Videos and pictures brought current.

Yesterday morning Tristan and I went to Thamien Park and had lots of fun. Tristan learned how to descend steps by sitting down and standing up on the next one. He also rode in the baby swing for a bit and walked around the park without putting too much sand in his mouth. Then we walked around the adjacent grass field and spotted airplanes – that place is great, because the planes circle around so a baby can just walk around with his eyes up for quite a while. After airplane watching, we practiced not walking in the street and walking together on the sidewalk.

In the evening, we went to the Alviso library and played there for a bit. It’s a tiny library, but there weren’t many other people there and everyone seemed to be at least tolerant of the toddler. We played peek-a-boo and Tristan played with the big wooden puzzles. At some point he got babbly and was getting loud about it, so I whispered ‘aaaaaa’ to him and it set him off giggling. It continued to set him off giggling for the entire evening – I think it’s losing its charm by now.

Today we went to the mommies’ group and Tristan made it through to the end without major fussing! Most of his friends were absent today, but I think that’s one reason it went well – fairly low concentration of other people in the way.

This afternoon, we had chicken nuggets and rice for lunch. The rice is cooked in chicken broth with garlic and ginger – I eat mine with soy and chili sauce but I serve his plain. The chicken nuggets are mostly for the purpose of having quick chicken, for cooking is still fairly difficult with him around and nobody else to watch him. I’m still so happy he’s been interested in both of those foods.

This evening, he showed some interest in learning how to climb up onto the couch but could not make it. It’s a big reclining couch with the legrests out most of the time, so that gives him a handicap when trying to climb it vs. a normal couch that doesn’t drop under your weight when you get onto it.

Right now, Tristan’s down for his second nap and he finally just fell asleep. The naps have been sort of touchy lately – I seem to have lied about him giving up the second one and taking a long one midday, because that has gone by the wayside. No matter whether I put him down for the first/main nap on time or way late, he has been only taking two hours and has needed more nappage in the evening. However, he doesn’t wake on his own from the second nap – if we don’t wake him up for a couple of hours, he’d sleep through the night but that night would end around 5 or 6 am. That continues to be far from a reasonable hour to be awake, so we’re trying to manipulate the sleep. Thankfully, he’s still good about his sleep habits – he enjoys his crib enough that fussing is usually just situational (protesting occasionally or mostly not feeling his best, in the case of this teething) and he has been falling asleep reliably and waking up slowly and patiently in the mornings. Knock on wood! I am on alert for when he connects climbing with a desire to get out of his crib – it’s coming soon..

Tomorrow I think we’re going to Thamien Park again in the morning but I’m not sure what we should do in the afternoon quite yet. It depends on whether any errands pop up and/or how lazy I feel.

Pictures and videos brought up to date.

The Wednesday playdate I’d been trying to arrange might not work out. We’ll see. If nothing else, alternatives can be arranged, both in time and location.

Instead of yesterday’s playdate, we ended up at Thamien Park with a handful of our buddies from the North Park playgroup that we’ve been going to every Tuesday and Thursday since before Tristan was even a crawler. There’s a great structure intended for 2-5 year olds, so we put the babies (who ranged in age from 8 months to almost 2 years) and parents up top and had the parents block the exits so nobody fell down. They had a great time!

I could, however, do without Tristan’s knack for ninja-ing sand and rocks into his mouth. I know that the best way to get the kid to stop doing stuff is to make sure it gets no attention – which is hard when it involves a possible choking hazard. Extinction, behaviorwise. But since it involves possible rocks and/or woodchips when they are present, I’ve had to go finger-sweeping his mouth a lot – this makes going to places with possible rocks infinitely stressful for me and it’s not the most respectful way for me to deal with behavior because I keep having to act on an emergency basis. He is still too young/little/has a crappy teacher on that topic/whichever to actually follow directions – he will at best comply after a moment or twelve of thought. Most of our discipline around here involves letting him know which actions are right and deserve attention, which means he’s usually fairly pleasant.. but keeping him out of danger is difficult without physical intervention.

In any event, playtime was fun other than the mystical earth-eating abilities of my toddler.

Today was the aforementioned North Park playgroup, which involved some very fussy babies. Tristan walked cheek-first into a table corner. I was right across from him, watching him walk around kicking a large ball and dangling two smaller ones from his hands. His ball-maneuvering limit must be two, because he’s usually far more careful about corners – he walks past this particular one twice a week for an hour! He’s got a bit of a bruise and a cut below his eye, and he has a bruise below his other one as well. There were a few occasions where Tristan busted out crying (due to teething or possibly a headache from the corner jab) and was playing with a cabinet door, and when he busts out crying he sort of forgets to hold himself up and keep himself safe. Poor baby. He looks sort of funky right now.

On Wednesday, Tristan figured out how to stick his hand into a snack trap to retrieve tasty, tasty pieces of cereal, and mostly distribute them on the floor and then eat them from there.

Halloween has come and gone.  We met up with a bunch of folks from our old apartment and went trick or treating near Rivermark – Tristan in a dragon costume, Kirin wearing all kinds of dragony goodness, and I as a Scotsman (kilt and all).   Pictures likely available in the gallery at some point 🙂

He seemed to tolerate things well enough – we lasted as long as the rest of the group, and ultimately headed back to a party they were having, where Tristan proceeded to run in circles for a while before getting bored and wanting to leave.

We’ve had pretty good luck with him, patience wise, lately – we took my mom and sister to Benihana as a thanks for babysitting a bit while they were here – Tristan actually made it through about 2/3rds of it before getting restless and necessitating a walk.  He actually seemed to like watching them cook – for a good chunk of the time, he had this “what in the world is this person doing” look on his face.

We’ve also managed to take him out to a buffet twice now, with no trouble whatsoever.   Basically, we just time it so he needs a meal as well, and let him eat as we do, and it all seems to work out in the end.

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. 🙂

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.

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.

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.