For the Grandparents

Just catching up on some pictures and showing family how fast these kids are growing.  Tristan will be turning 3 next weekend, and Betsy girl will be 10 months old in a week!  It's nuts how fast they are growing.  T man's vocabulary has multiplied times 20!  We have full conversations with him and he talks very clear.  He surprises us daily with new words and we are confused by how he knows these words.  Betsy's personality is coming out more and more.  She rocks out to music, cracks up at her brother, and has learned silly facial expressions. 

Lately, we've just been busy with life.  Nothing really new.  We actually haven't even been to the beach in a month or so.  Between Tristan's weekly activities; swim class, Wee Play and Learn class, etc...,  Betsy's neediness and wanting to be held every second, my church calling and sewing for Arkotec, cooking 3 different types of meals 3 times a day for the fam (infant/toddler/adult), cleaning up after two messy kids, Christian working full time AND running a small business, we manage to stay pretty busy.  I love my little family and enjoy being with them and taking care of them.  It's a lot of hard work, but it's so worth it.  

Pictures with our favorite little girl:     

More dress up time! Spiderman (again) saving the princess:

"Look mom, I saved the princess!"

Ava's ice cream party at the park:

Oh!  And I guess I should mention that Tristan is 100% potty trained!  He's been off the diaper for a month now.  He's only had 2 accidents at night and only one poop accident total!  I don't even put a towel down for him at night anymore.  He's pretty awesome.  Poo poo time on the toilet is his all time favorite thing to do.  "Mom, can you please get me my magazine and leave?".  

Our roly poly.  She loves rolling around:

The new face!:

We have a huge HUGE supply of video footage of these kids that we need to upload to the blog.  We have so much footage, I'm worried we might crash our computer.  Get excited! :)

Tristan's stories

A few months ago I found these baby memorabilia books/boxes for the kids.  I'm able to journal baby progress and stories in their books, as well as collect little things for their boxes.  (book fits inside of box, love it).  Anyways, one thing that Christian started up with T-man was his own story book on a tiny memo pad.  Tristan tells the story and dad writes it down for him.  I thought that this would be so perfect to put in his baby box and fun for him to read later on.  He's at a really fun age right now with so much to say.  He usually chooses the topic and it's written exactly as it comes out.  So...without further ado, here is a sneak peak at some of Tristan's stories:

Letter to Santa 

12/21/2011

Dear Santa,

This Christmas what I really want are toys.  I like trucks.  I like toys.  Like cars, trucks.  I like Toy Story 3.  I want bikes.  I am excited for you to come.  What cookies do you like?

Love,

Tristan

(Quick background on this next story - A bird was hit by a car and smashed in front of our house.  So every time we walked by, we had to talk about how sad it was for the bird.  We kind of took advantage of the opportunity to teach him about looking both ways before crossing the road.  I think it worked).

The Bird on the Street

1/1/2012

Bird not wants to go on the street.  And the street yeah.  The bird not wants to hit a car.  The car came and hit the bird.  The bird got smashed.  He wants his mommy.  The bird saying, "stop car!", "stop dad!".  The End.

Tristan's Swim Class

1/13/2012

I do in my swim class today.  I want to do the treasure!  Not want to do the treasure.  When I'm at home, mom, you be in swim class.  Teacher was good.  Betsy not want to go to swimming pool?  Mom, look at that, Betsy has a big tushie.  Betsy make bubbles.  The End.

Tristan goes to the Library

1/20/2012

I go to library.  I pick out books.  One book.  There's one, and two and three!  And I get one book.  I pick five. Only one book, and two.  We read quietly.  We get three and four and five and six.  I like two and three.  Only one and two and three.  I picked one book.  That's the end of the story.  We got two and three and four and five.

Bronson's Birthday

1/31/2012

Bronson doesn't like his birthday.  He don't likes it.  Because he don't likes it.  Because he's mad at his birthday.  His birthday's gonna be gone.  He wants a green birthday.  He likes a red birthday.  He likes a blue birthday.  He likes a yellow birthday.  He likes a purple one.  He likes purple.  He likes birthday presents, a green present.  He likes a blue one.  The End.

