Tristan’s been feeding pepole other than himself with his finger foods. We’re trying to put this on command. While feeding others, he likes to explore their mouths and watch them chew. He’s also been likely teething, as he sucked on and gummed at my finger quite a bit yesterday.

He’s been getting sort of strange (to us) about his food. He’s still not interested in a whole lot of different foods to feed himself, but he feeds himself the known favorites like a champ. That being said, he is very particular about when he wants his main mean of food (after the milk, and now after some finger food) and has been taking exceptionally long to eat it since he wants to take a bite and refuse to take more for several minutes. I assume he’s just being a one-year-old and I’m also thankful he’s trying to become more independent about eating (he also tries to spoon-feed himself occasionally), but in general the fact that he used to be such a willing eater and now turns his head is sort of nerve wracking. I’ve agreed to try to do the bulk of the feedings since it irritates me less.

What I personally have little patience for is anything that messes with his drinking – he’s so attached to the bottle and a bit particular that milk comes only from it. He knows how to drink from anything, really, but he dumps regular bottles and cups on himself quickly. In fact, the little juice boxes with straws have come in quite handy lately – but he won’t drink milk from a box-like package with a straw!

10 new pictures added to 1 year section.

This past month has gone so fast, and Tristan’s birthday has arrived suddenly. We’re updating things around here to reflect that our infant is officially a toddler by age as well as that whole walking thing.

One of Tristan’s grandmas was in town this past week and enjoyed the combined birthday party we had on Sunday with us, as well as a trip to Great America and many walks around the park. Another one of his grandmas and one of his aunts will be here tomorrow evening.

The party included families with children around the neighborhood that Tristan’s often played with. It went very smoothly for something planned at the last minute. James’s fajitas, my cakes, and our margaritas were a great hit. Who would’ve thought that you go to a toddler’s birthday party for the margaritas before that day? But we had a nice summery party although we couldn’t get Tristan to blow out a candle – or us to keep a candle lit enough for him to try – or many other interesting photo opportunities. It was a lot of fun and I’ll miss this neighborhood when we move.

Tristan’s walking very well and very quickly, standing up by himself without any help from person or object, and is comfortable in shoes or barefoot. He spends most of his waking time walking everywhere he can, and has done so by himself for over a month. Thankfully, he’s pretty damn confident now, which means that now I follow him around to yank him out of trouble rather than to reassure him. I’m looking forward to taking Tristan to places where I can just sort of sit back and watch him run and poke into everything.

We have lots of new toys, most of them birthday presents of sorts. Tristan’s grandma brought a lovely school bus toy, a delightfully noisy keyboard-type toy, and more. There’re so many neat things for one-year-olds! Tristan tends to gravitate toward the V-Tech line of toys, so most of the new ones have been from them. We also got him a baby-sized chair that he can sit in and get up from himself, some new videos since he’s fallen in love with anything cutesy and educational, and a new stroller. We sent the old one back with Tristan’s grandma to hopefully be sold, since we never used the damn thing due to its bulkiness; in its place we got a well-made umbrella stroller that’s good up to 55 lbs, is very light, and is compact when folded.

The switch to cow’s milk is complete. We’re thankful for Costco’s prices, and sort of lamenting the fact that we have to go to Costco very soon because milk is kind of expensive elsewhere. However, as one would expect from a one-year-old, he’s now beginning to become particular about what he wants to eat and when. We practiced a little bit of self-spoonfeeding today, and I think that if we continue to practice, he will be independent in due time.

Tristan is actually a bit sick right now; he got the family cold about a week after the rest of us. When we had the same cold, we were really miserable at first and the lingering cough is starting to taper off a week or so after we felt better. At least Tristan is in good spirits for the most part, but he’s had some portions of extreme fussiness.

Despite our efforts to mess with his naps, he still has been taking two naps per day. That being said, most days we could probably let him sleep through the night but we’re not about to train our kid into waking us up at 7AM if we can help it. The best thing that has come out of screwing with his naps is that we’ve learned he’s more adaptable than he used to be – he will still take good naps if he goes to sleep at weird times or fell asleep outside of his bed briefly.

He occasionally will sit with us or on the floor willingly for short amounts of time. This is infinitely longer than he used to willingly sit still.

Tristan won’t wave or point yet, but he makes the sign for milk and is getting better at clapping.

But best of all, his infant days are a memory. I’m looking forward to the toddler years. 😀

15 new photos added to 11 – 12 Months.

* Tristan’s been given his first cow’s milk; he loves it. Thankfully, it looks like getting rid of formula will be a trivial task. We have enough formula for another day or two, and then no more of that crap. Woooohooo! And it finally makes sense to purchase milk at Costco.

