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!

Tristan learned to play peekaboo on his terms today.  I was holding a blanket over my face and playing with him, and he decided to tug the blanket when he wanted me to show his face.  He also tugged it up to indicate when it was time to put it back.  Peekaboo is such great fun!

..can walk, run even.. but not stand on his own. Although he did try to stand up at least once today!

Tristan’s walking is coming along quite nicely. He prefers to practice in his room, but can occasionally be seen busting out walking across the room. We have all of our “first walker” videos almost ready to post. His prior practice with the hands has probably paid off well, as he can turn around very neatly already. Ah, you’ll see if you check the videos.. 🙂

We’ve also made a lot of progress in the self-feeding department. We’ve still been serving meals in the high chair, and that in itself is a bit of stress if he’s not in the mood for it. However, we can now spread a bunch of Cheerios on the tray and a lot of them will make it into his mouth without any other help! And there was a little bit of cooked pasta in something I served him and he took it well, without making the “damnit, there are CHUNKS in here!” face. The sippy cup is hit and miss; sometimes he’ll drink from it and sometimes he flat refuses. However, for the most part he’s still good about eating enough and not drinking it all away.

And now he’s awake, so time to perform this process I was just describing.

..well, and a couple of days, but here we are.

– With regards to walking, Tristan is now getting a little bit braver and busting out walking at random times during play. Before today, he was starting to do that but only in his room. I’m getting excited!

– He still doesn’t really self-feed but he gets the concept now. He can eat something fairly big, but he’s not really good at getting the little stuff in his mouth. We’ve been successfully using both a high chair and a sippy cup for a little over a week now. Both are things he won’t abide if he is in a pissy mood, and with the cup we are phasing it in with half of his formula in it and half in a bottle since he will protest the complete lack of a bottle.

– Putting him down to walk/play in a store is a lot of fun provided there is no schedule to follow. He’s not good at following the direction “come with me” quite yet. However, he will usually heed “sit down.”

– The TEETH on this child! #8 has broken through as of today and I hear a rumor that there are more coming.

Added 5 new videos to 10 – 11 Months.

Updated month by month page.