Developmental update at 4 years old

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that Tristan is 4 years old. When it comes to small children, every year that goes by is astronomical! Tristan is so different and so much bigger now. As adults we may age but we are pretty much no different than we were a year ago. For kids, it really is astronomical. Throwing kids huge birthday parties may seem excessive but it's such a huge milestone that I really love doing it. Tristan's construction party was his biggest party yet! It will be hard to top that one. Parents tell me that kids grow out of the parties as well and they don't get excited about them much as they get older. Right now all the kids are so young and excited and that makes me even more excited to throw a birthday party! One day, we can all look back on all these special occasions with fond memories. The experiences are priceless :)

Speech

Showing his white teeth after a dentist cleanup.

Tristan is a little person who you can have clear conversations with. His pronunciation of letters is improving all the time. Anyone can understand him most of the time. He used to have problems saying the sound of "f" but now it's fine.

He is developing his own personality but a lot of Jean-Louis and I are in him as well. He copies us and often says "aw, man!" "that is so cool!" and "what the hell?" It's not the best thing but we don't swear (or at least I never) so you will never hear him say anything worst than "hell."

He can seriously listen to you and understand what you tell him, if you have his full attention. I had a conversation with him about how bad it is to eat things that are burned such as burned toast. I told him it tastes awful and it can also lead to cancer and cancer could lead to death. The first time I told him that it just stuck with him. He knows that I yell every time his dad eats burned toast and so when Tristan sees this, Tristan tells his dad not to eat it because he will die.

When I explain something to Tristan, he repeats what he learns to his dad. He explained to Jean-Louis how some of the African's have no money and no food to eat and that is why they have no meat on their bodies. We do not want to waste food here because we are lucky to be eating so well. That was the lesson there :)

Tristan sucks at keeping secrets. I have told him plenty to test him and so far he has only kept one or two. He blabs to his dad all the time!

Tristan's signature.

He can write his name and copy his phone number. He remembers his phone number from memory as well. He can read numbers well but he gets a few letters mixed up. He also gets French and English pronunciation of letters mixed up some times.

Tristan likes to talk. Some times there is no shutting him up. He's your typical little 4 year old! Blah, blah, blah. But it's so entertaining and he has such a sweet and innocent voice :)

Eating

Dining with him has been great lately. He is eating a bit more now but I think he is still under eating for his age. He eats everything we give him. If he doesn't like it much, he still eats it because he knows he has too. For instance, he doesn't really like bittermelon so we don't give him much but he will still eat what we give him. I love bittermelon :)

Being goofy with a funny looking carrot.

He just left his highchair this week! I know we took forever doing this but it was only because he was making such a huge mess. We don't feed him at all and he had to prove to us that he could sit at the table on a regular chair and not make a mess. This week, we had plenty of water spills on the table and on the floor :( One time it was milk too. He still wears a bib to protect his clothes. We may lose the bib soon, depending on how it goes. Then again, even Jean-Louis still wears something on his body to protect his clothes. Ahem.

Sleep

Tristan sleeps from 9 or 9:30PM to 7:30 or 8AM. That is about the same as usual. He went from not napping at daycare to going back to naps. When he is home with me, he doesn't nap at all. We put him down earlier around 8:30PM or so.

Physical Development

Tristan is 37 pounds. We are looking forward to when he is 40 pounds so we can put him in a booster seat in the car. That should make things a lot easier.

Tristan is around 40 inches (or 102 cm) tall. He is finally tall enough to reach the bathroom sink to wash his hands if he tippy toes. We still have to carry him for the kitchen sink. He is also tall enough to turn on any light switch in the house. I believe at 40 inches tall, he is now tall enough to go on Disneyland rides! Assuming he is brave enough to go on them.

Tristan is wearing anything from 3 to 5 year old clothes. The 5 year old clothes need folding in the sleeves and pants but they don't look overly huge. For clothes that are 3 years old, we just let him wear them as undershirts under bigger shirts. It's cold right now so the smaller shirts are coming in handy! Since he is short, 3 year old pants are just the right length.

Potty Training

Tristan still pees in his pull up at night. At one point he went almost 2 weeks dry at night. We thought that was the end of pull ups but we were wrong. He just went 4 nights dry and then peed again. Since he is our only child, we haven't felt the urgency to push him much. Now that he is 4, we are having more conversations with him about this because he can understand more. Hopefully he will decide to stop all pull ups soon.

