Tristan has started playing Super Mario Bros as of yesterday! James busted out an emulator version on his computer and showed Tristan how to walk while he did the jumping. Soon, they graduated to James's old Nintendo DS and Tristan began to learn to play on his own. Granted, he's not great yet, but it's only been one day and none of us were great at playing within our first day and we started older than 3 and a half.
Now, video gaming is most certainly not the way to athletic success, but nobody in this household is successful athletically, so that's fine with us. We're a geek household and we've been waiting for this day for about as long as I waited to take a mommy-baby bike ride. Tristan has officially reached the age where he's more of a kid than a baby and it's been really nice to spend the cooperative time with him. Now, to get him playing some RPGs..
Tristan is very, very resistant to the idea of pooping in a toilet even still. I'm fairly sure we're going to make it to age 4 pooping in pull-up diapers. (And sleeping in them, but I don't expect that any time soon; he has less control over it.) However, this week is the beginning of "shitting takes place in the bathroom." I won't give him a pull-up to poop in unless he is in a bathroom. I've been parking Kirianna outside the bathroom, giving Tristan his iPad to entertain himself, and waiting it out.
Tristan is, unfortunately, NOT ready to be independent in the bathroom with the door closed for any amount of time. I'm sure that if he wanted to, he could handle it, but after what happened this week, he can freaking wait. We have a tube of hydrocortisone ointment for a persistent rash he has on his leg; it's kept in the diaper/underwear bin for ease of use. He closed the door and I let him alone for about 3 minutes. During that time, he took out the tube of ointment, got up by the sink, squeezed that shit everywhere, and started flooding the floor. Guess who gets supervised for a while? He had some fun helping me clean that mess up.
Today was fairly easy with the poop-speriment. He finished up about 3 minutes after I installed him in the bathroom with his entertainment and parked outside to breastfeed his sister. Then he wanted to sit in it and continue playing his game instead of having me clean him up to return to the living room. Prior to today, he spent close to an hour each time before deciding to release his bowels into the diaper. So we have a change in behavior toward the goal!
We've been abusing the power of the iPad (or P-Apple, as it is still often called around here) to manage having two kids. Tristan loves to play all versions of Angry Birds, but he's just learning that you should complete the board and be assigned 1-3 stars for your score. He still mostly resets the game prematurely, though. He plays Uno fairly well for a 3 year old, since he understands his numbers and colors and how to follow directions regarding such. He irritates the shit out of me with a game called Touch Physics, which has you draw objects in order to affect the movement of some other object toward a star - he isn't very fast with it, and I don't know how to play it, so he gets frustrated and either I'm nursing his sister and can't help, or hell, I'm no help anyway. He's also been playing Pocket Tanks, which involves shooting shit and making it explode, to which he exclaims, "Oh no!" Oh yes, Misunderstood Pigs, which is a spoof on Angry Birds where you play from the pigs' perspective; same "Oh no!" every time something in the game falls down.
The past two days, we've also been biking, since I can exercise again and he's been getting decent on his balance bike. Yesterday, I had him out on a bike with flat tires because I completely forgot to check. James had mentioned that Tristan was not as fast on the bike as he used to be; we figured that he was just out of practice after a hiatus. Turns out it's kind of hard to balance on a bike with flat tires! Today we went back out with his tires fixed and I actually had to sprint on my bike to keep up with him at times and make sure he didn't run into traffic. I'll take him out to actually go places instead of riding around the parking lot when he follows my directions or my path enough to stay out of cars' way, or perhaps I can toss a bike rack on my car and drive the bikes somewhere. I've been waiting for almost 4 years to be able to bike with my kid, so yay!
Tristan is adjusting very well to having a little sister. He doesn't lose his shit when I hold her anymore, or even when I nurse her - although he is a complete punk about trying to steal my nursing pads. He gives Kirianna kisses, comments on her crying without seeming resentful, and can even sleep through it when she's very fussy.
Two things that Tristan used to love are messing with him these days: the wind and music. He was formerly fascinated by wind and loved to watch trees, etc. swing and feel the wind in his hair. A while ago (when I got my new car) he started getting upset when the windows were open, and for that I do not blame him as the wind was far more tolerable with my old car. However, these past few months, he's refused to play outside and has gotten very mad even when going from car to store if it was "too windy." With regard to the music, when he was very little he would enjoy when we would sing to him; that hasn't been the case for several months now unless it's a kids' song or a couple of other non-kids' songs. These past couple of weeks he's been asking for the music in the car to be turned off in most cases, but he does have some preferences. He's learning to ask for a song called "The Cross" by a band called Within Temptation, and he has some tolerance for rock with a female lead singer.
