Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Tristans 1st Birthday

My baby is 1 year old! Can you believe it! On his actual birthday (Saturday) We went to TGI Fridays to celebrate and he had a good time. He was people watching like crazy since there was a lot going on. The wait staff came around and sang Happy Birthday and he drank his water from the sippy cup the whole time watching them. Then they brought him Vanilla Bean Ice Cream that was oh so good. His first time having ice cream and he couldn't get enough.

I forgot to say that he took his first steps on his own the day before his birthday. We gave him him his new rocking chair and sat him in it and he decided that he was going to stand up. Ken was in the middle of saying "Look, he stood up all by himself" when he took 4-5 steps to me. It was the coolest thing that he did it with no help from us. He has done it a couple of times since then but doesn't really want our help so I am just letting him go at his own pace. I think he will be running around any day now.

His birthday party went really great. As soon as we brought the cake out he was really happy. He sucked on the cake more than anything but had a blast playing in it. He got a lot of really nice stuff and had so much fun playing with everything as soon as we got home. We have a ridiculous amount of toys in our very small living room right now so I put some of his new toys up and will rotate them out. Our living room literally looks like a play room but it works because that's the only place he can really play for now. It amazes me how much our house has changed in a year. We went from only having neutral colors through out to having bright colors everywhere. I like it though.

I finally put some misc pictures up and ones of his birthday. You will see that he really loved his duck cake! I'm sure I will have lots of new pictures soon since his cousin Brianna is coming up from Florida this Friday for 10 days with her sister and Her mom Crystal who is a good friend of mine. It will be nice that he will have kids to play with. He loves kids but has never really played with any and last time Brianna was here 6 months ago he was a little to young to play. But now he is very active and a rough houser so it should be a lot of fun. Until next time, I hope everyone has a good week.

PS. I have one request. If you could take a quick second of your day to say a prayer for some people who are going through rough times right now. I know a couple of families personally who have lost there jobs and run out of unemployment and are in jeopardy of losing everything they have. It has been near impossible for these families to find jobs with the way our economy is right now and are barely surviving. This is the case across the country. I have told them that I would pray for them but I am asking that you pray for them too. It breaks my heart that families have worked so hard for everything they have and can lose it all so quick. I am truly lucky to not be in the situation but my heart still breaks for them.

Finally some pictures

Thursday, March 19, 2009

"A Reflection of my Blessings"

Well, once again it has been a while since my last post. I was doing so good at this until Tristan began to be the "on the go" baby. It's a job keeping up with him and I don't find a lot of time to get on the computer on the weekends when I'm home.

So I will start of by saying that one of the biggest things I have learned lately is how fast a year can go by. In 2 days my not so little baby is going to be 1. I can't believe it. I don't see how it's possible. We have managed to survive colic and breastfeeding and that is a true blessing. I remember in the beginning I felt like the colic would never go away and he would just cry all day for the rest of his life. That's what it feels like when you are sleep deprived anyway. It also seems like just yesterday that I was having my first and only pregnancy break down a few weeks before delivery. I was watching "SCOTT BAIO IS 46...AND PREGNANT" (I know, of all things I could watch, this is what I was watching!). I loved this show for some reason and when his girlfriend was in labor I had to walk to the kitchen to have a meltdown. Ken came out and checked on me and asked what was wrong and I told him that all of the sudden I was scared. I was terrified of labor, scared to bring a baby into this world and be completely responsible for molding him into a good person and teaching him life's lessons, and so emotional at how drastic my life was going to change. I wanted a baby so bad and was deemed infertile so I had to work a lot harder at getting pregnant but I was still scared at the changes ahead. I was going to be taking care of this helpless baby and devote my body to breastfeeding him to give him everything he deserved and this scared me. I was so afraid that I didn't have it in me and that I would fail. But here I am a year later wondering where the time went. I made it through the 1st year and it was amazing. Colic wasn't fun but we survived. Breastfeeding turned out to be the best and most rewarding thing that I have done for Tristan so far and I will be sad when the day comes when I wean him. Tristan has never had any formula or jarred baby food (since I made all his baby food), he has hit all his developmental milestones, and managed to develop quite a personality. All things a year ago that seemed so hard and challenging but I found the strength as all moms do. I have realized that I am a much stronger person than I ever though since becoming a mom. I learned how much love I have to give and that there is NOTHING that I won't do for my son and my family. I also never knew how much I could love Ken before Tristan came along. I have always loved him beyond the earth and sea but I never knew I could love him beyond that. Not only has he been such an amazing father taking care of Tristan and me and the house but he has been an amazing rock and support for me. He does so much for me and been there all the way to say "you can do it" and the love he has for Tristan just melts my heart. When I told him I wanted to breastfeed he supported me. When I told him I wanted to make all of Tristan's baby food he kind of looked at me like " are you really going to do that or say your going to do that", but he supported me and actually helps me make it. When I told him I wasn't ready to wean Tristan at a year he supported me and said that whenever I decide is fine and he will be there as support if I become sad from the transition. I guess my point is, he has SHOWN me how much he loves me. I couldn't be more blessed at what life has given me.

This post was more of a "Reflection of my Blessings" in the past year. I needed to reflect since my life has changed so much this past year. But now I will give you a couple of updates on my little birthday boy if you have made it this far. Lets see, he got his first haircut last week and did pretty good. A couple of sporadic fake tears but otherwise good. His hair was getting quite unruly kinking up every time he took a nap. It turned out really good and the lady puts some gel in it and spiked it afterwards. We called in the "Baby Hawk". So cute! I will have pictures soon. He hasn't been as good of an eater as he used to be. He used to eat anything and now one day he loves something and the next day he hates it. My favorite is when he is eating something and then after a handful of bites he decides he doesn't like it anymore and spits it out. Ahhh, toddler years here we come! He's not walking yet but any day now. He can stand for several seconds but when he realizes he's doing it he sits right down. He has taken a couple of falling steps from the gate to the couch but we don't count those. I know he can do it, he just doesn't want to right now. So we don't force him. We work on it for a short bit until his legs start flailing about. Lets see, what else??? Oh yea, my favorite one!....HE IS FINALLY SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT!!! (I am knocking on wood right now by the way!) It only took a year! I got so used to being up a few times a night that it's really bizarre to get to stay in my bed all night. He has been quite the little ham these days and become a dare devil. He climbs everything and loves to be hung upside down. I am definitely going to have my hands full! I think that is about it for now. I will update with some pictures today or tomorrow and then I will update with how his birthday went with pictures after Sunday. I'm sure there will be tons of pictures! I will try to get the ones we have now up tonight.