9 months old

Betsy girl is 9 months old today!  She is growing up so fast, it's unbelievable, and sad for me.  But it's a lot of fun watching her personality develop.  She is such a sweet little girl, and she's also really silly.  I can already tell that she's going to be really funny.  She laughs and smiles all the time.  We have also learned that she is a momma's girl for sure.  She is at that stage where she will only go to me for comfort, which I love and also hate because I need a break once in awhile but that's never an option.  But when she's really tired and we are both ready to snuggle, she just puts her thumb in her mouth and lays her head on my chest for a good 5-10 minutes or so, without moving!  I don't remember having that snuggle time with Tristan, for that long anyways.  I will always cherish the cuddle time I have with my Bessie Boo.  

There is also so much of her to love!  If you haven't noticed, she is our very round baby.  Catching up quickly to Tristan's stats.  At her 8 month appointment, she weighed 22 lbs.  Tristan weighed 25 lbs.  Putting her at "plus 95%".  And she's really tall too!  28 inches, putting her at 85%.  We are so proud of your rapidly growing body little Betsy!

She's waving now.

Learning how to eat her solids (finally!).

Goes down nicely for her 2 naps in the day.

Wakes up about 3-5 times every night, just wanting to cuddle. (killing me!)

 Her once blue eyes are now a hazel color like her dad.  Brown/green.

Her hair has a red tint in certain lighting.  Otherwise, it's sandy blonde I think.

Curls, curls, and curls!

Her two bottom teeth are making their way in nicely.

Her favorite jibber word, "baa baa baa".

When she gets really excited, she squeals in a high pitch.

Not mobile yet!  She sits on her tush or can roll around some.

Showing off those round curves.

 

We all survived brother's "potty training week"!  Betsy was such a good sport and gave her brother so much support.  Potty training was a success!  We are all glad this week is over.

Happy 9 months Betsy love!

We're back!

The kids can FINALLY breath out of their noses and I no longer need to pack a wad of tissue every time we leave the house!  I think we were going on 5 or 6 weeks of stuffy noses, fevers, ear infections, nasty coughs, and throwing up.  In and out of the doctors we went.  I was getting about 2 hours of sleep every night, trying to tend to the kids not being able to breath or when they spiked fevers.  Christian struggled to survive at work on little sleep.  The sad thing is, their sicknesses lasted so long, it almost seemed like our new way of life.  It began to feel like we would never sleep again.  The kids would rotate waking up every 30 minutes, it was killing us! (me)  We were kind of sinking into a hole, we even called in a super nanny to evaluate our situation because we knew that this couldn't be normal.  I understand that this could happen a few nights, or even a week, but almost 2 months?  Anyways, my point is, we clawed our way out of that hole and our family is up and running again.  I just hope that we don't catch that nasty stomach flu that is going around right now!  

To celebrate our wellness, we headed out to the beach of course and enjoyed some vitamin D.    

Someone can't keep his eyes off the surf.

 Notice the leg crossing.  It's her new thing and it's so cute.

So squishy.

 Tristan went ahead and put the leash on by himself and pretended to surf on Dad's board.  Then he would jump off the board and yell, "wipe out!".  

I hope I don't sound like a whiner!  I know that a lot of families go thru this, I'm just learning how to deal with 2 kids now.  It's not easy!  It just feels so good to be back though.  

Mele Kalikimaka

This was our first year spending Christmas with just our little family.  We missed everyone terribly but I was looking forward to a quiet, travel-free, relaxing Christmas together.  Unfortunately, the two little munchkins got sick a few days before Christmas.  Tristan had an ear infection and they both were snotty and coughy.  Some throwing up.  Some really high fevers.  So, not everything went as planned but we still got to squeeze in some fun stuff.  On Christmas Eve, we headed out to the North Shore to play on the beach while Dad surfed for a bit.        

 We pretty much had the beach to ourselves.  It was a beautiful day.

 I'm so proud that Betsy is not a sand-eater either.  She just likes feeling it between her little chubby fingers.    