On March 11th, Tristan's little sister Kirianna was born. Tristan doesn't like her much quite yet. We hear that's pretty normal, though.
We got home from the hospital on the 13th. Tristan did very well without me there for a few days. But he is very jealous of the baby whenever I am the one holding her. He can handle it when anyone else has her, but for some reason she represents a threat to him when I'm caring for her. He says the following:
"Baby sister Kirianna stand up?"
"Baby sister Kirianna go lay down in the bed please?"
"Bye, Kirianna!"
One thing that has made his life easier has been the visit with Grandma and Aunt Cindy. Both of them have given him tons of personal attention and have made him feel less scared in this new situation. He's gotten rather attached to both of them and knows to ask for them by name. In fact, he has spent lots of time hugging on them and refusing to hug me (in an "in the mood for them" way, not in an "I don't like you anymore" way, if that makes sense). It really warms me to see him getting attached to family like that - it's great to have family, and even more great that he gets attached to specific people and decides to form a real bond with them.
So, Tristan is using underwear during most of his awake time. We started in the last week of December so he'd have some time to get used to it before going back to school. He has the peeing thing down - he has pee accidents here and there, but they really distress him, and he has learned the general process of holding it in. He doesn't request to go to the toilet at home very often still; we have to offer him the chance. But we're done with having to take him on a strict schedule to make sure he puts pee into the toilet.
He's still not independent about the whole process. Someone has to go with him and talk him through the process, or at least supervise him through it. I think he is capable of doing it on his own but likes the extra support. After all, he can put his own clothing on except for getting fronts and backs right, and remembering to pull up the underwear before the pants. I figure that he's pretty good about asserting independence when he's confident, but that is a crucial step.
Pooping has been making very, very small progress. We've gotten him to poop in the toilet several times but he is frankly averse to it at this point. We've taken to providing him a pull-up diaper when we know he really has to go. He will ask to go to the toilet when he needs to poop and is in underwear, but he will not actually release his bowels into the toilet if he can help it. It's also fairly irritating to clean up poop when it all lands in his underwear, because he yanks his underwear down and manages to spread the poop everywhere. He also seems to have an aversion to staying in the bathroom to poop, even while wearing a diaper - this probably coincides with independence being incomplete but he requires privacy to poop. The privacy thing is fun in public, as we often go places with lots of people and he really wants to be alone to take care of business.
So, pleased with the progress and hoping he makes some more soon!
Tristan and I took a shower before his bedtime tonight. Usually, when we do this, he's ok with going to sleep with wet hair. For some reason tonight, he objected to the wet hair in bed so I decided to break out the hair dryer. To my astonishment, the hair dryer was the preferred option, and I took a few minutes to blow his hair dry. Six months ago, he freaked out when hand dryers in the bathroom came on, so I never expected this by any means.
The main news for this month is that Tristan has begun to say "yes" in proper context. He's been saying "say yes" for "yes" part of the time but he's working on that. It's been about two weeks now. It also makes communication a hell of a lot easier when he's sure about his answer. He's probably gotten more of what he wants because of it.
Another Tristanism is "Tickle T!" I think he learned it from being taught to say "Trick or treat!" around Halloween. He seriously enjoys being tickled and asks for it quite often, especially when we're snuggling up in bed before or after a sleep. Of course, it gets him worked up and makes it hard for him to settle down, but so does my general presence.
As today is Christmas, we've spent a good portion of the day opening and playing with gifts. Most of the stuff is for him - happens when you have kids. He received a lot of goodies with his name on it, and he's currently wearing a t-shirt with his name written in Spongebobs. He's been quite attracted to the cup and hat with his name on them. Now, this kid rarely wears hats so that's pretty neat.. and he discarded a Thomas shirt that he also received today to put the name shirt on.
We had a lot of fun around the Halloween season. We even went to a church party with Ethan and Evan on Halloween night. We also went to Google's peoplefest a few days prior. His school also had a Halloween parade where he got to go to school in costume. Tristan was dressed as Thomas the Tank Engine and got plenty of "wows" from other kids.
