A walk across campus

Today we went on an extensive adventure.  It started in the gradlot and then ended way way way across campus at the conference building.  Good thing I wore my high heeled sandals, or I would have been in trouble!!!  :/

My niece and nephew were featured in the statewide science fair that was held at BYU, so we decided to go and take a look.  My sister Faith texted me in the morning to see if we wanted to have lunch with her, but when I tried to get ahold of her, she didn't answer her phone.  We figured they were busy and that the fair would probably be in the student center.  It was a hike just to get there from where we had to park!  But there we no science fairs to be found.  Our next thought was the Marriot Center….so we hiked over there, and of course, it was empty.   Then Faith called to let us know they were in the conference building, and so we took another 10 minutes to get up there.  Man!  I sure got my exercise in for the week after that trip!  It was neat though, we got to see all the projects and a lot of them were actually very interesting.  Nick struck up a conversation with a couple kids who did a fish project.

Then afterwards, we all walked back to the student center to get lunch.  I ended up waiting in line at the Jamba Juice for like 20 minutes, but Auntie Faith watched Tristan and fed him sweet potatoes and ice cream.  Apparently he loved it because when I got back it was all over his shirt, haha.  Silly kid.  Nick had class at 2, so when Faith and the kids went back to finish up the judging and what not, Tristan and I went to JoAnns to look at fabric.  I've been wanting to make a valence for the living room window, something to make it look springy.  I went to Walmart yesterday after Tristan's physical therapy and got a new table cloth and runner for the coffee table, as well as a little vase and some yellow flowers.  Sadly, nothing really grabbed me enough to get, so I'll wait on that.  Maybe try some other fabric stores around.

We went back to BYU to wait for Nick after his class, and Tristan ended up in the front seat with me pushing buttons.  He turned on the lights and windshield wipers, rolled down all the windows, and then smashed his pinky in the visor.  Haha, I couldn't figure out what he was screaming about at first, then I felt really bad.  I was trying to  take a cute picture of us together, but it ended up just a picture of him screaming.  He's ok though, I saved his pinky in time!  Then we just enjoyed a nice relaxing rest of the day, minus Tristan not wanting to eat anything i made for him.  I finally relented and peeled, cubed, boiled and mashed potatoes.  He ate two bowls of those….go figure.

A note about physical therapy?  Tristan's new therapist seems to have a brain.  You know that TOT collar we tied awhile back?  Turns out the reason it didn't work is because it wasn't fitted properly.  It was made way too large.  She ended up adjusting it, and we went put it on him, he didn't mind it as much and even held his head up straight!  Wow, the difference a competent doctor can make, right?  He's also doing better in other things; he's pulling himself up onto everything he can reach, the coffee table, the bed frame, his crib, the couch.  He walks holding our hands almost perfectly.  The crawling is still a pain, he can't hold his head up and support his arms.  We are working on through, one day maybe.  Hopefully the collar will help with that as well, keep him from hanging his chin on his chest all the time.

Oh!  And to commemorate end of breastfeeding, Nick got me two new dresses.  The non stretchy, zip up in the back, one piece cute kind.  And I love them!  And Nick says I look fabulous in them, so that makes me happy as well.  I was always afraid of what I would look like after I had a baby.  Yeah, that's the vain side of me.  But I'm happy to say, I look almost exactly the same, just maybe a little more womanly, which is a plus.  I'm just glad I didn't gain a million pounds and keep it.  Nope, all my baby weight was gone in a few weeks, thanks to my little piggy baby who pretty much sucked me dry.

Hopefully tomorrow is another beautiful day, I feel like taking pictures!

Walking along our bed frame

Beautiful morning

Walking around campus

Smashing of the pinky!

Stuck under a drawer

Walking with daddy

Waiting for daddy at the mall

Dumping out toys

Standing up with the crib

Hi mommy!

Watching hulu

Ooh, a Suki Kitty

I think I'll yank her belly fur!

(good thing Suki is so sweet with him!

I have to save her all the time though)

Bananas

It's awesome that Tristan likes big people food.  Means we don't have to spend as much on dinky Gerber food cups.  Which he still loves, so we save them for car trips and Sundays because of how easy they are. But he's started eating mac'n'cheese, fruit yogurt, cereal and oatmeal, mashed potatoes and chicken.  It's great, because we can just sort of mash things up that we are having and feed them to him.  My  blender  has come in quite handy.  We only mash it a little, because we are trying to get him used to textures and chewing.  We never got to do more than fruits and veggies because of his rice sensitivity, so he was a little slow getting to solid foods.  Poor kid, he seems to be behind the 8 ball in everything.

