Tristan is 6 months old

It's Tristan's half birthday today. Can't celebrate today though since Daddy won't be here tonight. He's off to a iPhone meetup downtown. These meetups take place once a month so he got the okay from us to attend. Instead, we will celebrate tomorrow night.

Tristan, Tristan, Tristan. He has become quite the handful. Today, he's a big crank. Other days, he is very good and plays happily by himself. Guess, it's a good thing we are not celebrating today.

Solid food has made Tristan's poops more solid. In its current state, I kind of like it. It's easier to clean and it doesn't leak much and stain his clothes. But he isn't even eating much rice cereal yet. The rice cereal has eliminated one of his poops so now he only goes twice a day. That's better also. The introduction to solids is the biggest change for him right now.

Tristan has outgrown more of his clothes. Some of the clothes from 3-6 months no longer fit him so I have put them away. He is not big enough for the 6-12 month clothes yet though.

Tristan sits very well now. He barely tips over now. We leave him on the floor and check on him every minute. He doesn't hurt himself when he falls but he does scare himself and then he cries.

His cries are starting to sound more like whines to me, which is totally annoying. I leave him and watch him sometimes just to see what he does. He seems to have a lot of perseverance. I can see him crying non-stop for a long time. Sleep training is going to suck - big time! The plan is to start a no-crying method this weekend, unless something else comes up.

We now have 6 months of experience taking care of a new baby. Here is to surviving this long! Woohoo! Tristan can definitely interact with us more and we love making him laugh. I think the laughter of a baby is one of the best sounds you will ever hear :-)

Perhaps the worst is behind us now but we still have a long way to go. We're not at the place where we can honestly say that we love to spend every minute with him. In fact, both Mommy and Daddy wish to have a break from the baby. I have been itching to travel somewhere. Sadly, this may end up being the first year we don't go anywhere :( Oh well.... I'll make sure we have a great summer anyway in Vancouver.

Tristan's first taste of solid food

Yesterday, we fed Tristan rice cereal mixed with breastmilk. Woohoo! He seemed to have liked it. We gave him 2 tsp in the morning and then again in the evening. It got a bit messy since he wants to get his hands in there all the time. Now, I have a wet wash cloth nearby at all times. I was expecting a strange look from him but there was no expression. He ate it as though he had already been on it. It was a big moment so we took pictures and we filmed the feeding. Yeah, yeah... new parents here.

This morning, I pumped a bit too much milk so the cereal was extremely watery. That made it even messier since it would drip everywhere. I read somewhere that I should feed breastmilk first and then solids but since I had to pump and wasn't sure how much I could pump afterwards, I decided to do the reverse. The milk has to be lukewarm so I fed him the cereal right away. The potential problem with this is that he may get full on the cereal and not want much milk. Breastmilk is still the most important food for him right now.

Even after the messed up weekend, Tristan seems to be back to his routine (so far). He had a poop this morning at 7AM and then again after his breakfast. I can already see a change. His poop is a bit darker, firmer, and has a stronger odor than before. It's not horrible yet since this is just the beginning. The good news is that since it is firmer and more solid, it sticks better and there are fewer accidents on his clothes. Good thing too because we are getting low on our OxiClean Baby spray :)

6 months is a big transition

This Wednesday, Tristan will turn 6 months old. A lot of things happen at 6 months. We finally turned Tristan's cradle into a crib. The new bed sheets and mattress protective cover are on it and it looks great! The cradle is only good for the first 6 months and he is moving so much now - it was like he was sleeping in a box. I love the bedding we got from Dwell. It's pricey but it's super nice. Now, Tristan looks like a tiny baby again in the big crib. He's so adorable:)

The biggest change for Tristan, however; will be food! At 6 months, we have to start Tristan on solid foods, starting with rice cereal. We're actually going to start a couple of days earlier since Jean-Louis will be home and I want the big occasion to be captured on video. We just bought a few boxes of rice, oat, and wheat cereal. I also plan to get some dry lentils, beans, and chick peas. Tomorrow is the big day for Tristan!

Now that the weather is good, we will be going outside more often and that means Tristan has to be protected. I bought some sunblock for him and at 6 months, he can start to wear that on his body. I will be careful not to have him in the sun too long though. Don't want him to suffer from sunstroke or anything like that. We don't have to give him another reason to cry.

At 6 months, we are also going to start sleep training and that may lead us to the cry it out method - I'm not sure yet. Jean-Louis and I have to sit down and draft a contract we can both agree to. Potty training for number 2 might start soon too. One of my friends started her child at 5 months and it worked well for her. It might not be so bad since I can sort of predict when he is about to do it. He normally has 3 poops a day. Maybe that will change with the solid food introduction though.

What else? Well, they say you can't spoil a baby under 6 months so I guess it's time for us to be a bit more cautious and not give him too much attention. We are already carrying him less but that's partly because he's getting heavy. It helps that he can play by himself now too.

Technically, I could stop breastfeeding now. It's recommended that mothers breastfeed for at least the first 6 months. As long as I'm still home and working from home, it's pretty easy for me to do it so I think I will continue as long as I can and as long as Tristan still wants it. Besides, I'm only feeding like 5 times a day so it's not demanding at all. I am going to eliminate the one night feeding some time this week though since we want Tristan to sleep through the night. I think it won't be so hard since Tristan will be on solids and he will feel full longer.

Mother's Day is to blame for doing too much this weekend

Today is chore and recovery day. Both Tristan and I got off our routine this weekend and we need to get back on. This weekend was the first time we went out for like 5 days. Instead of taking it easy with just one outing and some small activities, we went out a lot and we're pooped.