Speaking of Ethan and Evan, they have unfortunately moved away in the middle of November. Tristan finally stopped asking about them every day about two weeks later. We all miss them and their family terribly. It will be difficult to come by friends like them.
Tristan is improving in two areas: the potty and eating. I've been carrying around a very portable potty for him to use when he's afraid of the ones in public; we're down to needing to use it instead of auto-flushers only. And he's sitting next to me eating sausage and "spicy chicken" (it's fake chicken) with.. a FORK. By HIMSELF. Yay for small victories!
- Still no more using the toilet for poop, but is starting to get better about using public toilets for pee. We're almost ready to try underwear for real. We stocked up on waterproof pads for the couch, car seat, etc.
- His language is improving, which is to be expected with that strange thing called 'growing up.' He's getting better at following multi-step directions, asking for things he wants, answering questions, and the like.
- If you ask him to write his name, he will. If you ask him what his name IS, he likely won't say it.
- He's getting rather bored of the iPad and avoids playing with it on most days. He's starting to ask to go out by saying, "More go daddy's car?"
- He's taken a liking to our local bouncy house, Bounce-A-Rama, to the point where you can't say it around him without him begging to go (which sounds like "More go Bounce-A-Rama?" over and over again in a cute little voice).
- He is improving in his behavior toward other children. When he started preschool, he became rather slappy and pushy. Now he does need reminding or removing from a situation, but it's often when he's been jumping for 50 minutes (50 minutes seems to be that magical threshold) or when other kids start doing it to each other (and he's trying to use it to join the play). He enjoys roughhousing with kids when it's mutually agreeable - he and his friend Ethan went at it for a while when we went to a pumpkin patch with a bouncy house recently.
- Counting seems to help alleviate his screaming when he's upset about something other than being in a lot of pain. He will eventually join in.
- One of his favorite things to do at the mall is read the sale advertisement signs either in the doorway or printed on the windows of the stores. He recognizes the percent and dollar symbols. It's really neat (though sometimes annoying when I'm trying to move fast) when he walks up to a sign and exclaims, "50% off!"
- He has a Thomas the Train costume for Halloween. He's been a considerable fan of Thomas for a while now. So stereotypical for his age and gender! I figure it could be worse, so I'll take it.
- His shirt-chewing has decreased markedly lately. How? I told him that if he chews holes in his shirt, it will have to go in the trash. In fact, we have a Thomas shirt that will have to go to trashland today since it's fairly holey on the shoulder. But it's really amazing to us that he understands the logic and can be reasoned with.
- He has discovered that he likes ham, although he insists it's "pepper-noni."
I'm getting around to writing about September's visit out to see the rest of the family!
Yep, we're getting pretty bad about that, but at least the pictures and videos are somewhat up to date. I also spent a lot of time fixing the picture thumbnails so that they're not all pictures of the sky.
We spent a little over a week out in IL (where James was a baby) and NY (where I was a baby). We piggybacked the trips because there was no way in hell that we felt like taking Tristan straight to NY. The purpose of the trip was to celebrate birthdays: James's mom turned the big 60 and the family planned a surprise party, which wasn't entirely a surprise by the time it happened. We also planned a surprise get-together for James's birthday, since we'd be in town with his high school buddies and since he didn't get a nod during Tristan's party this year. (I think The Little Gym was a bit immature for James, but who knows?)
The flights were all pretty good. Tristan slept a huge portion of the time away. The only time he didn't was when we didn't bring the car seat on board during the ride from IL to NY. For the record, there's a lot more space when you have two adults and a 3-year-old in a row and no car seat, but we needed kiddo to not be bored. We got him lots of crappy activity books from the airport stores and even found him a dragon backpack. There were younger babies on board the trip from CA to IL and they were awake longer than Tristan was, so I ended up playing with them a bit. But it's safe to say that Tristan flies well enough that a 2 hour trip is not out of the question.
Tristan had a little bit of trouble adjusting to his Aunt Cindy's house (as did we all, as is the way of being in Not Your Own House) but managed decently after the first day. He wanted to explore, and there's always plenty for a flying tornado child to hurt himself on, so we did worry a bit. We ended up stealing Cindy's bed and all 3 of us sleeping together in it for most of the nights. This involved me being elsewhere while Tristan was being put down, of course, but once we were all settled, we were only awake every hour or so adjusting whose feet were in which direction. We brought his P-Apple (iPad) but of course, Tristan is far more interested in physical exploration than pissing his life away on happy electronic entertainment - we could stand to learn from him, but being pregnant makes me lazier, damnit.