The other day I made a loaf of banana bread and let him try some.  His favorite was the buttery crust, every time he put a piece in his mouth he would shriek with delight, and it was very cute to watch.  We also got some life cereal and microwaved it with milk to turn it into oatmeal, which he loved as well.  It's a lot of fun being able to try all sorts of new things with him.  He's not very picky.

Except for today, I'm pretty sure he is teething again.  He didn't want to drink out of his sippy cup or his bottle, and would fuss every time I tried putting food in his mouth.  He ended up taking 3 super long naps.  Poor kid, he got like this the last time he was teething.  At least he still loves munching on his crackers.

Physical therapy went very well.  It's hard trying to figure out what to do to get him to respond to active exercises and passive stretches.  He's just such a stubborn little guy.  It is also very hard for him, just because of how weak the left side of his neck and back are from being so tight on the right for so long.  It's like he's having to relearn a lot of things.  Both the therapist and me were torturing him for the entire hour.  He does very well up until the last 15 or so minutes, and then he has a melt down and  only wants to grab me around the neck and scream.  I feel bad, but it has to be done.  He might end up in therapy for awhile because he never really learned to pick himself up to crawl, so that makes it hard for him to build up strength in his arms.  I know it doesn't sound like much, but for later on, it makes things like pulling up and eventually writing difficult.  It's good motivation for me, but we can only do so much.  He refuses most things, like when we try to get him on his knees to support himself with his arms.  Or when we try to get him to lift his head when we lean him to the side.  Like I said though, his therapist has lots of good ideas, so hopefully we'll be able to make some progress.

Until then, he's great at walking, and loves for us to hold his hands and let him cruise all over the house.

happy chunky monkey

So proper, eating the banana bread

Faces

Its interesting how you can see family resemblance in your children.  And what's crazy is being able to see both sides of the family in one child.  In every baby picture, I see someone from my family and someone from Nick's family in Tristan.  One picture he looks like my brother Josh, another he looks like Nick's mom, another he looks like my dad, another he looks like one of his Davis cousins.  It's just crazy how families look alike, and how families meld in children.  And what's even crazier, is Tristan is a product of my genetics!  He is a little boy version of me, at least that's what Nick likes to say.  He says Tristan looks more like me than him, but I think that mostly has to do with his chubby baby cheeks.  He looks a lot like I did as a baby.  And his eyes are probably turning brown.  It's a little sad, I wanted them to stay blue like Nick's but that's okay.  He's perfect just the way he is.

He's been such a happy boy, he likes to hang out in his door bouncer, thinking he can just walk away in it.  Maybe we should think about getting him a walker since he's probably never going to crawl.  Might as well play to his strengths, right?

Playing at church

Singing with daddy

playing with Nana Cox's puppy

See how many family faces you can see???

What's up with us lately

I've been a little behind on Tristan updates, so I apologize.

It's been a fairly uneventful week, Nick goes to class and work while tristan and I stay home bored off our butts.  We find things to do to pass the time, like clean up his toys, make block towers, stare out the windows at people walking down the street, and watch lots and lots of Hulu.  We've also been working on his new physical therapy, and things like trying to teach him to crawl, sit up on his own, cruise on furniture, things like that.  It's just been very hard for him because of his neck being so floppy after the botox.  He falls over so easily.  He's starting to get better.....a few bumps and bruises later.

And while he can't crawl, he can walk.  He loves to walk holding our hands, and it just makes him so excited!  He also has started giving hugs and saying nonsense words.  It's dang cute to hear him first thing in the morning babbling into his baby monitor.  What else has he been doing?  Oh, he discovered how to open and close drawers (and smashes his fingers at least once a day), and he likes to pull things out of the kitchen cupboards.  He still torments the heck out of poor Suki, but she asks for it by laying down right in front of him.  Over all, he has been a very happy little guy.

