Tristan Bibo and other updates

I know, I know. We’ve been delinquent, very, VERY delinquent in posting. There is no excuse, for cuteness abounds. And boy are you in luck because I was able to video His Royal Cuteness himself being very shall we say, “bibo”. And just after his new hair cut no less. So enjoy that and see below for what we did over Christmas.

I have told most everyone that we have been sick since Thanksgiving. Ugh. It’s true. We got the flu, then got better. Then we all came down with colds and cough (mine which progressed into asthma at one point) and which led to baby boy’s second ear infection. It was the same ear and I guess I should have been a little suspicious because he would rub it and point to it now and then (I just thought he was signing “hear”). But 10 days of antibiotics and looks like we are in the clear. I temporarily got better then pretty much immediately, my cough got worse and now I am feeling better but sounding worse. Sounding worse because I get into fits of uncontrollable coughing and pretty much have to continually stuff my mouth with Ricola to keep the commotion down lest people think I have TB.

Anyway, enough about that, how was our Christmas? Well, it was our first Christmas on our own. We got a little three foot tree (placed up on a table, out of reach of the little guy), we had a little “belen”. We stayed up on Christmas eve and went to mass on Christmas day. Since it was just us three, it didn’t make sense to cook a grand feast right? Wrong!!! Of course I went overboard and cooked a turkey (I know, hubby requested turkey over ham), stuffing, little cheesecakes, and on the day after Christmas, empanadas!

Hehe. I love party food! Needless to say, we missed a lot of people and I made George homesick by streaming some Filipino carols over the net. The good thing is we got to videochat with both sets of grandparents. And I got to call my Lola in the Phils. Medyo naiyak naman ako pagkatapos. She sounded so good and I really miss her! And she was so happy to hear all about Tristan! I have obviously been really bad not only in the blogging department but in the calling department as well. There’s one for a resolution.

What is up with us? Well, I’m really trying to graduate by summer next year. Pray for me J. No, I’m serious. If all goes well, I’ll do a two year postdoc and George will continue his work in the Cleveland Clinic which he loves. During that time we’ll try to look for something hopefully near Nicky and try to save so we can finally move and settle. *sigh* Well, one thing at a time. Tristan is awesome, as usual. He seems to be going through another growth spurt since mealtime seems to be getting longer and longer. For example, 2 sippy cups of milk, 1 clementine, half a banana, 2 stage 2 packets of baby food and an empanada. Definitely has my appetite. As you saw from the video, he’s been “talking” more and more and can convey what he wants really well (i.e. he will push/pull you to his room to play, or to the TV because the reception is fuzzy – antenna not on). Recently, something that cracks us up, is he’s been saying “no” but not in the usual way. He says it as if to follow with “Seriously?” Hehe. It’s quite hilarious. He’s really a good boy, funny and sweet. He’s tantrums have lessened in frequency for the moment (either that or we’ve become masters of distraction). He still wakes at night (something we feel like we’ll be working at for a while) but now can sort of brush his teeth (must sing “nananana nananana brush your teeth” to the tune of Elmo). For strangers or people he doesn’t see often, he’ll usually give you a smile if you sing. My friend Jona who came to visit us, didn’t sing but she seems to be a natural because Tristan was pretty much going away with her if we didn’t stop him J. Thanks for visiting guys!

Well, that’s pretty much it for now. We hope you’ve all had a great Christmas. Eat and be merry and then eat some more! It is the holidays after all.

Search for Charity

We recently received an email from the priest of the parish that we belong to, talking about a site called goodsearch.com and how it can help raise funds for the school that the parish is running.

GoodSearch donates money to a charity that you specify every time you do a web search through them. At this moment, each search generates $0.01 for your charity. A single penny doesn’t amount to much, but if you manage to get a good-sized group to conduct their web search through GoodSearch, the pennies add up to something sizeable. Nothing beats free money for charity for the ‘price’ of slightly modifying our web browsing behavior.

How does it work? from their FAQ:

Where does the money come from?

Search engines make most of their money from companies that pay an advertising fee when users click on links during a search. At GoodSearch, we’ve developed a patent-pending way to track and direct these search-generated proceeds to charities. In other words, a portion of advertiser dollars (and not your own!) earned as a result of your search, are now passed along to the organization you’ve chosen to support.

Aside from doing web searches, they also donate a much larger amount whenever you shop online and use goodsearch.com as a portal to go to your favorite site. I think they get the money as a referrer to these online shopping sites. Don’t worry, you’re still shopping at Amazon.com or Target.com and the experience is going to still be the same, except for this one extra step that costs us nothing and gives back a lot.

Our Lady of Peace School signed up for GoodSearch just this November and so far we’ve raised a small amount. I know this can be improved further because we’ve really only informed a few people.

