Another double-edged benefit of a cold is that Max is more likely to sneeze out his feeding tube, allowing us to take picture of him without his facetape. Here's a picture of him in the morning sunlight, holding a football:
Max is obsessed with balls of all kinds, and has shown some mastery of the football, whose aerodynamic properties are unfathomable to those of us who had to wait until age 8 to handle one. Indeed, more broadly, Max entertains himself with basketballs, soccer balls and so on for long stretches of time. It is my theory that he has inherited the sports gene that I sadly lack. Either it skipped a generation, or he got it from his mother, or possibly both.
The embedded video below (click here if you don't see it) shows Max catching, throwing and scampering after various balls. Indeed, over the past couple of weeks, Max seems to be diligently studying the fine art of crawling. He doesn't (as you'll see) have the skill mastered, but he's getting better.
Carolyn asked that I produce a concise best-of-Max-crawling video to avoid boring everyone. It's surprisingly difficult to cook 45 minutes of raw footage into a 90 second highlight reel. So far the best I've been able to manage is the seven-and-a-half minute video below. At least you get to listen to Alan Bean describe a sunrise while on a spacewalk.
Max at play from Codered Summer on Vimeo.