Guess where I am?

Waiting for Mommy while she shops at Gymboree...ahem.

The "I can't stand still" toddler

Burnaby Village Museum

Weekends are full of activities now

We do our grocery shopping on the weekend. Boring, I know but it's the only time we can be very productive doing it. I sometimes grab a few things like milk and fruit during the week day but most of our shopping is on the weekend. This Saturday, we shopped in the morning, had lunch at home, then headed off to the bike festival hosted by MEC. It was gloomy and it rained on and off but when we arrived at the festival in the Athletes village, it stopped raining and the sun even came out a few times. It was a nice event. I'm not into bikes but Jean-Louis and Tristan are so it was great. We played a game where we had to go through 10 booths to collect passport stamps for Tristan. At the end, we got a couple of cool prizes. Tristan got a bell for his bike, as well as a small light.

At the first booth, Tristan tried out some of the bikes, but most of them were too high for him. He went on a pedal bike for the first time but he didn't know what to do and Jean-Louis basically pushed him along. Finally, we put him on a wooden running bike and he just took off! He went so fast. Give him something he's familiar with and he'll know exactly what to do with it. The other kids on the running bikes looked like they were trying it for the very first time. Besides riding bikes, we also watched the bike stunt show, which was pretty cool. Jean-Louis went for a test ride with Tristan attached to a bike seat. Because of the weather, there weren't many people at all. We loved it!

On Sunday, we headed to Broadway for Greek Day. It was our first time there. We heard about it in previous years but we just never got to go. This year I was reminded countless times about the event through Facebook and Twitter. In fact the event coordinator is a friend of mine on Twitter! I just had to go this year, obviously :)

It was hot on Sunday! I overdressed myself and Tristan. Ugh. The crowds at Greek Day made it even hotter. We arrived shortly after opening and the place was packed within 30 minutes. I think the nice weather brought out everyone! Greek day is known as a family-friendly event but with the crowds it almost seemed insane to bring small children. Tristan is at that age where he doesn't get overly stimulated in large crowds but I was scared of losing him. He likes to walk on his own a lot and I almost lost Jean-Louis and Tristan in the crowd that day.





On Broadway, they had two areas where they set up the kids zone. Tristan played fishing and then got a prize. We were going to line up for cotton candy but thought it was a bad idea before lunch. After lunch however, the line up was insane so we couldn't even do it. Oh well. The cotton candy was more for us than Tristan anyway. We lined up for the Shrek air castle. It was Tristan's first time in one and from the outside, it looked like so much fun! Too bad he was too small to climb and slide down but he still had a thrill walking inside. I would have love to have gone in myself. I have never been inside one before. If Tristan was a summer baby, we would totally rent one of those!

We ate greek food, watched some music performances, walked around, stopped by a nearby coffee shop, and then took off when Tristan started to go a little bananas. It was way past his nap time. We also had other plans that day to go shop at MEC, take Tristan on a bike ride, and cook dinner. Yes, the weekends are beginning to feel a bit hectic but it's awesome :)

Tristan is 31 months old (or 2 years 7 months)

It's been awhile since I have done a post on Tristan's developmental updates. Today is no special day, except that it is the 20th of the month. Here is a brief update on how he is doing.

Potty Training

Tristan is well on his way to becoming diaper free. He wears underwear all the time except when he naps or sleeps at night. He has only had 2 dry diapers so far after waking up in the morning but when he does pee in his diaper it only happens once since the diaper is only a bit wet. He's working on it :) This weekend we went over to Victoria and even when we had a diaper or pull up on him, he did not pee in them once. No accidents and he even did number 2 at a restaurant. This is not to say he doesn't have any accidents. There are at least a couple of accidents a week still. Some times we just don't make it to the bathroom in time.

