Cant believe its almost APRIL

I mean really, before I know it, Tristan is going to be going to college (hopefully).   Time seems to be going by so fast, and it seems as if I cant get anything done.  My "to-do" for things around the house is annoyingly LONG.  I often make plans that are way too large for the day, and seem to half complete the things that I want to get done.  My attention is easily diverted. 

I mean who wants to clean when you have such a sweet little boy to play with and a beach across the street???  Or the park down the road??  Or we can go to Target and "browse" while Tristan says "ball...ball...ball..ball" at anything that remotly resembles a ball!!  Today we went to Target to buy milk, it took us an hour because we bounced a gigantic bouncy ball around the store for a while.  No, we did not break anything, and Yes we put it back where we found it.  WE have no need for a $9 glittery bouncy ball.  But for that hour we had fun with the bouncy ball....and he said ball ball ball with a gigantic smile the entire time.

The beach is a ton of fun with little man, but I am looking forward to one day being able to just lounge and read on the beach again!  Tristan is all over the place, and doesnt exactly have a fear of the water (which is Freezing right now by the way).  I dont even know why I bring a blanket to the beach, because its not like I get to lay down and Tristan doesnt lay down.  If I do lay down, Tristan lays down on me, and when he is covered in sand---this is not exactly comfortable.  So I usually choose to stand.

Tristan is such a joy to be around!  He loves water.  He loves bananas.  He loves Pringles.  Those are the three things that he never seems to tuen down no matter how tired he is.  He also likes anything with wheels.  He seems to have an obsession with putting straws into the straw holes.  He likes his sippy cup but still drinks milk out of bottles.  He will eat most of anything.  But sometimes doesnt want to eat at all.  He gets 3 meals and 2 snacks every day.  If he chooses not to eat his meal at the given time, his loss, I dont try to squeeze it in later.  I figure this way he will learn meal times and hopefully will put him on the road to a lifetime of normalcy when it comes to food.  Because I personally think that one reason why our country has such a high obesity rate in people, is beacause they (the people) never had a normal routine of food when younger, not in all cases, but I think this is a contributing factor. 

Ha, I love this face below.  If you look closely youll see that Tristan got a new tooth...top left...

And some exciting news for all of us..we recently bought a lot that we are going to build on.  We are thinking it will be about 2-3 years before we will be out there.  But we will be putting in a dock this spring, so we went out to take a look, to start thinking about placement of that last weekend.  Below are some pictures from the weekend trip out there (Santa Rosa Beach, about 20 minutes East of where we live now)

After we went out to the lot, we came back to the house, we went to the beach and then finished out the day letting Tristan play in his new baby pool out on the deck!

He loved it!

We cooked dinner, Tristan went to bed around 7, and we went to bed around 9....jealous??

Sunday morning Corey went to work on his boat that he is building, and we went to the park with my good friend Jackie and her cutie son Roland.  All was well at the park until the sprinklers came on in the adjacent baseball fields.  Tristan ran out of that playground straight for the 100 something sprinklers that were going off.  He manged to get a little wet before i got him out.  Roland followed and we decided to ditch the park since both kids were a little wet.  Jackie needed to go to Target, so we tagged along.  I wish I had a picture of the boys sharing a cart, maybe next time.  I will say that we went to Target and bought nothing just went to hang out with a friend.

By the way, Tristan followed the sidewalk and went straight into the playground while I was getting our stuff out of the car.

TRISTAN learns that fire is hot!!!

So on Tristan's actual first birthday, not his first birthday party day, he had a little expeirence with fire.  WE gave him his birthday cupcake and I was doing my best too keep his hand away from the flame.  It didnt work out for me

Now let me just say, I am not the type who gets upset when Tristan cries.  Sure I would be in a panic if he really got hurt, but there has not "yet" been a time that I truly needed to go into this panic mode.  Also I cant help but laugh when Tristan cries, really cries, not the fake cry, his face looks EXACTLY the same as when he was a newborn.  Although this video may not show it, I do make him feel better when he cries, I just dont freak out.


and the next one

Life is a Beach

It was so great to see 70 degrees  today.  When Corey came home for lunch, I went straight to Target to buy some sunscreen (last years was all expired) and some new swim shirts (all outgrown) and some swim trunks (he has one pair that fits them, and they happened to be in the wash....and his Speedo needs to be ordered). 