On Saturday, we went walking for like 3 hours and we were sweating bullets since we overdressed. Then, I spent too much time cooking so we could have a nice meal. Tristan is not used to being at places that are too noisy or that have too many people. He doesn't know where to look and is easily over stimulated. He fussed so much we had to use the pacifier many times! When we go outside of the mall, he calms down but when he fusses again, it's because he's tired. He didn't nap much this weekend at all and didn't sleep much at night so he's been rather cranky. In fact, he's having a hard time napping right now. Again, too much going on and he's not used to it. Neither am I. I'm so glad to be staying home today.

We did have a nice meal on the weekend. We had lots of junk food and sweets but I also made us some fresh food. I made spanakopita for appetizers and mushroom and white truffle fettucine. It was a vegetarian weekend. So vegetarian that I had to sneak in a few breaded chicken strips just to have a bit of meat. I grew up eating lots and lots of meat, what can I say?

On Sunday, I got to sleep in - that's a good enough Mother's Day gift for me! However, I woke up to Tristan crying in his crib and Daddy telling me that our iPhone app got rejected. Great. It turned out there was a minor issue and we fixed it right away and resubmitted it. Unfortunately, we will probably have to wait another week before we hear back. That's how it goes apparently. Not a big deal for us since our contract is still in review. The app could be approved and ready for sale but it won't be in the store since our contract is not in effect yet. We should have started this long ago, I know. I will need to blog about that later so that others don't do the same.

We took lots of pictures this weekend. I wanted to dress Tristan up before he grows out of his nice French clothes. We also needed more pictures outside of the house, for a change of scenery. We got some great shots for our May gallery. You would think that since Tristan is almost 6 months old now, we ought to be taking fewer pictures but we haven't slowed down one bit. I think he's cuter now than when he first arrived. He won't look like this again. It's fun. I love taking pictures. Organizing and playing with the pictures isn't top priority right now though.

Hope you all had a nice Mother's Day. Mine was hectic but good. It was my first Mother's Day and I initially wanted a party but then, that would have just made it more hectic :)

Babies that learn baby sign are smarter

We heard that you can teach babies sign language at 6 months of age. It appears that you can start even earlier. We want to communicate with Tristan better so here we go. He loves it when we move and use body language so this should be fun for him. Since we started, he seems very interested when we sign to him. This is work and learning on our part but we hope that it will pay off and we will be able to understand each other better.

This is now day two of using sign language to Tristan. We bought the baby sign book at Babies R Us but it's also available at Amazon for a better price! It's very easy to use and it's more than enough to keep you learning and teaching for awhile. We are starting with about 10 words which we are constantly using with him. These signs include Mommy, Daddy, milk, eat, toy, sleep, look, boy, red etc. We don't want to teach too much at a time. He has to get used to just a few first. The idea is to sign as often as possible. It feels a bit awkward at first and it certainly takes getting used to. It's a bit challenging too because you need your arms and hands to do it and we are always waiting for him to look at us first.

Another productive weekend - can this keep up?

Tristan did not sleep well last night. His ability to sleep better at night is deteriorating or something. When he first goes down to sleep, he usually sleeps around 3-4 hours straight before waking up. Then he'll sleep maybe another hour and then we have to rock him or give him the pacifier. This repeats another 4-5 times before we actually get up. It seems to be his typical routine now but I'm not used to it. I wake up every morning feeling super sleepy and kind of jet lagged. Last night he woke up so frequently, we were both basically up since 4 AM. I think I may have had a 20 minute snooze somewhere in there. The entire time, I was trying to rock and hold him. Bringing him to bed with me did not work this time. I'm wondering when most babies start to sleep well at night? At this point, I'm starting to consider the crying it out method, at least some version of it. He'll be 6 months old later this month so he'll be more ready for it.

This past weekend was one of the most productive ones I've had. Saturday, I had a research meeting, then we submitted our iPhone app and then that night I got enough of our website done to make it live. On Sunday, I finished another page of the website, then we went shopping in Coquitlam. We finally bought our high chair for Tristan and some feeding tools. Every time we go to Baby's World, we always spend a ton of money. We also shopped at Babys R Us and Ikea. iKea just ended up being a food stop since the line up was too long. We didn't go grocery shopping really this weekend so we stopped by the Langley Farm Market on the way back and quickly grabbed a few fruits and vegetables (and a mango crumble pie!). When we are so busy, we don't eat well. We've been dining on frozen food and can food the past 3 days. On top of that, we have been snacking on junk food and sweets. I know it's terrible. I will make sure I cook something today.

Tristan sat in the high chair last night with us when we had dinner. The chair can do many things, which I like, but it's quite bulky too. Most of them are I suppose. We just have space issues at our place and there seems to be more baby things in the living room now than furniture for us. I will write a review for the high chair once we use it a bit more. Tristan is just sitting in it and playing for now. We're starting him on solid food in a couple of weeks.

First iPhone app just got submitted to Apple

Woohoo! We finally did it. The day has come. The iPhone app we started back in October has now been released and we are just waiting for its approval to the App Store. We're very excited!

Today, has been a crazy day. I had a research meeting this morning for almost 3 hours and then we did our submission online and then I worked quickly on our website to make it live as soon as possible. Still got one more major page to complete but it's basically ready. Phew! What a journey this has been. Will talk about it more soon since Tristan is starting to fuss in between my arms here. To be continued...