Tristan turns 3!

We celebrated Tristan's 3rd birthday last weekend and it was a ton of fun.  His birthday fell on a Sunday this year, so we decided to do a beach day on Saturday out on the north shore, and then do dinner and cake with some friends on Sunday.  It's great because he's at that age where he understands exactly what is going on.  He knew that it was his special day.  Sunday morning Tristan woke up to a house full of balloons (blown up by mom and dad the night before), and presents.  We immediately turn on "Happy Birthday" by the Ting Tings on the ipod so he can dance it up a little and kick his balloons around.  (This is before 7 am but you have to start the day off right!)  And of course he wanted to dive right into opening his presents as soon as the dance session was over.  

(Forgive the grainy photos)  

 Post dance party, pre present opening.  He's so stoked about his big day.

 Betsy's first interaction with balloons.

Betsy could care less about the presents.

 A new drill!  He loves helping dad fix things around the house.  He insists on being called Bob the Builder while he's working.

 A new train set.  He was so excited about this. And this is what we get when we tell him to smile for the camera.

Later that afternoon, after church and naps, we headed up to St. Louis Heights recreational park and had dinner and cake with some friends.  It was rainy and cold which was a lot of fun for the forrest-y atmosphere and roasting smores in the fire pit.  It's nice to be able to bundle up once in awhile.  

In between showers we would head over to this lookout above Manoa valley. We could see our house way down below and the city in the other direction.

The lego cake.  Cake decor is not my specialty so don't look too close!  Tristan picked the lego man and put him on top.

 

These kids take cake eating very seriously.  They are very focused.    

 

The pinata.  Late on Saturday night, we decided to try and make a pinata.  I wanted to try and make some lego head or a lego, but we didn't really have the energy or time to get creative.  We just blew up one of T's really big balloons and paper mache'd it with newspaper.  It was a mistake to start it at 10 at night because we failed to remember that there were many stages of layering and drying.  2:30 in the morning, and 2 or 3 layers later, we decided to call it a night.  The next day, we popped the balloon before it was completely dry, and it sunk in a little bit.  About 10 minutes before walking out the door for the party, we thought it would be nice to put a face on it.  Christian decided to use black spray paint, and chose to put the eye in one of the sunken areas, making the pinata look super creepy.  This made Christian very happy!  He loves all things creepy. Hopefully it didn't scare the kids too much.

Smores!

 

 Betsy girl hanging out with Uncle Hanale.

Tristan, the ladies man!  No one posed him for this picture, it was 100% natural.  That's just how cool this kid is.  We love you T man!  Happy Birthday!

Some of Tristan's faves at 3 years old

Movies:

Cars

The Lion King 

TV Shows:

Dinosaur Train

Bob the Builder

Fireman Sam

Richard Scarry's Busy Town

Sayings: 

"I know, Betsy Bear" (trying to comfort her when she's sad) 

"We're best friends mom/dad, right?"  

"Nope" (his new favorite word and answer to everything.  I cringe when I hear it)  

"Mom, you're so big!" me: "big like tall or big like fat" Tristan: "big like fat".  Thanks Tristan.

"Dad, are we boys?" 

"I want to go shopping!" (like father, like son)

"I want chocolate, I need chocolate!" (whiny voice, his wants turn quickly into needs)

"I want to make you happy... you give me chocolate?" (trying to butter me up before he asks for something he knows he can't have)

Food:

spaghetti

mac and cheese

peanut butter and honey sandwiches

anything with chocolate

grapes, apples, oranges and strawberries

pancakes

pizza

chicken nuggets  

Places: 

Lego store

toy stores

book stores/ library

zoo

beach

pool

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.