Eating

Tristan is eating everything. He isn't as picky at the moment and will eat anything you give him. If he is picky, we bribe him with an upcoming course (e.g. cheese stick) and that usually does the trick. He has also been eating more sweets such as muffins, cookies, scones, and granola. These are all homemade but he also likes to eat store bought arrowroot animal cookies. I would say that he eats sweets maybe twice a week. He's at that age where we just want him to try everything and discover the world. If it's something that isn't great for him like a brownie, we'll just give him a bite or two. Jean-Louis almost let him try pop but then I said no. That stuff is pure crap and besides, Tristan hasn't even drank juice yet. Okay, so maybe he can't try everything quite yet! :)

Sleep

He sleeps from 9:15PM to 7AM. He naps for 1-2 hours. We can't really complain here. He's quite consistent and sleeps through the night. Some times if he wakes up a bit earlier, we just go tell him to go back to sleep and cover him up and he does.

Tristan is still in his crib and will be for awhile. There is a piece of wood we can move so that he can get in and out easily. We plan to remove that piece in October, after our vacation. Right now, he can jump in and out of his crib but he is usually good about staying inside until we get to his room.

Speech

He can sing but he is shy around others. Some of his favorites are Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Eensy-Weensy Spider, Happy Birthday, and Wheels on the Bus. His pronunciation is getting much better now. He can have simple conversations with my Mom on the phone and she actually understands him. He is still mixing his French and English. He is a little us in many ways. He says "oh my goodness" a lot and I've heard him say "what the heck" and "what the dickens." He tries to explain everything with "because... I'm a big boy" or something else. He loves to say because. You ask him why or how come and he'll say "because" and then try to finish it off with something. We find that he is constantly rehearsing his speech with us. We have to let him too but it's very interesting to watch him.

In the last week or so, he has been saying "love you" to us. Yup, it has taken him this long! Not sure if he totally understands it but we'll take it :)

Growth & Exercise

Tristan weighs 30 pounds. He can jump down from the third step on the stairs. He likes to run because Mom and Dad runs. He walks home one way from daycare and he increasingly wants to walk more. He loves biking on his Strider and requests to do it every day. He is at that age where we can take him out more and he can have fun. Overall, he is just easier to care for and more fun to be with. I think that is a recipe for traveling more, don't you? ;)

Behavior

Tantrums are on the decline. At the moment. Of course this could change but we're enjoying every moment of peace:)

When he coughs, he knows to do it into his elbow. He is an expert at blowing his nose. Bye bye aspirator! He started blowing his nose a few months ago. A couple of weeks ago, he started to spit out toothpaste after we brush his teeth.

Air time!

First dry overnight diaper

We just reached yet another milestone in Tristan's potty training. He's has been doing very well in underwear pretty much all the time except that he still sleeps in a diaper. We let him wear underwear when we go out and we have so far managed to find public washrooms for him whenever he needed it. I have to say little boys are lucky they can pee while standing up! He even peed while standing on a log off a trail when we went hiking in Whistler. He sits and pees too but lately his preference is to stand, since daddy pees that way too :)

Tristan is advancing in potty training because he can hold his pee for long periods. I remember one day when he only peed twice from the morning he woke up to the time it was 4PM. I must have peed like 5 times by then. Since then I have tried to get him to drink more but it wasn't like he wasn't drinking at all. This week he actually wet his bed many times. He wears a diaper to sleep and he pees so much that it leaks. It really annoys me since I have to do laundry all the time. We decided to cut him from any drinking after 8PM. We encourage him to pee before bed but it doesn't always happen. We have been starting to tell him not to pee in his diaper and if he doesn't for awhile, we can put an underwear on him. He seems to like the idea but we just figured he is not ready yet.