Grandma Linda's party, from Tristan's perspective, was pretty much playing on the adjacent playground as we took turns making sure he didn't kill himself. He does require more supervision than the average 3 year old (hell, there was a family member who was about his age and he was supervised by his older brothers without getting into too much shit) but he's also a bit of a daredevil. He saw playground equipment that doesn't especially exist here, such as see-saws and merry-go-rounds. He fell off the latter at least once, but definitely liked to spin in circles. Later on, he ended up sucking on the big candy witch adornment from his grandma's birthday cake, much to the envy of many of the other kids and adults. He also discovered that he likes grape soda a bit - not something we're going to keep around here, since soda is something we don't want him really partaking in (he dislikes Coke, which helps a lot).
James's party, from Tristan's perspective, was: go outside with me and another child, walk around the lake at James's parents' house, be told not to walk where the mud is wet, immediately step into the wet mud, fall, be marched inside for impromptu bath, and build Lincoln Logs with whoever else was willing to mind him for a bit while James and I chatted with his friends.
We stayed at a hotel for the NY portion of the trip. While staying with family is nice, having fewer people sharing one toilet is a major benefit. The sleeping arrangement was the same: I go away while James puts Tristan down, and then we all snore happily away, waking up every hour or so. Tristan got to meet my father for the first time - he'd met the rest of the family I'm still in contact with already. A new house meant exploration time for Tristan, so he was difficult to keep hold of. But he did have one major victory - he managed to poop in the toilet for the first (and thusfar only) time. It's somewhat undignifying to go visit the family only to chat about poop for an hour or so, but that's part of life with a kid Tristan's age. Tristan showed off his awesome writing skills for the family, we took a lot of pictures, he played with a dollhouse that was on hand (and liked it so much he may get one for Christmas from us), he managed to sleep through a sit-down meal (thankfully, as he gets antsy sitting down to eat when he won't eat anything) and then it was over and we were on our way back to IL.
We spent some more time with the family and then were on our way back to CA. It turned out to be a decent amount of time for visiting. I was freaking tired and shitty company; such is the way of the pregnant one. It was wonderful to see everyone. Tristan is especially attached to Cindy, his grandma Linda, and his uncle AJ. (Tristan had a major tantrum when Cindy split from us to drive home separately at one point!)
However, it will be some years before we attempt a trip of that magnitude again. Preferably when Tristan is able to entertain his younger sibling so they both give us a bit of downtime.
A week and a half into Tristan's preschool experience, and I finally have the inclination to write about it. Being sick can go stuff itself, by the way.
August 29th, four days after Tristan turned 3, was his first day of preschool. Now, he doesn't really have the language skills (I am guessing) for us to be able to tell him this kind of shit, or he's like any other 3 year old and understands but is still scared. Either way, it takes him a bit of time to get used to new things. This was no exception.
I decided that I'd personally drop him off and pick him up for the first week - in my new Soccer Mom mobile, a Mazda 5 (thankfully, it is a very SMALL minivan/wagon thingie). I figured that throwing him on a bus and saying, "Good luck!" before he knew what the hell was going on was not going to go over very well. So I brought him to the school that is as physically far away as one can get while still being in the same district, and I learned where his classroom is, and I learned which doors he needs to enter and exit through. The first couple of days were rough - he very obviously was distressed by the fact that mommy was leaving and he was not. By the third day, he got the general routine down and separated with a few hugs.
He's been showing off his love for letters and spelling (ah yes, a chip off the old female block.. bwahaha) in full force. But his behavior last week outside of school was somewhat abysmal. He started a brand new habit - hitting other children. He also rekindled an older one - hitting me. I spoke to his teacher(s) and they assured me that there's not some unusual slugging going on amongst the kids in class. Also, we all immediately got sick and that likely had a negative effect on his judgment aside from the "what the fuck is this routine and where is my old one?" factor.