During the day, we can trust him to go potty by himself. He pees and washes his hands by himself. When he has to poo, we normally go assist him.

Behavior

Tristan is a fun and imaginative child. He likes to pretend play and he tells crazy stories or sings funny tunes all the time. We sort of do that ourselves so he definitely gets some of it from us.

When he does something bad and we yell at him, he gets mad and tells us that he will hide under the table and never come out again. We need to control our yelling some times but he is going through a time where it is some times really hard to get him to listen and do what we tell him to do. He likes to stall things he doesn't want to do right away such as go to bed.

Tristan is a very fortunate child. We shower him with nice toys and great food all the time and I'm not sure if he is spoiled or not but some times he forgets how lucky he is. When we go to the store, he some times asks us to buy him things. I tell him that I don't like it when he asks for things and that really nice and good boys don't ask. Good boys just get things some times. I tell him it's okay to tell us what he likes and show us but don't ask us to buy it. Now when we are at the store, he grabs toys and brings it to me and says "this is really cool." See? He's learning!

Lately, we have found that he has been over opinionated and stubborn a lot. For instance, when he doesn't want to put on his coat himself and wants us to, we could be standing there arguing for 10 minutes. Sometimes we are able to convince him to do it but other times, he will throw a tantrum. Yes, a tantrum! We haven't seen these sorts of tantrums since the terrible twos. Luckily, these don't occur as often and don't last as long as the terrible two tantrums. It's still pretty awful though :(

Tantrums aside, I think Tristan is at the age where he can be a lot of fun to be with. He is mature enough to have conversations with and smart enough to rely on for help some times. He corrects us many times when we talk to him and we don't even realize we made a mistake. He likes to be useful so he helps where he can with things around the house. For instance, he helps set the dining table and this past weekend he helped put up decorations on the Christmas tree. He did break an ornament along the way though. It was the first one we ever broke:( Oh well. It could have been worst.

Tristan is very affectionate. We shower him with kisses and hugs and tell him we love him all the time and he does the same to us. His grandparents in France noticed how affectionate he was when we were in France this past Spring as well. I hear that kids grow out of this affectionate phase so I want to enjoy it as long as I can :)

Canada Day celebrations at Ron McLean Park

This year we considered going to Stevenston for their annual salmon festival. I heard their barbecue salmon was delicious but what we really wanted to do was to have Tristan take part in the children's bike parade. We just couldn't decide so we ended up not going. It would have been nice to dress Tristan up and decorate his bike but we couldn't do it at the last minute. Plus, we had to be there at 8:30AM, which is super early for us! Maybe we'll be more prepared next year.

We also considered Granville Island and Burnaby Village Museum. There were so many things happening everywhere for Canada Day. In the end, we just wanted to stay close to home and the closest festival to us was actually at Ron McLean Park. It was a 8-10 minute walk from our home and it was probably as good as anywhere else. The other nice thing about this park was that the celebration didn't start until 11AM. I got to sleep in until almost 9AM! Woohoo!

It's pretty crazy. We have been living in this neighborhood for years and we have never been to the Ron McLean Park Canada Day celebration. We ended up spending a couple hours at the park. There were lots of games for kids. I tried to get Tristan to swing the hockey stick at the goalie but he wasn't interested. He wasn't interested in any throwing game either. We sat and watched some entertainment on the stage. They had folk dancers, music, and people came out doing tai chi. There lots of food stands as well. All the food was a bargain and everything was for fundraising. I bought a smokie and pop for $3 and Tristan and I shared the smokie for lunch. Jean-Louis drank the pop. I also noticed watermelon slices were $0.25 each but Tristan didn't want any.

There was a playground and Tristan was more interested in that than the other activities. He saw one of his daycare friends there and was sort of following her around. He was too shy to say hello since she was playing with a group of other kids. We noticed so many kids were dressed in red and white for Canada Day!

There was a fire truck and Tristan got to look inside. There was a police car and all the kids were taking turns sitting inside. Some pretended to be criminals and sat in the back seat. Every now and then the police siren would go on. Lol. What can you expect when you let little curious kids sit inside a police car?

