Wednesday playdate

Tristan had his friend Bryan over for a couple of hours this morning, and they had lots of fun! They roamed around the dining room and living room, and then went into Tristan’s room to play with the toys and Ninja kitty, and then went into the dining room for a snack. Bryan learned to suck food from one of the puree pouches like Tristan does, and they both walked around together eating so nicely. And it was very nice to have the company of Bryan’s mom Helena in baby-chasing and feeding – the time flew right by. And now Tristan’s napping and I have time to write about his day. 🙂

14 months old

It’s freaky how much older 14 months sounds than 13 months. It seemed that when people asked his age, he was a “huge” 13 month old and a “big” 14 month old.

We’re still working on those molars but he’s a pretty good sport about it all. But he’s using his teeth to chew very nicely. He seems to have a taste for small pieces of chicken – he will gobble them up whereas he wasn’t much interested before. Specifically, James made his World Famous Fajitas (or at least North San Jose Famous ones :)) and Tristan came up to me while I was eating mine in his room and demanded some, much like how a cat would demand food. I’m so happy to see him interested in more food, so I held out one hand with pieces of chicken while I ate mine with the other hand. That’s not a habit we intend to continue – eating in the bedrooms or having my hand serve as a plate, actually. (By the way, we’re lazy enough to eat in bed if we could. But we are cohabitating with some very sneaky ants who find food wherever it falls, and it’s carpeted in there, so even Samurai can’t find dropped food most of the time.)

Let’s see.. I am not sure if he’s acquired more words but he seems to be very interested in language. He may be saying ‘dog.’ He knows the word ‘airplane’ but I don’t really understand him most of the time when he says it – I can tell by context because he looks up and there one is. He loves his reading videos, which we leave on in the dining room while we’re home along with some of the lately-mocked Baby Einstein videos that he enjoys (hey, I got them because he likes the damn puppets, not because I expect him to start engineering at age 2).

We have his toys set out in the dining room and in his bedroom. He has free roam of most of the place, but we know he needs to be watched more carefully when he’s in the mood to play with the home rather than his toys (getting into doors, closets, etc.).

He’s still going back and forth between how many naps he wants to take, but he definitely takes shorter naps when he takes two of them. One seems to work on most days.

The mouth

Tristan’s getting his lower molars in. They were huge and bumpy under the gum for a while, and now they are beginning to break through. Remarkably, he’s not been in as crappy a mood as he was in just around his birthday, but he’s definitely very high maintenance these days to keep it that way.

But it’s getting difficult to entertain him, as he can’t be left outside anymore! We went to the Children’s Museum yesterday, and there’s a big park adjacent to wander through. The museum time was wonderful, but then we went to walk in the park and watch for airplanes. (By the way, he is FASCINATED by airplanes lately. Whenever he thinks he hears one, he watches and watches and gets excited when he sees it..) Unfortunately, he walked over to the first dirt area and started shoving rocks in his mouth. And this happens wherever there are rocks or woodchips to be played with. I’m ok with him putting dirt in his mouth – it’s gross, but it won’t kill him. The rocks and woodchips, however, scare me as choking hazards. I really need some advice here! I try to keep it low-key when dealing with Stuff in the Mouth as to not generate a preference for getting attention that way, but that’s sort of hard as it involves invading his mouth to remove the offending material. And he’s a ninja – by the time I’ve spotted what it is he might pick up, it’s in his mouth. I know that this won’t last forever but he’s in for a damn lot of trips to the mall if he can’t play outside without trying to be suicidal.

Lately

Food time is still going well. We practice some spoon feeding, he allows me to spoon feed him, and he is well-behaved with the suckable pouches. Tristan still would rather drink milk instead of eat; I am not very upset about this as most moms of babies his age say their babies don’t want any or enough milk. He still regularly receives sippy cups and bottles, but I have to jam something in next to him in his high chair so he does not turn sippy cups upside down and soak his pants with milk or juice. The general guideline lately is that he gets a sippy cup in the high chair and a bottle when he gets a drink anywhere else. We will have to work on that one, as we recognize that he’s using the bottles for comfort and we sometimes take advantage of that. At least he’s stopped screaming bloody murder for his milk, for the most part, but that’s also because at home we’ve started to prefill containers and grab them from the fridge.

Tristan seems to have passed the “up up up” phase. Not sure what his next repetitive utterings will be.

For a month or so, we were able to mess around with Tristan’s naps and he’d take them whenever it was necessary, whether that ended up being a one or a two nap day. Suddenly, several days ago, he began sleeping in until 8:30 and sometimes 9 (much improved over the 7!), taking only one nap for about two hours, and going to bed around 10. This actually makes a lot of sense once we get it honed. We’ve still been trying to put him down for an evening nap for the past few days as well when he appeared tired, and he just did not fall asleep – instead, he played nicely for at least half an hour and then got upset. We’d get him from the crib and go out to a store somewhere, and he was in a perfectly fine mood. Then he’d go to sleep for that wonderful stretch. So I suppose tonight we may try to skip attempting an evening nap and just let him snore around 10, which gives us approximately twenty minutes to mess around online before I pass out.

Lately

We went to Bounce-o-rama yesterday and Tristan thoroughly enjoyed the toddler bouncer.. for about twenty minutes. I’d paid for an hour (because that’s how it works). They told me that you get two hours when you pay for one with some sort of mumbled goodness about a sale going on. No matter, he did have a lot of fun for the twenty minutes he was in there.

* Tristan’s walking now looks pretty proficient and I don’t worry about him hitting his head when he falls, like I used to. I have confidence in his fall-breaking skills. That being said, he’s also been climbing things and standing in his little armchair. I am not sure where my confidence lies with regards to that yet.

* Eating has been evolving somewhat. First of all, as of last Thursday, he’s no longer completely on strike as far as being spoon-fed. While we were over at a playgroup with his friend Bryan and his mom was feeding him, we gave some to Tristan for S&G, because playgroups are for complaining about the little things about children and the refusing to be fed thing came up. So, he allows a spoon in his mouth again sometimes. That being said, we’ve started doing two things instead of trying to resume spoon-feeding him. Once a day, I aim for some self spoon-feeding practice, where I load up a spoon and hand it to him, whereby it’s his responsibility to get more of it in his mouth than in his hair, and he does fairly well at that. The second thing is that baby food puree now comes in little squeezable or suckable pouches that he can (and so far will) manage on his own with absolutely none in the hair. Aside from that, he enjoys pea crisps and isn’t too much a fan of the sweet that is not fruit – which works just fine, considering. Also, he’s getting a little more adventurous with the food he will pick up and eat by himself – I gave him rice on Saturday and for the first time, he shoveled it in and gobbled it up. Yay!

*The babbling! He says ‘up’ very frequently, and he’s been trying very hard to talk in general. I have no idea what else he is saying because it seems to have little context. But it sounds so cute.

*Airplanes. One of his first “must see” items whenever one passes overhead. He still won’t point, but he does indicate what he is looking at. I think he tries to say a word for airplane, but it doesn’t at all sound like the word airplane.

*He can kick a ball around a field as if he were trying out for a soccer team. Perhaps we should look into tot-soccer at 18 months. :p