 

Betsy visiting with Dad after his surf sesh.  

Christmas morning was so nice and relaxing.  I remember hearing Tristan get up around 6:30 or 7:00 am and stumble out into the living room.  He whispered, "a bike!".  And yelled, "MOM!  A BIKE!"  He was SO excited that Santa brought him his bike.  

I'm not surprised that this boy caught on how to ride the bike really fast.  It's awesome.  He loves going down ramps as fast as he can.  He puts his feet up on the handle bars and cruises.  Very coordinated.

Miss Betsy (without her Christmas pjs on.  Love the baby blow outs!) takes the time to meet her new Hello Kitty doll.  She loves her!  Christian said that she had the biggest smile on her face when she pulled her out of the stocking.  It's her new best friend. 

 

 

Later that afternoon, Tristan's fever spiked to104 degrees.  It was pretty sad.  We all tried to get in some rest and then we BBQ'd some yummy steaks with the Thomson family that evening.  Aside from the sick kids, and being away from our families, Christmas was wonderful.  

December so far...

It has been raining a lot the past couple of weeks, which means the kids get stuck going on errands with mom, or they need to get creative with their time at home.  It's been sweater weather which I love!  Low 70's, high 60's.  It feels like Christmas here.  

The kids enjoy wrestling together.  Betsy is finally holding her own!  Enough getting picked on.  (and yes, they are pretty much the same size now.):  

About every other day, Tristan gets into the costume drawer and dresses up.  He's pretty much the same thing every time; Spider/Super Man.  He tries to get Betsy involved and dress her up too.  This is what I've walked out to a couple of times:

We got our tree earlier in the month.  We kind of thought we were going to get a little one this year, and we came home with this beast.  Naturally, we had a little buyers remorse, but got over that fast and fell in love with our perfect tree.  I love decorating the tree.  This is our very first year using colored lights.  Mama likes.    

 So does Tristan.  He chose one little corner of the tree and hung everything there.  So helpful.  

My two boys posing by our tree:

Betsy girl is getting little curls over her ears.  I love it!  I hope they are here to stay!

Meet Fred.  He is our elf on the shelf and has been in our home since the first week of December.  He is keeping a good eye on our little ones and making sure they are being good this year.  Each night he flies back to Santa and gives him a full report.  Then he comes back to our home and finds a new place to camp out for the day, just to watch.  Tristan LOVES finding his new spot in the house each morning.  And he knows exactly why he is here.  One day when Tristan was being naughty and was crying really hard because he was getting into trouble, he ran over to Fred and cried, "Please!...don't go back and tell Santa!".  He was hysterical.  It was the saddest thing ever.  But hey, that's what Fred is here for,  to keep these kids in line. :)

 

All clean from a bath, and just cute.  Still, the happiest baby I've ever seen:

We did attend the Pipe Masters this year.  Was so much fun.  This actually deserves a post of it's own, so I'll post more pictures from this special day later.  

This was the worst Santa I have ever seen!  We were at a different mall from our own, and decided to just visit Santa while we were here and get it over with so we didn't have to fight the crowds at Ala Moana.  No one was in line, we walked right up.  Santa was kicking back with the elf photographers and a Mountain Dew.  They finally saw that we were waiting and took their positions, but no one cared to greet me or tell me what to do.  They didn't even look at me.  So I just slowly walked up with the kids, and told the photographers that we were taking our own photos.  They were fine with that, as long as we were behind the white fence.  Whatever.  That's fine.  I repeated it to Santa, just to fill him in, and he says, "Don't tell me, I'm just the mannequin".  Ok.  So I'm forcing the kids on his lap and waiting for Santa to get into character but he never did.  Didn't even care to talk to Tristan.  So I had to step in and say, "Tristan, don't you want to tell Santa what you want for Christmas??"  And Santa says really short, "What do you want?"  Tristan was not that impressed but Betsy got a kick out of the whole experience.  It was all pretty funny.  But I think we will try and take them to Ala Moana to make it up to Tristan.  It wasn't as magical as he expected.