This Tuesday (because Monday was a holiday) was his first bus trip. He did not separate well, as this was a new introduction to the routine. I was told that he entered the classroom in a decent enough mood. By today, he looked a little bit dismayed to be put on the bus but there was no screaming. He's fairly obsessed with "The Wheels on the Bus" and likes being in moving vehicles so I assume he has at least a small amount of affinity for the bus by this point.
There are a few other kids in his class - not sure entirely how many, as the class is split into two sessions with half of the class arriving and leaving earlier. There are 2 or 3 other high-functioning autistic kids for sure. At least one of them has expressive language that seems better developed than Tristan's, although I don't think any of them obsesses over written language as he does. And the ones we've met so far (the 2 or 3 - I am not sure because one of them has been out sick and we didn't have the "so, what's wrong with YOUR kid?" talk) are all girls. He's going to be quite experienced with the ladies.
And that is preschool in a nutshell. Not much else of note, other than a) we got Tristan a new bed (it's in the "upside down" position, not in the position shown in the image and b) we're expecting a *gasp* sibling for Tristan in March.
My tiny little (great big, huge) baby is THREE years old! I'd ask where the time went, but I know damn well what happens to time. It gets swallowed up by the Time Monster.
On the 25th, his birthday, we went to Santa Cruz and spent the afternoon at the beach. We have family in town (my mom, my aunt Toni, and my cousin Matt). Tristan absolutely adored it. He wanted to go into the water so badly, but we only let him jump the end of the waves with some adult help, mostly from my mom. I think he needs to see some of us go into the water first before we can truly show him how the ocean works, but it was intensely cold. Tristan was fascinated by the lapping waves and spent at least an hour dancing among them. Then he firmly ensconced himself in the sand, covering himself in a bit of sand-water paste that stuck well to him for hours. I'm very glad we went on Tristan's behalf - it seems like an amazing experience for him.
Today was his birthday party! Tristan started out the day by going with James to his class at The Little Gym, attending another birthday party for his friend Alek, and then coming back to have his own party also at The Little Gym.
The party went very well, though it kicked all of our asses. We had a wonderful turnout, all of the details went as planned (the new party time worked well; we had been previously double-booked which was a scary experience), the food was delicious, and the kids generally made it through the festivities. Imagine about 11 one- to three year-olds in a room full of child-sized gymnastics equipment, no head injuries, and everyone having fun. After the hour of that, we corralled the kids and parents into a tiny party room and served pizza and cake. Tristan eats neither on a regular basis, but he did enjoy pepperoni (he says this as "pepper-noni") and the whipped cream frosting from his cake. One of his friends helped him blow out the candles, but that's to be expected as we did not rehearse the "your face is near fire: do something about it" aspect of candle extinguishing. We still haven't gotten the gifts out of the car, let alone opened - there was a strict 2 hour time limit on the party as there was another party following ours, and the face-stuffing took the second hour entirely. Thank you to everyone who came and everyone who took pictures and of course the the gifts; thank you to my mom and Aunt Toni for help with all of the details!
Tristan is showing a lot of improvement and interest in learning to swim. At the beginning of the season, he was afraid to be in the water without being held, whether or not he was wearing a lifejacket or floatie. He was also drinking the pool water to the point where we had to stage an intervention program to get him to cut down on it. Now he's cruising across the pool independently and putting his mouth in the water to BLOW BUBBLES! He finds the pool water to be cold, as do I, but has a harder time getting used to it than I do - poor baby.
All around, Tristan has been growing more mature and independent. When he woke from his nap today, he gave his iPad attention and didn't even need to hang on me at ALL. For people who had seen him about two months ago, this will probably be shocking. I have also been able to do something I hadn't in a long, long time - put him down for naps - and he's stopped most of the screaming when he wakes up, provided we think to leave the door open. I have to hide my head behind a pillow to do it properly, but I've been enjoying several weeks of having a child who sleeps. His tantrums have grown far less screamy and more grunty, to the point where sometimes I can't tell if he is upset about something or pooping. Yesterday he managed to sit through an almost 2 hour lunch (iPad in hand) and behave amazingly.
Potty training is still about the same; Tristan is making an effort to stay dry in his pull-ups and to pee in the toilet when brought. He doesn't usually initiate bathroom trips and he still refuses to poop anywhere but his diaper. Thankfully, he does poop IN the diaper and doesn't (yet?) try to remove it by himself or decorate with it. He says that he's scared when the topic of poop in toilet comes up, and whenever I'm removing the diaper to deposit said poop into the toilet. But he has a solid (hah hah) understanding of what goes in the toilet and I'm confident that he'll get there when he is ready. I'm really happy that we can get away with being slackers (read: not really on top of things) and he's still progressing.
