after hanging on for dear life for about two months, max’s 4th loose baby tooth finally gave up and fell out this week. mark and i couldn’t believe how much the tooth got pushed out and up while still in residence – it was a quite a snaggle-tooth by the end.
and it was one of the big top middle teeth so the gap is adorable.
i’ve been revamping my blog – it’s taken a lot of tinkering, but i did it all myself, so i’m feeling a little proud of how it turned out. what do you think?
i’ve also started working on photos from our wonderful trip to orlando last week…i really hope to have them posted by friday!
until then, here are a few recent photos of max.
Last night we watched “In Search of the King Cobra” hosted by herpetologist Austin Stevens and Max loved it.
During the program, while in India in search of the Cobra, Austin caught a Russell’s Viper and showed the audience how the fangs worked by having it bite through plastic on a cup and “milking” it for venom.
Max thought that was so incredibly cool, I told him today we would study the Viper and then have a fun project.
Russell’s Viper
What We Learned:
-A scientist who studies snakes is called a herpetologist.
-Russell’s Viper is one of the most dangerous snakes in all of Asia because of it’s lethal venom.
-Also called a “rat snake” (it’s favorite snack)
-It preys mainly on rodents and other small animals
-Is a member of the Viperidae family of snakes
-Aggressive and threatened easily
-Coils up, hisses and strikes out very quickly
-Normally two to five and a half feet in length, with triangular shaped heads and large fangs. The markings on their heads include three triangular shaped spots along with dark lines that stretch from the eyes to the corners of the mouth
-Can be found in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Asia and Taiwan. It prefers to live in grassy areas and fields, as well as savannahs, scrubby areas and sometimes rainforests. It also lives in hedges, bushes and along fences near human settlements, where they are hard to see.
Project: “Milking A Snake”
We took a glass and put a little bit of orange juice inside (it looks just like the venom we saw on the TV show) and put rubber banded plastic wrap on the top. Then Max stuck two pieces of toothpicks in the plastic for the “fangs”. For the scene to be complete, Max played herpetologist and held his rubber snake to the toothpicks.
After I got my picture, he proceeded to drink the venom. 
good thing it was just in time for max’s “crazy hair day” at this week’s vacation bible school!
i couldn’t believe there weren’t any other kids with temporary color in their hair – that was mark’s idea – but there were lots of spiked and multi-ponytailed dos! i let max pick out the color at walgreens tuesday night and asked mark to apply it outside while i was getting ready this morning. i thought i had suggested “streaks” but apparently that wasn’t heard…he did max’s whole sweet head! it came out really cool. i kept thinking he looked like a mini kurt cobain or that he stepped out of that trippy movie “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”. he was pointed at and got lots of laughs from the kids when he was dropped off at vbs this morning, so i hung back for a a minute to see how max would react. but he took it in stride – he just laughed too and got right down to the important business of having fun.
i love to see his face light up with joy over simple things and see that he has the confidence to experience that joy no matter what color his hair is or who’s watching.
when max was about one and a half, mark set up his camera on a tripod over max’s crib and attached it to his laptop to take time lapse photos of how much he wiggled around in his sleep during the night. this is definitely a favorite of ours – i’m so glad we have it.
to watch the video, please click on the link entitled “oldie but goodie – time lapse max”, which is underneath the photo. i tried several different things, but ultimately couldn’t figure out how to have it just play within this blog. so you have to click the link, which will open another page, and click the link again, where you’ll be prompted to save/download the .exe file. finally, find the .exe file on your computer and click it to play. it just takes a minute and it’s worth it!
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