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.

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.

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!

Ethan Joel

Nicky and Dave announced the arrival of their second addition, Ethan Joel! Congratulations to you guys! He was slightly preemie (by a month) but otherwise is doing OK. Ahhhh, I remember those first days of having that little bundle all fragile and wrinkly and pink. I also remember being pretty much a zombie and running on auto-pilot (feed, put baby to sleep, pump). I also remember George’s sleep deprivation-induced hallucinations (“I think I’ve lost the baby!”). Come to think of it, I remember my sleep deprivation-induced hallucinations as well. In my defense, I would like to say that Nicky was also hearing the breast pump “speaking” to her. Hehe. Goodtimes :p Anyway, awesome, awesome news. So excited to go visit them and maybe help out. Just waiting on their OK… And waiting….and waiting… Joke lang. Whenever you want and are ready guys. I promise we will help. We will take Zoe-zoe and cook and clean and do whatever. You know, Labor Day is fast approaching…

Bread

wheat bread

Speaking of Nicky and Dave, my brother-in –law is a master bread maker. He makes phenomenal bread and pizza (OMG, Dave/Nicky please send me your sweet onion pizza recipe – yumyum). Anyway, I’ve told him that I tried in the past and failed miserably. George can attest to this as we once tried to make whole wheat bread and it tasted so bad we had to throw it away. Ever since, I vowed not to waste time on an endeavor that obviously did not want anything to do with me. Until an article on www.thesimpledollar.com caught my eye. It was a step-by-step article on how to make white bread. And it got me thinking, hey if this guy can do it (even without a stand mixer), so can I! And it came out pretty good. This gave me confidence to go to the next level and try wheat bread. Lo and behold, it worked! Check out my awesomeness above! It tastes much, much yummier than store bought (if I do say so myself). So, I’m thinking of trying pandesal next. By the way, I managed to get a stand mixer for $15 from craigslist (it’s a bit wobbly for heavy dough but gets the mixing done). Go craigslist!

Drums

stress reliever (or inducer for the neighbors)

I took 2 summers worth of drum lessons back when I was in still in UP. When I moved to the US, I asked around a bit but never really thought of seriously going back to taking lessons. I was living in an apartment and felt that I would be causing too much noise. Then came graduate school and things got busy, priorities got shifted, and then came marriage and baby. Don’t get me wrong, these are all good things. But since baby, I sometimes felt that my identity was replaced by “mom”. In the early weeks and months after baby, I could notice my speech devolving from lack of conversation. Now that I think about it, one of my aunts told me this and it’s true! There were so many things I wanted to try and get involved in but finances were tight and time was always a precious commodity. Now baby is a little older, and George was so supportive of me first, getting lessons and now, getting a drumset! Yup, a crying baby is not enough noise for our neighbors. Let’s add a beginning drummer to the mix. Hehe. I’m by no means an expert. And I made clear to my teacher that this is for my personal enjoyment only. No professional aspirations…..yet! Haha! Ok. Let’s not get carried away. Here’s a link to my teacher’s myspace page – www.dominictancredi.com.

Sleep training and all things Tristan

pakwan monster

Woohoo! Baby is doing so good! Let’s be honest, there is still crying. But more often than not, five minutes of crying then he’s down. This weekend he woke only once every night and very briefly. He went right back down when I said “Not time to wake up yet. One more sleep, baby.”. No fuss. What we found out though is that he’s an early riser. As in, 5AM early riser. So we have to go to bed early as well to be sure we make it to work. There are days when he’ll cry a little longer or take longer to go to sleep. This past week, for instance, we had a number of thunderstorms and that spooked him a bit. Loud noises like ambulances and firetrucks are also a pain if they happen to be right when baby is dozing off. Otherwise, this method seems to work. Our baby is well rested, and mom and dad have more time to manage the household.

We think Tristan may be going through another growth spurt. It’s been a while. One breakfast he had a whole bowl of oatmeal, some of our rice and longganisa, some fruit, and still wanted more oatmeal! Hmm. Takaw boy. Mana ka talaga samin. He loves chicken pot pie (“Pa pai”) and can feed himself from a bowl. He takes whole milk at the daycare but strangely, not at home. We discovered he will take milk if its strawberry-flavored but the organic brand we found is $1.40 a tetrapack. Hello?!! He also likes pakwan as you can see above. Mmmmm.

ibaby

Sleep Training
My suggestions if you will ever try to sleep train your little one:

1. Make sure hubby or wifie is completely on board with the training. The last thing you want is someone suggesting we move to the family bed when it’s 4 AM. The combination of guilt and sleep deprivation will break anyone’s resolve. Hubby or wifie must have also read or studied up on the method rather than relying on you as the resident expert (which is really not too smart seeing as you are both trying this out for the first time).
2. Mattresses on the floor are waaaaaay more comfortable than chairs as suggested in the book. Especially if you are trying to pretend to be sleeping. For an hour and a half.
3. Be as consistent as possible but do realize there will be slip-ups. If baby is crying for longer than usual and it is too early to be up and too early to make a ruckus, make an exception.
4. Keep a good log book. The way we worked it out was that for the first couple of nights, George would be in the other room with the video monitor so that he could take notes on the middle of the night wakenings while I was in Tristan’s room calming him and then pretending to be asleep. Hard to take notes when you’re eyes are closed.
5. As we have painfully found out, naps are very important
6. Try to tweak schedules for early wakers. We are still working on this one.
7. Persevere. It may not be perfect, but it will be better.

When Tristan was smaller, co-sleeping really worked well for our family. It was natural, there was bonding, everyone slept better. I didn’t think I needed to train Tristan to sleep on his own. But then I noticed he was needing me for every little wake-up and I was pretty much hostage from the time when I put the llittle guy down up till he woke up. And the bedtime ritual was driving me crazy. It took about one and a half hours for baby to go to sleep and this was already after bathtime and storytime. At this point (15-16 months), Tristan was taking whole milk although he was still breastfeeding at night. I knew he didn’t need to nurse to sleep but just wanted to. I must admit, it was also very appealing to think I could finally sleep on my back (instead of sideways with an octopus latched on to you). It also helped that I knew Tristan could understand us when we were explaining things to him. Ok, on to the actual training.

First of all, the first night/time will be terrible and it will make you doubt everything. But as with everything baby, he will slowly adjust to the new routine. This does not mean no crying, it means shorter crying and less wakings (maybe). We started out in chairs right in front of the crib, but like I said in #2, probably not the best thing. He cried a maximum of 40 minutes straight and then went down for a nap. For his first night sleep, this was a little worse. I think because since we were on the chairs, baby fell asleep sitting down and would wake up crying everytime his little chin hit his chest. The second day (on mattress) was much, much better. Fast forward to the 7th and 8th night, Tristan woke up once and cried a maximum of ten minutes. Regarding number 5 above, when he missed his afternoon nap, everything went downhill on the 9th night. But we hope to get back on track. I did notice he did learn to put himself back to bed much, much quicker and by himself. Sometimes, he would wake, cry out once or twice, then plop back down. So, do we buy into sleep training? At this age, at this point, yes we do. And I will hopefully not have to eat my words any time soon. But hey, if co-sleeping is working out for your family, by all means co-sleep and enjoy the little warm bundle beside you.

Airplanes

For some reason, planes have been flying overhead a little more than usual and like many loud noises, this catches Tristan’s attention. We’ve managed to see a couple of planes or helicopters zoom by. Now every time we go out, Tristan points to the sky in anticipation. He also learned the airplane sign after being taught once because he was so excited. He’s also been recently “talking” a bit more. I say “talking” because he makes sounds that approximate the word and we’re pretty sure he’s trying to say it. Stuff like “ga-aj” (garage) and “aa-aht” (arrowroot). Anyway, we now use the “Want to see an airplane? Let’s go out and maybe we can see one!” line to distract him or get him to want to go outside and walk around a bit. This brings us to girls.

Girls

George and I have noticed Tristan’s attention is not only drawn to other little kiddies biking or playing but more especially, he likes little girl kiddies, and sometimes older girls. Talaga naman ang anak ko. If he sees a girl, he makes a beeline straight for her and then, once there, becomes really, really shy (“mommy carry me” shy). One time he chased after a girl and stopped right in front of her. She went “aaaw, cute baby” and stroked his cheek. He promptly asked to be carried and hid in the crook of my neck as they went away. This is also a useful thing to use when trying to prevent a potential tantrum (daddy goes “let’s go look for little girls”). And it’s not just our imagination. When I mention the word “girls” to him, he breaks out in a large grin, which makes us equally amused.

Just last week I was talking to my mom on the phone, telling her that after Tristan’s initial bout of illnesses from home day care inoculation, he’s hardly ever sick now. Spoke too soon, I suppose, since he came down with a bad fever (104 F) this Friday through Saturday. Thankfully, he was better by Sunday and could go back and be with his baby buddies today. Not sure what brought the fever on. He was teething pretty badly but the association between teething and “teething fevers” still puzzles me a bit. I know I should know, being an immunologist and all that. I know it’s inflammation, but it doesn’t seem to be “systemic” enough in my mind to cause the fever. It probably didn’t help that I gave Tristan a cooler than usual bath since the heat was sweltering over here. But most probably he caught something from somewhere.

