Future Fisherman/paddleboarder

As many of you know, our family (and I include all of us, Tristan too) has started up a Paddleboard company, check out our website at http://www.boteboard.com/.  Paddleboarding a great family activity, and I cant wait til it warms up to get Tristan out on the water.  He loved it last summer...and Im sure by the end of this summer he wiill want his very own!  He is an independent little thing, and if it wasnt for the size of the paddleboard, I could see it now... Little Monster going for a paddle by himself when no one is looking (the 30 lbs might be a little issue...but considering he carries around a 10 lb medicine ball...i could see him pushing one of these into the water with ease.  Below are some pictures from the store the other day...Corey probably shouldnt have shown him to stand on this in the store...because now he wants to go "fish" all the time...

SO its been a while...

and in an effort to keep my sanity, Im going to give this blog a go again (and I also want to be able to read back on some of Tristan's adventures (and I want to share his adventures, b/c they deserve to be shared), because Im sure I will forget a little or maybe a lot as time goes by)...by keeping my sanity..i mean not that I am really losing my sanity....I just think that it might help me see the light of things when I have a troll that runs around the house and GETS INTO EVERYTHING!!!!

Little Monster (how fitting this name turned out to be) has done a lot in the last 6 months and I would be typing all night if I tried to put all of that into this post, so Im just going to jump ahead to now. 
He is a bundle of energy that never stops moving, if you turn  your eye for a second he is into things that you never thought that he could possibly be into.  Like....

1.  He fixed himself a cup of coffee the other day, by fix, I mean he climbed onto the counter top, into the cabinet and grabbed the entire jumbo thing of coffee (I am a coffee drinker, and I only buy the largest possible containers of coffee)...reached over to the next cabinet and grabbed himself a mug....filled his mug with grinded coffee....and I find him enjoying this on the counter

2.  He has somehow fit about 6 rolls of toiletpaper into a toilet, and then wondered why it wasnt flushing (but thankfully to his fascination of flushing toilets, i was able to convert this to an almost fully potty trained 2 year old!!!!!, more on that later )

3.  He has served Einstein about 20 lbs of food at one time, meaning he filled and overfilled einsteins bowl...then sat and enjoyed it with him...Tristan LOVES kibbles and bits

4.  He has sharpied his entire bathroom, the floors of our bedroom and bathroom, and im sure other places that I have not yet found.

5.  He has gone down for a "nap" by mysterioulsly and quitely ended up in the laundry room along with an entire bottle of car wash on the floor (this was about a month ago, but I was reminded of it when I finally

really cleaned it up today)

Tristan also has a ton of personality, and TALKS alot, and loves loves loves loves loves his "juuu---ce"...he would literally drink a gallon of juice in a day if you let him...we got a new fridge about a month ago...that has an ice maker and water dispenser (how did we live with out this for soooo long??? oh and this fridge actually works ...or old one would freeze half the things in the fridge, unfreeze and refreeze things in teh freezer, and it didnt have door shelves, it was pretty much worthless)...anyways we convinced Tristan that the fridge has MAGIC JUICE (really just water) and we now put an drop of juice in with the MAGIC JUICE....so now Tristan drinks....ma--gic Juuuice, peas (please).

Potty Training.....welll we kind of eased into this...we were able to make him "aware" of going to the bathroom last summer...becauase the child lived in his bathing suit...and lets be honest, those swim diapers do nothing but make a gigantic mess really, and in all they are worthless..( he did where them at swim lessons and when we have swam in pools)...so since he was virtually naked all summer he became "aware"...I had heard that you needed a few days to completly devote to potty training...so I waited until Christmas time because he had 2 weeks out of daycare/preschool and we went full force (but since we had family in town most of this time, it wasnt was easy as I would have wanted it to be)...and my 16 year old little brother thought it was gross that i let him run around without pants and was following him with a potty (and you may too) but it progressed to working...so once the fam left, i was able to really focus on it with him, and within a few days he had got it.  Also many thanks to his teacher at school for helping out...she had no problem with having to change his clothes a few times, and as of today he has been an accident free man at school the last 2 weeks...and pretty much an accident free man at home too...we still wear a nightime pull up to bed...b/c i am just going to wait til i think he can make it to the potty by himself in the morning...and he will probably need to chill on the magic juice before bed before we make the leap to "undee ware" at night.