Yesterday, I forgot to change Tristan out of his underwear for his afternoon nap. When he woke up, the bed was soaked. He didn't even know until I pointed it out. When he realized what had happened, he cried. He was devastated. This morning when he woke up, he walked straight to the potty, sat down, and pee on his own while I was in his bedroom fetching his day clothes. When I came to the bathroom he was said "look, I peed!" I took the diaper he threw on the floor and noticed it was as light as empty. I was totally shocked! Then Tristan said "I hold it. No pee it there. I hold it." Hooray! Then we both did the happy dance :)

I'm beginning to think that Tristan felt all along that it was okay to pee in his diaper during nap and sleep times. We allowed it since we didn't think he was ready. It seems that he is ready to give up the diaper and that we just had to tell him no. "No it's never good to pee in your diaper. You only have it on for emergencies. Try not to pee in it." I think he understands. And now he is trying.

The fish we didn't buy

Vacationing in Whistler with a 2 year old

There aren't many tours to take or activities to join when traveling with a 2 year old. Whistler is no exception. When I researched and planned our trip there for the end of May, I discovered that a lot of cool tours like zip-lining, adventure zone for the kids, river rafting, and bear safaris had an age limit of least 4 years old. It turns out because we were going near the end of May, a lot of the summer activities like the mountaintop barbecue was not even opened yet. In fact, there are stores in the village that are closed until June. It's slow season right now in Whistler!

We went to Whistler with Tristan for a week, from Sunday to Sunday. We made the best of it and ended up having a good and relaxing time. As I mentioned in my last post, there were lots of dining specials so that was great. Especially because we ate out A LOT. I saved ourselves a few meals going up since I cooked a huge batch of fried rice shortly before we left for Whistler. I made us what I call, mountain retreat granola for snacks and brought along a couple containers of frozen food. We went grocery shopping beforehand as well so we had fresh bread, milk, and fruit. We were only able to do this because Whistler was a 2 hour drive away from Vancouver. In fact, I think it took us more like 1 1/2 hours. Our room did not have a kitchen but there was a small fridge, microwave, and dishwasher. The dishwasher was just a waste of space, in my opinion.

Over the course of the week, we did a lot of things. We were never bored. Our resort was just minutes away from the village so we walked a lot. We took pictures and stopped by many coffee shops. Tristan played in the nice park in the village. We cruised around and got more activity information and then planned our week day by day while we sipped on coffee. We ended up taking part in two paid activities: 1) TreeTrek Canopy Walk and 2) Peak 2 Peak sightseeing.

We observed the weather like a hawk and chose a nice morning for the TreeTrek tour. ZipTrek, the company that offered this tour, was very accommodating and lent us a hiking backpack to carry Tristan in. We also had a car seat for him inside their shuttle bus. There was no charge for the backpack and because we could carry Tristan, there was no charge for him for the tour :) For those who are too big to carry, kids need to be at least 6 years old to participate in this tour. We had a good time and Tristan was well behaved. The tour lasted around 2 hours.

The Peak 2 Peak opened for the summer season on May 28th. Since we were leaving on the 29th, we had to go on the 28th. I feel a bit foolish because I noted down all the great hikes on the top but there is no hiking at all this time of year. The top is covered in tons of snow and there is skiing until August. I thought maybe some of the popular trails might have been shoveled. No chance! We enjoyed the 20 minute private gondola ride up to Whistler Mountain from Whistler Village and then the 11 minutes Peak 2 Peak gondola ride across to Blackcomb Mountain. We ended up going back and forth a couple of times since we wanted to ride the silver gondola with the glass viewing floor. Tristan really enjoyed riding in the gondolas too. The views from above the mountain was amazing. It wasn't that cold up there but then again, I was wearing a ski jacket. I realized during our trip that I under packed and would freeze up there. Luckily, there were tons of sales for snow gear and apparel right now :) Not all the restaurants on the mountain were opened either. Again, it was slow season. We bought some mushroom soup and fed Tristan inside one of the eating areas while we watched the snowboarders and skiers go down the mountain. It was winter wonderland up there and it snowed too!