We lined up for the bouncy castle but Tristan was scared when he was inside. He tried to climb up but had trouble and we told him he didn't have to leave yet. Anyway, he cried a bit so we just removed him. We ended up lining up for the pirate ship bouncy castle. It was an open ship so he wasn't as scared. He could also see us too. After bouncing around, he wanted to go again but we ran out of time. It's funny because last year we went in a bouncy castle just like the enclosed one at this park and he wasn't scared at all.

We got home nice and early and started our little barbecue. Just the three of us. Hot dogs, veggie dogs, grilled bananas/mangoes, tomato salad, chips, and lemon/fruit tarts for dessert. By 6:30PM we were done eating and done cleaning up. That's an entire hour earlier than what we are used to! Hooray for celebrating Canada Day near home! :)

Hope all my Canadian readers had a fabulous Canada Day too!

 

What a kid's dish looks like in France

Tuna & pasta

Salmon & fries

What we did in the Portland area

We had such a blast in the one week we spent in the Portland area. The weather was very kind to us. It only rained maybe two days on and off and by the end of the week a heat wave hit. It went from 15C to 25C and it stayed there for a few days. It felt like summer and we were overdressed and sweating! We couldn't have been luckier though because we planned our shopping trips during most of the rain and all the things we did during the trip worked out great weather wise.

We drove A LOT. With all the driving that we did, some outings felt a bit like an European tour. We only got to spend maybe one hour tops at each place. I was particularly frantic while we shopped. There were so many great buys and so many great things that we just couldn't get in Vancouver. I would grab something and then have about 2 minutes to decide if I was going to buy it. Power shopping would even be an under statement. We were so productive though and I was sweating from shopping and carrying so much. No kidding! If we had more time, I would have definitely bought more so maybe it's a good thing I had a time limit :)

This trip was a preview of Portland and the surrounding area for us. We would definitely like to go back but next time we'll stay inside the city. After driving what seemed like forever to get there from Vancouver, we were so relieved to find that our resort by Mt. Hood was not covered in snow and that it was really nice! It was a one-bedroom villa with a full kitchen, washer/dryer in the unit, TV in the living room and TV in the bedroom, private patio with BBQ grill, and fireplace in the living room! The resort looked pretty new too so we were thrilled :) It's just too bad it was a 1 hour drive to Portland but we can't complain too much. We didn't use the amenities because we barely spent time at the resort itself but we did take full advantage of the kitchen. We only dined out for three full meals during the week. We shopped at Trader Joe's and made ourselves dinner and breakfast at home. I also prepped us some sandwiches for our road trip to the coast. The resort probably didn't think visitors would use the kitchen so much so we found ourselves complaining how ill equipped the kitchen was with supplies. We're hard to please, I know! No dish rack? We didn't want to use the dishwasher because it was too noisy and it took too long so we just hand washed everything and laid it loosely on the counter to dry. We ended up breaking one of the dishes as a result. Oops.

Grocery Shopping

There are so many local and organic choices for foods down in the Portland area. The Saturday farmer's market in Portland State University is now one of my favorite farmer's markets. There were so many organic stands and the local produce looked so amazing. If I lived there, I would have filled a shopping cart full of mixed lettuce leaves and greens like collards, kale of every kind etc. Of course I would use big reusable shopping bags because that's cooler and I would blend in well with the locals :) There was entertainment and music, food stands, bakery tables, wine, nuts etc. It was so lively down there and we went at such a perfect time. The weather was 25C that day and the morning was pleasantly cool when we got to the market. I bought plenty of local nuts, wine, bread, cookies, leeks, purple carrots, anise, and Jerusalem artichokes! It's so hard to find Jerusalem artichokes here in Vancouver and they are expensive. Here we call them sunchokes and I buy mine at Thrify Foods. They grow them in Portland and they looked so great and were cheap. I was literally doing the happy dance when I saw them:) They were everywhere too.

Jerusalem artichokes (aka sunchokes)

We visited Trader Joe's for the first time and then by the time we left the US to come home, we had visited Trader Joe's five times. I guess you could say we love the place :) In fact, I'm probably going to write a post just about Trader Joe's on my food blog later.