We haven't gotten Tristan anything new for his iPad in quite some time, but he's fine with that. He's begun to write the names of numbers alongside the numbers in one particular application. His handwriting probably looks like any kindergartner learning to write. There's a slingshot-type game called "Angry Birds" that has taken off tremendously, to the point where the plush birds are sold in every novelty store you can see - and I LOVE it that Tristan understands the rule, "You can throw Angry Birds only while in the house."
Tristan is fully independent on playground equipment - I no longer have needed to go up with him to make sure he doesn't kill himself. He is, however, becoming notably impatient - his New York blood is showing. He's been climbing over other children who hesitate to take their turns or are lingering in any way when taking turns for slides and other equipment, and he's been known to just plain cut in line while everyone else is picking their ass trying to decide who goes next. As a rule, I don't mind this (which is why I let it develop, haha) but I need to teach him the rule of "Don't climb over the SAME people over and over, and let others in front of you have a fair chance to take a turn before climbing on over."
His conversational skills are picking up. One theme that keeps popping up is, "I'm scared!" He is scared of the aforementioned pooping in a toilet and of automatically flushing toilets, public toilets, being overtickled, and probably drowning (he's been reportedly saying he's scared when I dive under water). He is starting to be able to respond to the question, "What is your name?" - he does best with visual cues, such as the words to the question and answer being written out and in front of him to help.
Unfortunately, I am no longer wearing him in the sling, and him no longer being worn has very much coincided with him stopping climbing on my head.
He had an incident where he ran from me in a Kohl's store when I took him there specifically to buy toys. He walked a bit in front of me and then suddenly darted into a rack of clothing when I called for him to stop, going instantly invisible. After panicking for a moment and wondering how to describe him to folks in the store to help me look and hoping he didn't escape into the attached mall, I decided to look over in the toy section for shits and grins. Guess who was there and so very proud of himself? Unfortunately, that earned him prompt removal from the store and then the mall after he got the "never run away from me" lecture on a bench outside of the store. I am pleased to report that after a month or so of requiring him to be in a stroller everywhere (I was seriously unable to keep up with him for a short time), he's currently responding nicely to calls to stop and stay closer.
That is where we seem to be right now.
Tristan is quickly developing an obsession with Thomas the Train.
We picked up some trains and tracks the last time we went to Ikea - couldn't have been too long ago, maybe three months? And at first, Tristan needed to be supervised with them. He got INSANELY frustrated whenever he couldn't get the trains to stick together properly. They were taken away a lot because he'd seriously lose his shit over it whenever the line of trains disintegrated. Since we refuse to encourage him losing his shit unnecessarily, he needed to be gradually accustomed to the system.
Fast forward past our Vegas trip about a week, when I gave him the battery-operated, SELF-MOVING Thomas. And it all began to click. James has spent a LOT of time with Tristan playing with the trains and showing him how to have fun. After all, battery-operated trains can be used to push uncooperative little trains around in a line. And so we expanded our set with a second battery-operated train (Percy, the green one), a shitload more tracks, and a couple more from the Thomas line that were less active.
Last night, we had the following - a Thomas video on, a Thomas iPad app being played, and trains in clear sight and frequently approached.
This article was interrupted by Tristan waking up and resuming the Thomas-thon.
When my little brother was obsessed with Thomas, I tried very hard to pretend that no such trains existed. Now, I'm glad to hear George Carlin's voice narrating the videos (RIP). Too bad he doesn't drop the F-bomb a bit in these; they might be more interesting that way.
But Tristan is now firmly interested in a stereotypical BOY interest.
Seriously, did I just blink or miss almost a month of our lives?
I managed to chronicle that we were starting potty training, at least. And so far, it's going wonderfully. Tristan understands that pee goes in the toilet and he will pee in there on command if anything's in there. He hasn't yet pooped in the toilet, and I think he's a little bit scared of the process.
But the big news is that we've been on a plane and survived! Our kid wasn't even the most annoying kid on the flight!
