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.

We were sick a couple of weeks ago and Tristan got in the habit of requesting that his dad carry him to the bathroom. Just now, we told Tristan that daddy would pick him “up, up, up” to go to the toilet. He perked up at the prospect.. and then got up and ran himself to the bathroom. Punkbutt baby..

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.