Even though Tristan can be an absolute pill at times...like when you just finish cleaning, mopping, and obsessivly scrubbing the baseboards and doors with lysol...and he follows and spills an entire jug of juice onto the floor that he was trying to get out of the fridge all over the floor...and then carries an apple and drops it everywhere and puts the stickiness onto the walls, and einstein follows and licks the apple goodness...which then his dog hair gets stuck into...you get the picture.....Tristan is the most loving little man...he hugs and kisses and squeezes and says I love you and "hold me peas" and asks for kisses when he gets hurt...and then after you kiss him...he says all better....and even though sometimes I want to pretend to be asleep when I hear " mommy...mom...mommmiiieee..mommy...mom" I really am lucky to have such a fun loving, crazy, curious little man as my side kick each and every day...

Tristan on Crab Island

Ill try to get a better viedo next time, Tristan was crying a little at the end of this video, but I promise he wasnt hurt...just a little cranky---

Another amazing weekend, makes for a very Tired Monday

This past weekend, we spent pretty much all day on Crab Island!  The water and weather was amazing on both days!  Tristan even took a nap for a little over an hour on Saturday!  Tristan is a hit on crab island, and dont be fooled he loves the attention.

Just another day in Paradise....

Sometimes I have to pinch myself that we live in such a beautiful place and that Tristan seems to enjoy it every second of it.  Lately, this oil spill mess is taking up too much of my time.  Normally at this time of the year I check the National Hurricane Center website every morning to see if there are any potential storms brewing out there (which there is).  But lately my morning routine has changes to read about the oil spill.  Pensacola beaches are getting pretty nasty, a dolphin washed up on shore there today and later died when being transported to an aquarium in Panama City. The pictures below are from Pensacola beaches today.

Our beaches have not yet been affected yet.  There have been tar balls in Ft Walton, tar balls in Miramar Beach (just east of Destin), but we have not seen anything yet on the beach in Destin.  However there have been oil skimmers in front of Destin non stop and oil has been looming offshore in front of Destin, but so far our beaches have been spared.  Count us lucky due to the tides, currents, and winds, but reality is we can wake up tomorrow and our beaches may look like those above.  Kind of scary, and it really irks me that there is no one out there that is able to come up with a way to stop the oil from spilling into the gulf.  You would think that with all the technology that is out there, someone would be able to do something.  The damage has been done, what is in the gulf is in the gulf, but geez figure out a way to stop thousands of gallons gushing into the gulf on a daily basis.  They (BP) are saying that it will be mid August before the relief wells are drilled (which in translation most likely means September and if we have some major storms come through the Gulf, will it be after hurricane season that they can get this well plugged??  I wish everyone would stop playing the blame game and focus all energy and efforts on plugging that well.  I also have a hard time believing that anyone is telling the full truth in this situation, first BP says its 1000 barrels leaking each day, then 5000, then at most 25000, now the number is around 60000, and maybe even more than 100000 barrels each day...which is more than 2 million gallons of oil every day. So even if they do get this well plugged by mid August, that means roughly another 100 million gallons (most likely more) will be spilled into the Gulf Waters.  I'm not even going to get started on the marine life impact, but the health concerns for humans, especially young children (aka, monst), which could take years to unfold.  Last thing about the oil mess, it is so sad to see how it effecting the daily  lives of so many individuals just in this area (and we haven't even had much of anything here), its sad to go down to the docks, which are normally busy with people and full of fish, and charter boats coming in with their catches.  I went down to the docks yesterday, there was ONE charter boat that was showing signs of activity, there was maybe 15 people in total around the docks--I honestly find it doubtful that this men and women who have spent their lives fishing, their families who have invested so much into the business will ever be fully compensated for the losses that they are incurring. Okay enough of that.

Tristan went to Noah's Ark again today, he still cried when I dropped him off, but it wasn't nearly as gut wrenching--he even gave me a hug and kiss good bye.  I picked him up about 30 minutes early today, in time to see him enjoying his afternoon treat of Popsicles.  His teacher said that she has never in her life seen a kid get so excited about Popsicles like he does.  He puts so much emotion and displays such enjoyment in something so simple.  Needless to say I will be going to the store tomorrow to buy some icee pops ( i think that's what they are called, they are the kind that you buy liquid and then freeze).  He said his goodbyes and made sure to make one last visit around all of the things in his classroom before we left, I think he is really starting to enjoy "school," even though he makes such a dramatic scene when I drop him off.  But I happened to see 2 of his classmates be dropped off today, and they did the same thing.