Touring

We did about 75% of the things I had planned for us to do. Of course we sort of lost about two days of vacation if you factor in all the driving around. The driving was somewhat hard on us all and we are all super sick of our car now. Lol. Tristan was pretty good but he lacked sleep all week so he acted up in the evenings during dinner time a few times. That wasn't so fun:( Instead of going to bed at 9PM, he slept at 11:30PM and got up at the usual 7:30AM. He normally napped in the car for maybe 30 minutes during the day as well but all of that does not add up. He was just sleep deprived. On top of that, he was sick coughing for the first 3 or 4 days. The weather improved and I fed him lots of soup so he got better quickly. Thank goodness. It was an adventure for him to come with us on such a long road trip and I sort of feel bad for him because we didn't get to play in playgrounds much and we didn't bike at all. We did go snowtubing on Mt. Hood, which he really enjoyed :)

We wanted to spend more time in the city so we only took one coastal trip. We drove to Long Beach and then headed south to Tillamook. We went through Astoria but didn't stop. We did stop by Seaside and Cannon Beach. All the beaches are about the same. They were all long, wide, and white sand beaches. Cannon Beach is particularly stunning because of all the rock formations nearby like the "haystack." Our final destination stop was Tillamook. We got to the cheese factory there just before they closed so we were able to quickly try some cheese, buy cheese, and get ice cream. I was told their ice cream was awesome so I had to try :) We hoarded so much cheese from there, you would think we were Wallace & Gromit. Cheeeeese!

Two days before we left, we took an excursion to the Columbia gorge and river. We drove along the scenic highway from Troutdale along the Columbia gorge and stopped by Vista House and Multnomah Falls. Then we continued on all the way to Dalles, just to see the landscape change into desert and dry land. It wasn't as drastic as I imagined but in Dalles it was 28C. Of course we were already experiencing a hotter than usual day of 25C inside Portland. When we drove back through Hood River and back to our resort, the temperature dropped to 18C. Within an hour we went from a hot desert to snow in the mountains. It is pretty cool when you think about it.

Shopping

Shopping on NW 23rd Avenue

We went shopping at Woodburn and also in around Portland on 23rd, the Pearl District, and Hawthorne. The biggest outlets are in Woodburn. It's mostly clothes and shoes though. There are tons of good buys and you can definitely break your bank if you are not careful. Consider yourself warned :) NW 23rd Avenue was our first shopping stop inside Portland and even though it rained that day, we really loved that street. The stores were on the ground level of what looked like Victorian style homes. The street actually reminded me a lot of my Fernwood community in Victoria. Williams-Sonoma is on that street, as well as the Kitchen Kaboodle, which I really liked. Two Tarts bakery is there and it's not far from St. Honoré Boulangerie, which was our very first stop inside Portland. The Pearl District is also a great shopping area. The flagship Powell's Books store is there, as well as Anthropologie, Sur la Table etc. Tons of stores that I love are there! Hawthorne is good for vintage clothes, especially "House of Vintage." It's so big so you will need time to sift through everything to find the cool stuff. It took me awhile and I only bought a couple of things. And of course, every neighborhood you go to, there are cafes and bakeries and so many things are organic, gluten-free, or vegan. I think all the coffee shops carry cow milk, almond milk, and soy milk. That was my impression anyway.

Meeting the Locals

On our last day there, we toured the Lan Su Gardens in Chinatown and then met up with one of Jean-Louis' tweeples, who was living in Portland. It's funny because we have only been there for a week and we have seen more places than him. He has been a local for over two years but has barely left the city center. Jean-Louis' friend is Vegan so he took us to a good restaurant called Vita Cafe that had lots of vegan and gluten-free food. It was on Alberta Street and it was his friend's favorite street in Portland. There were tons of great coffee shops, cool vintage type shops, colorful stores, eateries and art galleries. Vita Cafe was great. It was very family-friendly and we ordered a good variety of vegan dishes. Now we have ideas of what to make at home as well :) After lunch, we walked down the street to Barista. This is a popular coffee shop that serves local coffee. The main counter inside reminded me of a pub and bar. The cashier was dressed in a suit with a tie and had designer glasses on. The place just felt very hip. Jean-Louis' friend recommended I buy a bag of "heart" coffee since it's local and would be hard to find outside of Portland. I can't wait to try it! :)

Oh, another great thing we love about Portland is that it's the bike capital of the US and there are so many bikers and bike lanes there. The friends we met are bikers themselves and they were telling us that they practically biked from one end of the city to the other end without ever leaving a designated bike lane. That is awesome! Bike city and vegan paradise? Jean-Louis was happier than me! If you are a hippy, hipster, green type of person, or if you like vintage, Portland is your city, man.