It's funny to think we walked and played in the snow on top of the mountain because in the valley below, we were hiking and swimming. In fact, one of Tristan's favorite activities in Whistler was swimming. We took advantage of the heated outdoor pool at our resort and on the day it rained, we went to the Meadows Park Sports Centre to swim indoors. We bought a inflatable life saver for Tristan and he was able to float and move all on his own in the pool. It was the best $1.50 purchase we made at the dollar store :)

Here are some of the other things that we did:

1. Running while pushing Tristan in the jogging stroller (11.4KM, more on this later)
2. Hiking to Nairns Falls (1.5KM one way, highly recommended for toddlers!)
3. Whistler library story time
4. Dine out event at Edgewater Lodge Restaurant
5. Watched DVDS together in our room (free to borrow from the resort)
6. Shopping in the village
7. Drove south looking for hiking trails (ones we wanted to do were closed:()
8. Visited Lost Lake Park, Rainbow Park (flew a kite)
9. Drove to Pemberton and had coffee
10. Took advantage of many daily dining specials (e.g. $10 pasta Thursdays at Quattro)
11. Sleep! Lots of sleep!

Whistler was fun. Jean-Louis and I have only been there once for a weekend and it was during the winter season. This was our first trip in the Spring. We had never gone up the mountain either so that was new. The lakes and parks in the valley and in the nearby area are stunning. The food was delicious and luckily for us, didn't cost us an arm and a leg. Tristan more or less ate well. He was really okay to dine with. Surprising.



Since we shared a room, it was hard to do other things when Tristan fell asleep. It was hard for him to sleep while we were still up. The simplest solution was for all of us to sleep at the same time. That meant keeping Tristan up a bit later every night and we had to sleep earlier every night at around 10:30PM. No matter when we slept, Tristan would still get up at 7 or 6:30AM. After a week of all of us together, I'm ready to give it up. Tristan was still a handful here and there so I'm glad this was just a vacation. We're so glad to be back home in Vancouver and back to our routine! You never know how much you miss home until you leave it for awhile :)

The walk home from daycare

Happy Easter!

We're not doing anything special this year for Easter. Maybe next year when Tristan is 3, we'll do an Easter hunt and he can have more chocolate. Right now he is not familiar with chocolate. He has eaten it before but it's usually part of something else like chocolate chips in a cookie. He has probably tasted chocolate only three times in his life! In fact when I gave him a banana oatmeal chocolate chip cookie last week, he was asking me what the chips were. He was calling them blueberries and I told him they were chocolate chips.

We're heading over to Victoria for my Grandpa's 49th day passing on Tuesday so we decided to make a weekend out of it and go during Easter as well. I don't feel like it's an appropriate time for celebrating but I did bake Easter cookies to mark Easter. Like always, I will be giving most of them away. I usually bake around 55 cookies or two batches. We can't possibly eat that many cookies anyway. I'll probably freeze some as well :)

This week one of the kids at daycare gave Tristan and all the other kids in the toddler room some Easter treats. He was the only one and I was sort of wondering if kids were doing this. It's definitely not popular but it was so nice to receive something :)
Happy Easter and enjoy your day off work!

Broken elephant cookie freakout

How Tristan eats his logans

From cool messy-haired toddler to chubby little monk

Tristan's first haircut

Today is a sad day. At least for me. I cut off Tristan's nice hair and I'm going to miss it :( It took 26 months to grow to this length.

We were at Winners today shopping and Jean-Louis once again tells me that people everywhere are calling him a girl. Why is it such a bad thing for little boys to have longish hair anyway?? The long hair didn't bother me much but it was sort of messy and needed cleaning up. The plan was to cut just the back of the head in time for Chinese New Year. Since Jean-Louis will be cleaning the house tomorrow and we were able to eat an early dinner, we decided it was time. The stars were aligned and I had no more excuses:(

It was our last time to have fun with his hair so we had to take pictures :)

A 5 minute haircut of just the back, ended up being a 30 minute haircut of the whole head. I had to cut the sides since it didn't make sense not to. Then I had to even things out and ended up cutting more and more and more. I would have cut more too but I made myself stop before too much damage was made. Overall, the haircut looks good but it definitely could be better. Since it was my first toddler haircut, I'm cool with just good :)