* He’s been getting better with the finger foods, but also pickier. Not that that’s not to be expected as he gets older, but it definitely makes mealtimes longer. His favorites so far are Cheerios, Baby Goldfish crackers, and Pizza Pie puffs from Snikiddy (I think) that are sold at Babies R Us.

* For a while now, the solid food introduction log has been more for novelty; most people stop the individual-ingredient thing far before we did, but I figured that it would be neat to still be able to tell Tristan when he first had some putzy ingredients. I’m still keeping track, but I expect it to not be long before I just say “screw it, he eats everything.”

* We haven’t tried the sippy cups in a couple of weeks, since the last time he tried he was sort of clumsy and then pissed off about it and flat-out refused to drink from them. (We also got an insulated straw cup in hopes that we can travel with beverages a little easier, and we shall see if he accepts that.) I know at least one 3 year old who uses the same sippy cups that we got Tristan, so I have hopes that they will be ‘good’ for some time, since I went all-out and purchased three of them at $10 each.

Tristan’s been able to get from non-standing to standing position without using any climbing props for a couple of days now – enough for me to notice it’s not just a fluke and he’s able to do it for real!

He’s also been walking, walking, and a bit more walking and it’s a wonderful thing. We went out to the local park this morning and Tristan walked in a very deliberate path for an impressive amount of time. Hopefully he can be trained early on to follow me or us on command – that way, it’ll be so much easier for us patience-wise to let him explore.

We found some new shoes – a tiny little pair of Pumas at Babies R Us that unfortunately have laces rather than velcro but it was the only pair remotely in his size, and a pair of Crocs that are too large but the next size is too small, and some of those slip-on water socks with a cute little matching water hat. Tristan loves the Pumas and hasn’t yet tripped over the laces, which come untied unless I consciously remember to tie the laces in reverse so the knots don’t slip. He immediately kicked off the Crocs and I haven’t had a good opportunity to use them again yet. I haven’t gotten the water socks onto him but I bought two pair; the theoretical correct size and the next size up. Said theoretical correct size of water sock is tiny and to add insult to injury, I’ve already lost one so I can’t give them away or try to return them. I’ve seen his feet next to his peers’ feet – Tristan has some clomping paws, all right. But this is a pain in the butt as his shoe size is probably 5 1/2, which I’ve only seen so far at Payless of all places (after we got/liked the Pumas, of course). So hopefully his feet will grow just a tiny little bit soon so all of the shoes fit properly.

Tristan managed to put away at least 4 oz of juice today using a straw. We’d tried once before but it didn’t work very well; apparently, you need bendy straws for babies. Who knew? But in any event, this sort of opens up the world. It’s so much easier to carry around straws than pack special drinks for babies and/or special vessels for whichever drinks.

We were scheduled for a meeting involving our attempt at a home, and we recently found out that James’s job provides back-up day care up to five times per year. Since we (at the time) had no alternative plans, we set up a session of day care for Tristan.

We woke up at 8am (the buttcrack of dawn in our household) to start getting ready and pack Tristan’s crap for the day care visit. At 8:30 we dragged Tristan out of his bed and gave him a bottle, and he was mostly OK with this. Since he usually wakes up closer to 10, we decided to have the day care staff feed him his morning solids as well as lunch. By 9:15, we pulled into the facility, brought him in, got checked in, and he was UP! He didn’t even notice we were standing to the side of a room full of kids; he was off walking! He barely noticed when we left, either. But this made us feel that we made the right decision to leave him for the time being.

And then! What do you think we would’ve done with the day after going to our house meeting? That’s right – we went to the amusement park. We essentially ditched our kid to go to Great America. And it was awesome, even though we had to walk a few miles to figure out where the damn water stuff even was. Even better, there’s SO much to do there with babies. But this time, we didn’t have to drag one through to find out.

We went to pick Tristan up from the day care and found him being pulled along with three other babies in a wagon, ready to go play. He looked like he was having so much fun, but he was so SLEEPY! He apparently does not nap well in strange places, so he napped about half an hour the whole day. At home, he sleeps for two hours during his morning nap still. He ended up taking a long-ass evening nap and we’ve wrapped around to the next day, where he’s now awaiting my arrival to retrieve him from the crib.

New videos added to 11 – 12 Months.

Tristan has been:
wake: 10am
1.nap sleep: 1pm
1.nap wake: 3pm
2.nap sleep: 7pm
2.nap wake: 9pm
sleep: midnight

This is skewed a little bit later than we need, but at least he’s generally on our schedule!