Have you been to Portland, Oregon? Do you love it too? Vancouver, Canada will always be the best place to live for us but I certainly wouldn't mind moving to Portland for the short term :) I heard it could become like Silicon Valley one day so that means there would be great jobs for tech geeks like Jean-Louis and I. That would be something! :)

Easter crafts, Easter hunt, Easter day feast

This Easter was the most fun! In previous years, Tristan wasn't really interested in many crafts and he was too young to play in Easter hunts. He is almost 3 1/2 now and he is quite ready for all of that now.

EASTER CRAFTS

We painted boiled eggs. Not only Tristan and I but Jean-Louis as well! Jean-Louis really got into it. He carefully painted a couple of pretty rainbow eggs :) Now that is what I call family Easter fun!

Tristan wanted a tiger so I painted Tigger.

Oh yeah, I also baked sugar cookies and cupcakes :) What kind of foodie would I be if I didn't?

1st EASTER HUNT

On Saturday night, I planned a egg hunt for Tristan. I took the idea from the Easter hunt article I found, which suggested to insert clues inside eggs that would eventually lead to finding the Easter basket. I bought 8 plastic eggs from the dollar store and wrote 8 clues about where to find the next egg. The important thing is that all the eggs have to be located in the exact order! As I unfortunately found out last night, you can't just randomly hide the eggs. Lol.

I set aside the first clue and inserted the last 7 clues into 7 eggs. The first clue was given at the start of the game. The 8th and final egg said "good job!" and gave a clue of where to find the prize. It helps to write down all the clues and then number them in the order they should be found. Then I crossed my fingers, went to bed, and hoped everything would work out as planned :)

There are three floors to our home and I made sure clues were distributed everywhere. I planned it so that Tristan would have to go up and down the stairs many times. He had to work for his prize, yo!

Here are examples of some of the clues I used:

• This is your favorite toy. You love playing this with daddy. Look around here for the next egg.
• You sleep with this at night. His first name is "Black."
• "To infinity and beyond!" Find me and you'll find the egg.
• You hide here every time it is time to go have your bath.

The last egg had a different color note inside, which Tristan noticed right away. It provided a drawing of where his prize was located. Unfortunately, Tristan didn't get the drawing at all. Jean-Louis had to help him.

Overall, Tristan did extremely well. We did the egg hunt first thing in the morning when we woke up. I didn't want to risk him accidentally running into the hidden eggs. He was super excited when we first started. Near the end, he was a bit distracted and didn't really want to hear clues anymore. At one point, he went around randomly and searched for eggs. We told him the game didn't work like that. Then after it was all done, he kept asking why there aren't any more eggs to look for. When the Easter basket was handed over, he let him eat a bit of the chocolate right away. Then we sat down for our regular breakfast.

The "prize"

This was the first egg hunt I planned. My parents bought chocolate eggs for us when we were kids and they randomly hid them outside. It was hard to find them and I'm pretty sure some were forgotten completely. I love these planned egg hunts a lot better :)

This was Tristan's first egg hunt. He didn't really get it but he is still learning. We tried to explain it to him the day before to prepare him. When he woke up he knew there was an egg hunt so he dashed off and told us he was going to hide the eggs. I think he was referring to the eggs we painted the other day. My guess was he was going to the fridge to grab those eggs and hide them. No, no, no.

This was Jean-Louis' first egg hunt. He doesn't remember any egg hunt but that doesn't really surprise me because he grew up in France and the French don't go crazy with the chocolate, eggs, or presents. He comes from a Catholic family and they just go to church and have a nice traditional meal. It's only in the past 5 years or so that the crazy North American culture of chocolate eggs has crept into France. It's all for commercialization.

EASTER DAY FEAST

This year is the first year we ever had a vegetarian Easter. That's right, no meat! We had some eggs in the salad and a bit of cheese in the gougères, else it would have been a vegan Easter. Actually, we had non-vegan cupcakes too. Anyhow, the food was great and it was not a big deal at all. We had a vegan dish which resembled steak but was made from chickpeas and gluten. Psychologically, I guess we thought we were having meat and we were satisfied :)

Chickpea cutlets