It could just be coincidence or a side effect of sickness that he was being unusually cranky this weekend. This was actually the one time we brought him out that people weren’t cooing at him and complimenting him. Instead, parents and non-parents alike were averting their gaze from the unfolding conniption. Hysterical screaming, arm flailing and back arching over the smallest things. Please, please, please, let this not be a taste of things to come.

This got George and I to talking about whether the tantrums stem from his inability to communicate more precisely, and that maybe we should teach him more signs to expand his “vocabulary”. Although he mimics what we say sometimes, his “words” sound very similar. “Ba” for ball, back, and bump. “Baba” for bubbles. “Ah” for on AND off, up AND down (just different intonation for down. I know, we don’t understand why he won’t say “Da” either since he says “Dada” a lot.). I also realized that there were a bunch of signs I left out from my last post such as “hot”, “frog”, “rain”, “cereal/cracker/puff”, “hear”, “bath”, “phone”, and maybe more that escape me. Upon reflection, this seems a pretty impressive roster and one we hope to continue to expand. Now if I could only think of some signs for strawberry, corn, later, now, full, want, go, please, …

I have a friend I made in the lactation room, Rinli, who now has resigned from her job to focus more on her son. She had told me (quite some time ago) that I should record every moment with Tristan because it all goes by so fast and is quickly forgotten. I had previously made a picture book which lasted until 10 months but then I stopped. Being the slacker that I am, I am resuming it only now.

Tristan is 15 and a half months now. He can walk pretty well, and occasionally will mimic some of the simpler words we say. He is a very gentle baby with others and when he does get rough with us we always stress that he should be gentle and shouldn’t hurt. He loves, loves, loves anything techy we are fooling around with: our cellphones, laptops, desktops, and remote controls. He pretty much ignores his stuffed animals. His current fascination is the DVD player which kind of spooks him when he manages to eject out the DVD. He is afraid of loud noises and anything vacuum-y or blender-y sounding, which I would like to use as my excuse for our apartment being so dirty. Despite this, he has a curious fascination with said device producing loud noise. For example, if the Roomba is running, he gives his baby sign that he is scared but then he motions that he wants to see it. He also loves smashing the keyboard (we are currently using a babysmash program) and interfering with daddy’s surfing. He loves bubbles and says “baba” in anticipation of seeing some. He loves to eat corn, spaghetti, bananas, and strawberries. He is so cute, it’s really hard to get mad at him, even if you’ve just spent an hour and a half trying to get him to sleep. In my defense, I don’t think I am exaggerating his cuteness since he always has a fan at church, at the grocery store, at the restaurant, pretty much wherever. He loves chasing after the older kids, even if they are gone by the time he gets to where they were. He likes daddy’s massages and mommy’s kisses. I mentioned that we taught him some baby signs. He knows “more”, “eat/drink”, “a/sleep”, “milk”, “car”, “flower”, “dog”, “book”, “banana”, “hurt”, “gentle”, “elephant” (sometimes), “cat” (sometimes), and then he taught himself “scared” and ‘happy”. He is most vocal right before bed when he blabbers to himself and I sometimes catch him practicing his signs. If you bring attention to him when he happens to repeat a word you say, he will quickly stop repeating it (He’s the same way with food so sometimes the best strategy is to place some food on his tray and pretend to ignore him instead of forcing him to try it.). Even though he manages to make me scream at him at times, I have found this is not only a mommy-guilt inducing action but also a very ineffective one because he works better with being gentle and redirection. If daddy scolds him, he cries and the desired effect of stopping is achieved, whereas a mommy scolding is, for some reason, funny.

Today’s Magical Tristan Moment 07/15/08
Tristan has some sort of ritual before finally nodding off. After a bedtime story, he nurses on and off and then stands up and sits down repeatedly. He will try to get anyone to play with him so both George and pretend we are asleep but sometimes he will poke like, directly in my eye to get me to name parts of the face. Tonight, he actually repeated eyes which sounded like “as”, and mouth “ma” when he pointed to the parts of my face and I named them for him. Aha! No early intervention required! Though I doubt he will repeat it for us if he isn’t in the mood. Bedtime seems to be talkative and playful time for him. Seems like he is teething again. He’s been biting both my fingers and his own. It’s a shame because we were planning to start sleep “training” soon. Don’t worry, the Sleep Lady Shuffle, not the Ferber kind of sleep “training” (we couldn’t take the latter). Yeah. Whoopee! We’ll let you know how it goes.

I was talking with Justine last night about Tristan’s new photos and I just realized that I really didn’t explicitly tell where the link is to the photos . Dumb, dumb, dumb.

The small thumbnail pic in the last post is actually clickable and that will take you to the photo gallery but, of course, I failed to mention that.

So here it is.

Enjoy!