So, check out goodsearch.com and see if your favorite charity is listed as a member. If not, maybe you can have them sign up. And if you’re particularly nice, maybe you can contribute to our parish school. Here’s the information:

Our Lady of Peace School (Cleveland, OH)
ID: 889844

That’s it for now. I’ll try to drum up awareness to goodsearch.com and, hopefully, we’ll see the usage spike.

More Magical Tristan Moments

Daddy Antics a.k.a. Blinking and Telekinesis

A while back, George had told Tristan that blinking at the traffic lights would make them change color. So Tristan would blink at the lights, and George would laugh at him. He also thinks that this works for the DVD screen saver (you know, the one that flashes the DVD logo at different areas of the screen). OK, I admit, I found it hilarious too but I often wonder what would happen if I left the little guy in the care of my husband for too long.

No, but seriously, George is really great with Tristan and I feel that their relationship has grown closer these past months. There was a time when George would make “dabog” that Tristan didn’t want to kiss or hug him, and he is still very clingy with me. But now, I think he really enjoys when they can play the rougher games together and when he can be carried and “thrown about”. I also think that it helped that I was leaving him with George a lot more (because of experiments etc.). In the past, I always felt that everything would go to pieces if it wasn’t me who was giving him the bath and the doing the nighttime routine and putting him to bed. But when I had to leave him out of necessity, I found that he gave George very little trouble. Now Tristan gives kisses and hugs to Dada without needing a bribe (most of the time).

Bellybutton Comfort / Lovey?

All the sleep training books I had read suggested the use of a “lovey” to comfort the baby while he is transitioning. We have tried to attach Tristan to his Froggy which he used to kiss but he actually got somewhat attached to what we call Red Bear, a valentine gift George had given me a long time ago. (Sidenote: we always felt kind of weird bringing Red Bear to church as this bear is red because he is in a devil costume complete with horns and a tail). Anyway, we thought for sure he would use Red Bear to comfort himself in the crib, but to our surprise, he started doing something really funny. Tristan comforts himself by rubbing his bellybutton. I’m serious. When he goes to bed, he’ll look for it. When he wakes up, he’ll rub it. Once, when said bellybutton was obstructed by a diaper, I swear we saw him actually panic! Haha! Oh baby! Whatever works for you. Now, Tristan sleeps pretty well, crying for about 5 minutes before quieting and lying down. Then he either goes to sleep at once or will do a little whine/talk to sleep for 10 minutes. He sleeps most days from 8pm to 5am (this morning he slept until 6am, yeah!). If he is teething or has an upset stomach, this will disrupt his sleep. One night, he had a bad dream and bolted upright and started crying. It took a while to calm him down again. But most days, he has been pretty good and I think, in part, we have his bellybutton to thank for it.

Airshow and Thomas

The past Labor Day weekend, we decided to stay in Cleveland and watch the Cleveland Airshow. We rode the tram downtown which Tristan really liked because we called it a “train” and kept singing the Thomas and Friends song. We believe he only likes that show because of the song which he bobs and sways along to. Anyway, we didn’t pay for the Airshow and were just watching it from the pier. I wasn’t expecting much, but it was pretty impressive. The planes were flying so low and doing all kinds of stunts it was kind of hard not to be entertained. George was in heaven, of course but Tristan enjoyed it too…for about 30 minutes. Then the novelty kind of wore off and he just wanted to run after all the children and jump into the water (or at least look over the edge). So, good thing we didn’t buy tickets. We still had a blast and got to show baby some of his favorite things: planes and trains. Check out some of the pics above.

Roomba Infatuation

I guess I have mentioned previously that Tristan has always been fascinated with the Roomba. He starting out being terrified but curious, and now he is just infatuated with it. It is the first thing he asks for in the morning and we always have to say, “No baby, too loud”. He wants to start it but doesn’t want to push the button himself (still a bit afraid) so he will bug you and bug you to turn it on. Then after it’s been cleaning a while he wants you to make it dock (because it will home to its base and make beeping sounds). He imitates it and goes “beep” which sounds more like “bep”. Then he will demand you repeat the whole procedure again. Hey, I can’t complain. Our apartment is cleaner for it.

ABCs

We heard about this website www.starfall.com and have been going through the alphabet section for some time now. It’s pretty cool because there are real pictures, animation, and Tristan’s favorite, music! He’s also been requesting the Dr. Seuss ABCs…every night. We discovered he knew the sounds for many of the letters and even tried to sound out difficult ones like F and K. That was pretty cool! I think he might be starting to get tired of it now because he let me read him The Cat in the Hat tonight, instead. And thank goodness because I was so tired of telling him “That’s not right! There’s no such thing as a Fiffer-feffer-feff (or a Zizzer-zazzer-zuzz)!”.

Alrighty, well that’s about all that’s goin’ on in the Aranjuez household. Going for our 18th month check-up/shots tomorrow. Will keep you posted on how that goes soon Bye for now!