Funny story?  A couple days ago, I put Tristan down for a nap.  We were hanging out playing a video game and he was being fussy, which usually mean "Mommy I'm tired, leave me alone."  But about half an hour later, I noticed he was still babbling away.  He must not have been very tired after all.  So I went to get  him.  Usually, he'll have pooped himself (no idea why, naps always bring it out).  It didn't feel like he had a full diaper when I picked him up, so I just took him out to the living room.  I was about to put him down when I noticed my arm and hand were soaked.   "Ah, are you all peed up?" I said.  Nick looked over at us from his game and started laughing.  "No, Sara, that's poop!"  Bah!  Tristan had diarrheaed all out his diaper, and up his back and out his legs.......YUCKIE!  I ran back to the bedroom, and Nick came to help.  He laid down a sheet on the floor so we didn't get poo everywhere, and man oh man, this was the diaper to rule all diapers.  It was DISGUSTING!  I asked Nick to go run a bath for Tristan and he did.  No amount of wipies was going to get rid of this smell.  Yeah, that was the worst diaper I have ever had to change.

Haha, and me?  Well, like I said, my life is a little boring right now.  End of the semester is usually pretty busy for Nick, so I hardly get to see him.  I find things to do to pass the time like bake, read, write, play with Tristan, and take naps.  I just read Hunger Games again the other day, which was fun.  I'm determined to see it opening day if not opening night.  And I have been working on my book again.  Now that Tristan takes pretty descent naps I have time to.  And I have also been playing around with film again.  After church last Sunday, we went to a park and took some pretty outdoorsy pictures.  My dad sent me a book on how to use a SLR camera in nature shots, so I wanted to practice.  Most of them actually turned out quite nicely.  I'm excited to try some more when it  gets to be spring and there is actual vegetation to photograph.

Anyhoo, that's all for now.  I'll be sure to let you know how Tristan's next physical  therapy appointment goes!

One of the new stretches, works very well

Tristan got stuck, silly baby

Practicing standing up

Getting into the ziplocks

His new favorite, kicking the door

Blended mac'n'cheese for baby!

Apparently he loved it,

it was  the first time a weird texture

didn't make him gag

Some sort of plant.....

Sunshine through the seeds

Provo River (Nick's shot)

Last years leaves

Nick and Tristan 

Pretty rock formation

I'm so funny

One of my favorite shows is The Biggest Loser.  Nick and I watch it faithfully.  No idea why we are so hooked.  It's not exactly something you should want to aspire to be a part of!  But it's a ton of fun to see the change in people as they work to lose weight.  This past week when I was watching and they went to singles and started ganging up on one another, it made me think of something.  Maybe it's because I've seen too many commercials for the new Hunger Games movie, but this is what I thought of.

This is probably one of my finest creations, haha.  It's not greatly done, but the concept is dang funny.  I could just see the contestants scrambling over each other like in The Hunger Games series.  I mean, there's only one winner in both contests, right?  Bahahaha I love photophop

A stroll in the park

Day light savings time.....who thought of that one?

Well, even though we knew about it and supposedly set an alarm, we still woke up late.  It was stake conference for the singles, but because we woke up when it was starting, we decided to just go to our homeward at 1 PM.  We ended up being a little late for that as well, but got to sit in the foyer with other parents and their babies.  Tristan even made a couple of friends!  He was getting very frustrated though seeing them crawl.  We put him on the ground in the hopes that he would try  mimicking what he saw, but the poor kid could hardly keep his head up.  He's got a lovely bruise on his forehead from a different attempt the other day.

But we discovered he loves babies.  He was giggling like crazy every time he saw one, and I had the thought that maybe I should join a mommy play group so he has more baby interaction.  It was darling though, there was a little girl who was quite a bit smaller than him, but he was flirting with her like no one's business.l  My goodness but we have an adorable son!

Afterwards, we walked over to the park across the street to let him swing and slide down the slides.  Tristan loves being outdoors, he was so happy swinging with daddy and sliding down the slides.  We saw a couple in the field flying a kite and Nick started singing the song from Mary Poppins to him.  We've decided that we need to get outdoors more, especially since it is starting to warm up quite a bit.  It was sooo nice outside today!  We didn't even need jackets.  I wish it would stay like this all year round, this type of weather is just perfect.

Sundays are so lovely and quiet.

A treatment that actually worked!

This is absolutely amazing!  I really do wish we had gotten it done sooner, but I'm glad we were able to do it now.

Yesterday, Nick and I noticed Tristan was being slightly more tipsy than usual.  He had floppy newborn head.  Haha, okay, maybe not quite as bad, but his coordination in turning was terrible.  And when I looked closely, his neck looked different to me.  It looked.....smooth.  Hmm, I felt it.  It was soft.

