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!