Sand and One Year Old is an interesting combination!  The mess is worth the smiles on his face, and the AWESOME naps he takes afterwards.  He was so excited to be on the beach!  He was laughing, playing in the sand, throwing sand at me, and wave/people watching.  He is brave, he went straight for the water--> I think he only cried because the water is still Freezing (56 degrees).  So its really the combination of water and sand that is so messy. 

I think if I let him, he would spend the whole day out there.  After about 2 hours when his eyes were closing, and when he tried to walk he would fall, I packed up everything and we headed home.  The stroller is a sandy mess (I am so thankful that I dont have to drive to the beach/Id hate to have to clean all the sand out of the car!)....                         

We came home and hopped in the Bath, I think he fell asleep before I even got him dressed.  Now time to go clean up all the mess we made going to the beach. 

Tristan was having so much fun, I called Corey and made him drive over to see the mess of his son.  Im glad he came because now I have a picture of the 2 of us!

And.....we are back to the bottles

So after torturing poor little man and forcing him to drink out of sippy cups---we gave in.  He was so excited about his bottle.  We will try again in a couple of weeks, but for now I'm going to keep it a little more predictable.  We will still be using the sippy cup throughout the day, but I will give him a bottle before his nap, and then before he goes to sleep at night.  Twice a day (20 oz---2 bottles at 10 oz) he will get a bottle, that will ensure me that he is getting the milk he needs.  Will make for an awesome nap, and bedtime will go a little smoother.  So during the next month we are really going to focus on becoming "ONE" with our sippy cup, and then we will drop the nap time bottle (I think we could drop it now, but for my sake going to hold onto it for a few more weeks).  Then at 13 months hopefully we will just do the night time bottle after dinner before bed...with a goal of dropping it completly around 14/15 months.

I dont think I spent enough time with the sippy cup prior to his first birthday, and it was a bit mean of me to just take it away.  Maybe next time i post that we are bottle free it will be for real :-)

On another note, Tristan and I just got back from his friend Eli's First Birthday.  Eli has a pool at his house, and once Tristan saw this he went into PANIC mode, he was trying so hard to get away from me and just wanted to climb in.  So after a few minutes of panic, we put the boys in Eli's wagon and took them around the pool for a couple of laps---which thankfully got Tristan's mind off of the gigantic bathtub he was wanting to get in earlier.   I love when we have places to go and kids to play with because Tristan always instantly falls asleep in the car on the way home, and stays asleep while I move him form the car to his crib---its the best. 

Now if only I had a maid so that I could use his naptime as a time to sit and do nothing, not the case---oh well...

Bottle Free...So far!!!

So far we have been bottle free since Monday night!!!  He wasnt too happy with me Tuesday morning, he kept throwing his sippy cup at me and wanted nothing to do with it.  But he is drinking better from his sippy cups than he ever has before, and I think he is drinking all the milk he needs from them.  I did notice that his appetite for regular food went way up--so I guess thats a good thing!
Also we went to the store today, I wanted to get him a few more cups (i dont wash cups during the day, just rinse and save the washing for the evening, so i need enough cups to last through the day, call me wasteful--but I really dont care), and he was grabbing at all the different sippy cups....did not touch one of the bottles in the isle, just the sippy cups.  So I think this is a good sign!
Tristan also has a new thing that he does, which is hilarious and not sure where he got it from.  But everytime he sees a drink (could be anything) he opens his mouth and say "ahhh" but as in a refreshing quench my thirst "ahh". 
But an ANNNNNOYING habit he picked up from Einstein (our dog), is hte whining.  THos eof you who have had the pleasure to meet Einstein know that he has a tendecy to whimper when he wants something.  "So recently when Tristan wants something he does the same whine " eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh ."  This is my least favorite thing that Tristan does.