During the first week of June, we took our trip to Las Vegas to meet up with our family and spend some time among the lights and stimulation of the strip. We stayed there for about a week, which was probably three days too long. James's parents were there, along with his sister Cindy, and my mom and stepdad joined us for part of the trip. We rented adjacent suites - we figured that it would be SO much easier to coordinate people and pawn Tristan off on some of them if we were all in the same location.
Tristan's favorite activities included opening, closing, opening, and closing all doors, including the balcony door, the bathroom doors, the bedroom door, the toilet seat cover, and the shower doors. He enjoyed the sights from the 12th floor balcony, including pools, trees, cars, and the lights of the hotels. There wasn't a whole lot to DO there other than travel about and see things for children, but Tristan got a whole lot of time doing those things. We got several-day monorail passes and he quite enjoyed riding on the train. We also had one chance to go into the pool, which was this lazy-river sort of thing - Tristan enjoyed the water but disliked the floating tubes.
As far as relating to people went, Tristan was a considerable koala. He got really, really, really upset whenever I disappeared from a room. We had to sneak around a lot so that he never saw me so much as go to the toilet. He related very well to his Grandma Linda and Aunt Cindy (read: they could sometimes calm him down even when he was being a butt), and even slept in the bed with Cindy (YAY! We got a break from the bedtime routine!)
I'm totally up for taking another airplane trip, but I'm not sure I want to try to pass an entire week in one location without a doppelganger of myself so that I don't have to hear "waaaaaaaaaAAAH!" for stepping out of Tristan's sight. ;)
We are suddenly on day 1 of official potty training and the third day straight Tristan has managed to deposit pee into the toilet! We've missed one poop and a few pees today, but Tristan most certainly understands how to urinate into a toilet and did so about four times already. We're using Hershey's Drops as the 'production reward' and they are working amazingly - he understands that peeing in the toilet earns him a piece, and even asks for it at the end (which sounds like, "I want chocolate please!"). Anyway, what with my lack of managing a SINGLE post lately, I wanted to be sure to share Tristan's success in beginning the toilet training process BEFORE THE AGE OF 3!
We have managed to have some sickness or another for most of the month of May. I'm kind of sick of this shit. I'm speaking for the entire family with that statement. I think we're beginning to feel human again, but the last time I thought that was directly preceding what's been the three week cold.
In any event, we've gone through the IFSP and the IEP. "Speak English," you say? Ah, ok.
"IFSP" is the shit we get before Tristan turns 3. It means Individual Family Service Plan. This is funded by the Early Start program and has been our at-home ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) therapy. We're in the process of having solidified the last one of these and are about to finish the exit report process, since Tristan is 33 months, or 2 years 9 months, old.
"IEP" is the shit we get after Tristan turns 3. It means Individualized Education Program. This is taken care of by the school district, which is Milpitas Unified in our case. The focus shifts from individual and family needs to educational care, so Tristan will transition to a preschool setting at the age of 3.
Oh, shit, yeah, I am looking forward to the free time. And I am looking forward to watching Tristan mature as a person as he gets to know new people and a new format.
I also am getting right sick of these meetings about Tristan's skills and I suspect he also is. One of the assessments involved putting us into this shoebox of a room - Tristan, the lady performing the assessment, and me. We had to substitute James for me (and kick me into the hallway) after trying myriad configurations because Tristan was sort of spazzing out.
Tristan most certainly concentrates better without me around. He hangs and climbs on me joyously; he's rather fixated on me and can't really ignore me to work. He acts more calmly around everyone else, especially James. Thankfully, James was present in this case. I wish Tristan would calm down around me when it's naptime.
Tristan's language is taking a new direction. He's spontaneously using the phrasing, "I want (insert noun), please." However, this means a lot of things right now: I see, I know, I remember, I think, and sometimes even I want. It's the only phrase he uses consistenly (other than "More (insert noun), please" but that's essentially the same thing). But he is REALLY starting to express those things that he sees, knows, remembers, thinks, and wants.
Our family is on its way to Las Vegas on Monday - this will be Tristan's very first airplane trip. This is a family trip - we plan to meet most of the family that reads this website. It will be the first break I've had in the daily routine this year, if I remember correctly (and I can't be counted on to; that is the main reason I keep this site!). Tristan is all about the sensory-seeking and stimulation so we expect that he shall enjoy this. Wish us luck!