I took him to Nick and told him to feel.  He looked at me with the same surprised face.  The tumor felt completely gone.  There was no tight ball of muscle in his neck.  Everything had evened out.

Wow.  It felt sooo weird, and yet it was super exciting!  Finally, the tension is his neck had been relieved, he can move his neck around freely.  It is amazing!  He was actually leaning his head to the left today, and I've never seen him do that.  Oh, I am so glad we pushed for this.  During all those silly tests, I knew his problem was just that tight muscle, he didn't have vision or hearing problems or a brain tumor.  It was just the dang muscle!  But like I said, even though I'm disappointed that it took six months for the doctors to finally listen to us, I'm glad that it happened.  Don't tell me to "just watch it"!  Now we can stretch him out without it hurting him, now he can work on strengthening the other side of his neck, now he can try and sit up and stand without being pulled to one side by that silly muscle.

Yeay for botox!

Back to his normal self and pulling clothes out of drawers

Botox isn't just for the wrinkly

Botox:  Botulinum toxin.

Wait, what????  TOXIN???


Ok right, I knew that, I think.  So why did I want doctors to shoot up my baby with toxin?  Oh yeah, his neck......It only took us, hmmmm, six months to make it happen.

The good news is, you can use botox treatment in babies with torticollis up into their toddler years.  I just didn't want to wait that long.  His head shape already suffered from poor physical therapy, I didn't want him to walk around with a perpetual head tilt for the rest of his life.  Check it out on google images and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Today was the day.  We drove up to Primary's and checked in.  Baby was a tad bit grumpy because he hadn't eaten anything since last night.  I did get him up this morning though to give him a bottle full of juice to make sure he had good veins.  Just my luck, they were doing a general, which meant happy baby gas instead of an IV.  After waiting for just a few minutes, they took us back, explained the procedure and asked if we were ready to leave our little boy with them.  They let him play with the gas mask so he wouldn't freak out, and then laid him down.  I have to say, watching this was worse than watching him get an IV!  He didn't even mind the needle, but had a very hard time with the nurses holding him down and the anesthesiologist smothering him with a mask.  But it didn't last long, his eyes rolled back and he was out like a light.  They asked me to help hold him down and keep him happy, but I couldn't stand too close.  He was struggling a lot and the gas was leaking out, and I was starting to get dizzy.  So when they asked us to give kisses before sending us out, Nick and I both were like, oh we're ok!  We'll see him after.

We went to cafeteria and got Nick some breakfast and me a milk while we waited.  They told us it would only be about a 20 minute procedure and that he would wake up pretty quick afterwards.  And it was very quick, as we were walking back to the waiting room, the receptionist grabbed us in the hall and took us back to the recovery room.  A few feet away from the door we heard him screaming.  Haha, apparently waking up  this time wasn't as pleasant.  A nice old nurse was rocking him in a chair and giving him a bottle of juice.  He reached for me as soon as he saw me, which I thought was adorable.  He was much more alert and grumpy this time, but still kind of silly.  After he finished his juice they let us go.  But man, if I though the gas was bad in the botox room, it was even worse coming out of Tristan.  He practically sedated Nick and me on the ride home breathing that stuff on us.  And for two hours after we got home, he still smelled just as strong.  A very sweet and pungent strawberry smell that makes you very dizzy.  No wonder he was still tipsy all over the place!  Poor kid.  But he was back to his normal self with in a half hour, rolling around, playing with toys and giggling and virtually everything.  I'm very proud, he's been such a trooper, and he did very well today.

Now we wait.  They told us it would take a few days for the effects to really show, and in the mean time not do anything too strenuous with him.  We're also going to take him to a new physical therapist up north to learn what to do now that his muscle has been relaxed.  Hopefully we will start to see good results with the treatment, that he will be able to start pulling himself up and sitting and crawling on his own.  I'm very excited, I really hope it works well for him.

Tristan loves the bubble towers

Daddy let's him look up close

Playing with toys and waiting for the doctor

This is a fun one we should get mommy!

Mommy, what are they going to do to me??

(you can see where the muscle sticks out

on the right side)

Waking up and chewing on the monkey

All nice and recovered

Botox injection points

Daddy jungle gym!

I could do this all day!