Anyways all of Tristan's bottles are cleaned and put away, and I intend on keeping it that way...I think if we have made it 2 days, then we are done for good! But what I will miss, is how peaceful he always was once he got a bottle when he was thirsty or hungry!!  Little baby, is turning into a little toddler...kind of sad. The picture below was his last in the car bottle at least last one I have a picture of. 

And on another note, Birthday celebrations for Corey and I are not as fun as they used to be.  We still had a great time, but the ride home was not something i want to do again.  We went out to Red Bar in Seaside.  We left our house right around the same time that Tristan normally goes to bed, Mistake number one!!!  We figured that Tristan would take a power nap (30-45 mins) in the car, but we forgot that Tristan wouldnt sleep with friends in the back

Once we got to Red Bar, we had to wait roughly an hour before we were seated, there was a live band so Tristan was into that!  He stared at the drummer the entire time.  Once dinner rolled around, it turned into me not eating because Tristan wanted to touch EVERYTHING.  It wasnt the most enjoyable dinner, but since it was Coreys Birthday I let him enjoy his meal, and we just took mine home. 

We went out to the car to get ready for the ride home before Corey, Daniel, and Clint joined us.  Tristan got changed into his PJS, and got to play drive for a couple of minutes....then I got him in his car seat...plan was for him to drink his bottle and pass out (since it was already 9:30)...well just as he got settled and was probably 2 minutes from sleeping, the guys got in the car...which made for a SCREAMING ride home, it was the longest 30 minutes of my life.  And I dont think Danile will be getting in a car with Tristan anytime soon! 

So the post that was about Tristan stopping bottles, turned into a Happy Birthday to Corey post!  And in case you were wondering, I didnt make an elaborate cake for Corey's birthday, but i didnt discover my likeness of decorating cakes until after his birthday, already have some ideas for next year!!!

Tristan turns ONE

Okay, so I am officially horrible at blogging, my March goal is to post more!!!

Anyways Tristan turned one this past Friday, and I threw him an Elmo themed Birthday Party. I originally wasn't going to throw him a party, but then changed my mind once the month of February rolled around.

I originally was going to get his cake from the bakery, but once I found out the price (I am TRYING to start saving where I would normally just spend), I decided to give it a go...so for roughly $10 (3 boxes of cake mix, 3 containers of icing, 1 frosting tip, cup cake liners, 9 eggs) this is what I made--I found out last week, that I like decorating cakes and cup cakes!

On the day of his actual birthday, we gave him a cupcake with a candle. While trying to show Tristan how to blow it out, he got a little sneaky on me and grabbed the candle! Needless to say he broke out into a SCREAM, and then was terrified to touch the cupcake. But eventually he dug in!

When I made the ELMO cake, my plan was for Tristan to be able to dig into the ENTIRE cake, but Corey ruined it, he said that that wasn't not happening. The whole reason I made so many cup cakes was so that all guests ate cupcakes and Tristan was able to hopefully destroy a humongous cake...I mean you only turn ONE once.

Tristan's party turned out great, everyone that RSVPd came ( I still had a TON of left over food)... and most importantly all the kids seemed to enjoy themselves. I managed to get almost all the kids that were there on the couch for a group shot-- I have about 20 of them, so the progression of the poses and facial expressions is great, but I'm including a picture that Corey edited:

Tristan took his first steps on January 20th---he finally started walking more than crawling this past weekend!!! Last night he couldn't go to bed, b/c all he wanted to do was walk, he was so proud. Only problem is, he doesn't really look where he is walking, and trips all over everything! But hopefully in a couple of weeks he wont be as clumsy!

Today was also the day of Tristan's ONE year checkup at his pediatrician's. He weighed a little over 25 lbs, and is now 32 inches tall! His doctor said that everything looks great and besides his BREAK-DOWN while getting shots the appointment was a breeze. Tomorrow, we are cold turkey stopping bottles---hopefully he doesn't throw too much of a fit. My pediatrician says that 3 seems to be the magic number of days before they forget about it. So I am looking forward to Friday!!!! Hopefully I don't give in to the bottles tomorrow! Its supposed to be super nice out the next couple of days, my plan is to play outside as much as possible in hopes that he doesn't think about his beloved bottles and just drinks milk (whole milk finally) from his sippy cups!!!