Tristan behaved well, considering it lasted a long time. He was constantly moving so it was actually very challenging. I never came close to poking him with the scissors but his hair is not quite even since he was moving so much. Well, also because I have never done any other haircut aside from a full head buzz on Jean-Louis. Near the end, we had to give him things to hold and play with just to keep him in his seat. First the hair clip, then the iPhone. I know! Horrible but we won't be doing this often. The new haircut will take some getting used to. Jean-Louis says he looks chubbier. I'm not sure it's an improvement but he definitely looks more boyish now!

Multicolor daycare filth

Portraits of Tristan via "Paint it!" Now

Movie Director in the making: Tristan films a video

Toddler behind the camera from CocoaGeek on Vimeo.

Mall ice cream truck through the 8mm vintage camera

Mall ice cream truck through the 8mm vintage camera from Mommying Around on Vimeo.

Have a Merry Christmas!

From our family to yours, we want to wish you a Merry Christmas :) May this holiday season bring you joy, love, and laughter! Cheers.

Santa visits daycare

Today, we visited daycare for about an hour to go see Santa. Santa was coming and he had gifts for all the children. Even though we are not big on the whole Santa thing, I wanted Tristan to be a part of this because all the other kids were. I also wanted to bring him there to play a bit. Daycare sure beats the StrongStart at the school.

We arrived a bit late and ended up being the second to last kid to receive a gift from Santa. Oops. He received a Christmas story book. All the kids got some sort of Christmas story book. It was nice. It didn't last long. Each child was called out and came to collect their present from Santa. Then a picture was taken and it was the next child's turn.

I was the only parent at daycare today. I kind of thought I would be. It's bad that I don't carry out a full time job but it's good that I'm able to take part in these things while I am still free from work. I got to observe Tristan play with the other kids at daycare. He didn't really stick by any one kid in particular. There is this really loud boy who tends to bang toys and makes a lot of racket. Tristan followed and copied him every now and then. That's bad but he didn't bang toys. He was just copying what the other boy was saying. I discovered that this other boy is the "5 more minutes" boy. Lately, Tristan has been telling us "5 more minutes" or "2 more minutes" and we would just laugh. Now, I know who he is copying that from!

There are a couple of boys Tristan enjoys playing with. One of them is his best buddy, at least that is what the staff claims. I watched them. They did play together a bit and I couldn't resist taking a few pictures of them. It was so cute! Imagine having a best friend at the age of 2.

While I was observing and watching after Tristan, other kids would approach me and talk to me. I couldn't understand most of them. They sort of talk like Tristan and is only learning how to speak properly. If anyone, only their parents would fully understand them. One little boy got me to put on his shoes. A little girl wouldn't stop talking to me. She was a chatterbox and she got me to watch and hold her Christmas book while she played in the ball room. Sure, why not? Tristan was fine alone so I spent some time talking with one of the staff members. I could see that Tristan was well behaved. When all the other kids were painting the table instead of their snowflake or grabbing the table cloth, Tristan was just looking at them or quietly painting his own snowflake. In fact, he was so tidy, he painted mainly the center of the snowflake and didn't get any paint on the table around him. The staff member I spoke to says that he is so mellow and easy going. He did fight over a toy a couple of times so I had to intervene. Then the staff member said that he is great at sharing toys. She must be referring to most of the time because it's not all the time!

Tristan had fun on our daycare visit. He didn't even know I was there some times. When we left, he didn't get upset either so it was all good. Daycare has been good to him and to us. When we picked him up on Wednesday, we found a nice gift bag for us in his cubby. It was addressed from Tristan to Mom and Dad. There were bakes, jam, bathroom treats, an ornament for the tree, and a card. I had a feeling they were giving us something but I didn't know it was going to be that much! There was also a Christmas card to Tristan from his French teacher. I love sweet surprises :)