicks on his light and proceeds to putter about his room until he decides to go to sleep. Sometimes this can last five minutes, sometimes two hours. Here's what I love: At some point, he decides he's tired, he turns off his light and climbs into bed. It just cracks me up, trying to be in his head. "Oh man, I've read and re-read every damn book in here, I've sung every song I can remember and I've talked to every stuffed animal. . . eh, might as well go to sleep." Walks over to wall: click! Walks back to bed. It's beautiful.

He's a showman. The first couple of music classes that we took were fine by Max. We'd go to class, he'd play along, shake the instruments and run around once in awhile. Outside of class, though, he was like, "Music class, wha. . ?" He'd listen to his Elvis, his Jonathan Richman, his Holly, Buddy (what Max calls Buddy Holly) but, pop in that damn music class cd and he'd react like he was getting scanned. This last class though, the beats got him hooked like a crack head junkie. As with all his favorite discs, he has the whole freakin' thing memorized, knows what songs come in what order and has all the b-sides.

So, we go to class one day and, joy, his favorite song is dropped. Most kids just hung with their parents, sitting on their laps, maybe mumbling along, sort of singing or, depending on their age, drooling, uh, musically. Max, though, leapt up, stood in the center of the parent/kid circle and began to belt out: "STAR SHINE! NUMBERONE NUMBERTWO BYEBYE GOODNIGHT!!!" Had Katie and I been in a chair, we would have fallen out of them, laughing with joy and pride. As it was, being that we were already on the floor, we just sort of tipped over.

Max is clairvoyant. A few weeks back our homegirl, Kelli, was planning on coming down for a visit. A few days before she was due to arrive, I mentioned to Max that Kelli was coming. He came back with, "No, daddy, Kelli is not coming. Kelli is sick!" Ha-ha! So I called Kelli and left her a voicemail about the cute thing Max said. Kelli called the next day, saying she had listened to the voicemail, laughed, gone to bed and woke up with the nastiest cold: trip canceled. So, I guess, really, he can either tell the future or cast spells. Perhaps both. Kell-kell lives up Moorhead way, where the Red River prefers to color outside the lines. And the other day, ominously, Max mentioned that, "Kelli's car is stuck in the mud!". I hope he turns out to be a better singer than a wee Nostradamus.

Here's Max, dancing his pants off to They Might Be Giants. Whoops! There's reason 6,122.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Site Meter