Yesterday we went to the beach to watch Corey shark fish (his new hobby), and Tristan absolutely LOVES the beach.  He lays down rolls around in the sand, runs into the waves, lays down in the water and rolls around (trying to ignore that voice in the back of my mind, that is telling me who knows if this water is even safe to  play in) but for now Ill let him play.  The funny part about going to the beach with him, is that he gets a little uncomfortable in his britches and demands to take them off...so yes I'm that person who lets their kid run around naked sometimes (I checked and there aren't any sex offenders on holiday isle), so far no one has said anything to me about this, they just think its funny and cute....next summer he is going to have to learn to keep his swim trunk on though.  Next time we go, I am making Corey take a video of how crazy he gets around the waves, I need to invest in a real video camera because I'm sure that the money that I spend on that will be well worth it when we watch the videos in the future.

The last two pictures are from last night after he got a bath in the sink of the Sandpiper Cove bathrooms (I even brought soap).  He was trying his best to get me to let him go back in the sand and water and play, but I did not give in!  I really hope that we can continue playing on our beaches, but as soon as there is oil, we wont be going.  There is no way that Tristan will stay out of that mess, fortunately we have friends with pools, so I guess worse case scenario we will be playing there.  Which to him, where ever there is water he is happy (sink, bathtub, sprinkler, pool, whatever) the kid loves water.

Two Posts in ONE day...I must be procrastinating

Actually Im just doing laundry, lots of it, and there happens to be a lot of down time during laundry marathons.  Tristan has been napping for about 3 hours, basically since we got home from swim lessons.  Swim lessons went well again today, the instructor at the lessons, has given Tristan the nick name "Bam Bam" because he is so blonde and strong and never still.
On a completly different note the cutest thing happened at swim lessons today.  There is a 3 year old boy and his 6 month old sister that are in Tristan's class.  The kids in the class break up into 3 groups and we all rotate into stations, different stations focus on different things.  One of the stations focuses on floating on your back, the 6 month old little girl, FELL ASLEEEP while floating on her back, and STAYED ASLEEP for the rest of the class---maybe girls really are calmer!!!!
Today Tristans first station was on the steps...there are 4 steps leading out of the pool, Tristan can hold his head out of the water easily on the first 2, and barely on the 3rd.  The station was structured to get the kids to go under water and put the rings into buckets at the top of the stairs. Tristan (BAM BAM) loved this, he would go under water and hesitanly throw his ring into the bucket.  Well when it was time to leave this "FUN" station he threw a FIT.  I mean Id be pretty upset too if I was having a grand old time collecting rings only to be forced to go float on my back for the next 10 minutes.  But he got over it and we continued with the swim lesson.  I think that if I was ever teaching swim lessons to children under 3, all toys would be put away, because the second Tristan sees a toy he wants to go play.  The child does not focus well when he sees something he wants.  But in the swim schools defense, the other kids did not get upset when having to leave the toys.
In the beginning of June, Tristan started attending Noah's Ark preschool 3 days a week, from 9-3:30.  The first day was rough for him, he cried and asked about his mama (which has now turned into mo-me, because of his school), but overall he loved it.  I was not so sure they could teach him to take a nap on a mat, but guess what he slept for TWO hours on his mat yesterday (the first day it was only 15 minutes and his naps have gradually gotten longer since starting).  He does say "school" now, we talk about it a lot when we are at the house.  Tristan has complete utter MELT DOWNS when we drop him off, cling to your leg, open his mouth, cant breathe MELT DOWNS!  But the teacher says that he does great shortly after we leave, and does very well the rest of the day.  There is nothing sweeter than when you go to pick him up and his face lights up and he runs to give you a hug ( I LOVE IT).  Yesterday when he went, Corey took him, Corey said that as soon as they pulled up to the school, Tristan started his meltdown.  Im kind of jealous that Corey got the first "gift" that Tristan made at school, Tristan painted a brick for Corey for Father's Day.  Id take a picture and post it, but the Brick is on Corey's desk at work (ill try ot remember to take a picture some day soon).  Tristan was on the waiting list FOREVER at Noah;s Ark, and I am glad that he finally got in.  The preschool seems to be very well organized and educationed focused and I love that they are structured and keep to a tight schedule on everything.  For those of you who dont know, one of the main reasons Tristan started going to "school" was so that I could have a couple of hours to myself to get thigns done and I have also started working again.  I have always been interested in Real Estate and an opportunity presented itself and I decided to go for it, so I am now a working mom (part time, but still). 
There is probably a lot more that i could write about, but I just heard the laundry machine beep at me, so its back to chores for now.

Its been a while...

Last week was Tristan's first swim lesson, he loved it!  The program that I am doing with him is 2 months long, so hopefully in August he will be swimming!  He is taking a nap right now so that he will be ready and rested for his lesson today!  The pool is right by Corey's office, so he came by to take a video, which Ive posted below: