Party at Nana's

Yer lookin' at a real rugged mountain man!

We've been visting my folks here in Colorado and have been making the rounds to see all of our new baby friends as well. Tyler is such a trooper and is dealing with the chaos like a champ. The neighborhood here in Arvada is very friendly and social and he got his first exposure to everyone the first night after he woke up after only an hour of sleep. Since he was up, the gang all came over to check him out and he was a little freaked out by all these people smiling and laughing at him. Needless to say, he was not his usual jovial self and Mr. Grumpy-pants wanted to go right back to bed. I can't say he was much happier at the Memorial Day bbq down the street, but then again, it was chilly and the gail-force winds kept blowing everything around so maybe he sensed I wasn't too crazy about the idea, either.

If I stare into space, maybe the pachyderm won't notice me

It was a zoo at the zoo! Julie, Katie, Tyler and Lara enjoyed the craziness, though.


Things picked up on Monday, though, with his first trip to the zoo! We met little Katie and her mom, dad and grandma for a quick trip through the masses of strollers (seems everyone else had zoo on the brain) to see the elephants, monkeys, cheetahs, geese and a few others. The highlight of the day? Eating lunch, of course! Tyler has become a champ at eating and he's really starting to eye whatever I put in my mouth (I keep telling him he probably won't like oatmeal cookies, but he doesn't seem to be falling for it). Monday night we had the same gang that scared him the first night over for dinner and he was much, much happier to see them all this time around.

Of all the new friends he's met here in Colorado, the two that make him smile the most are the furiest of all - Scout and Rowdy - my mom's two very friendly (overly friendly, at times) Golden Retrievers. He tries to grab their fur (coming up with handfuls of hair....nice) and they, in turn, stick their cold wet noses in his face and give him a big kiss every so often.

The sleep saga

Ah ya ya ya ya ya! I woke up to Tyler's musings this morning at 4:45am. After 15 minutes of rocking it was clear that he was up for good and was a very happy baby (unless he was being rocked back to sleep, that is). At least he woke up, happy and seemingly refreshed this time. I'm wondering if this baby ever sleep through the night? I am astonished and jealous when I hear stories of babies that started sleeping through the night at 8 weeks (or earlier!). Of course, there are the few stories of kids that still don't at age 4, but that isn't much comfort right now. I had to post a few photos of what a great sleeper Tyler was initially, maybe if I backtrack, I can figure out where we went wrong. He's almost 8 months and is waking up more now than he was at 2 months, which is insane. I suspect there will be some sleep training in our near future, if I could just find the time to read some of those books to tell me what to do!

The sleeping with mittens look, very hip here in L.A.

The seemingly no-legged sleeping pose

Even pea pods like to sleep, especially on Grandpa's lap!

Best place in the world to sleep, snuggled up next to Daddy!

The Mother's Day Hives

The polka-dotted baby

That's right, for my first Mother's Day, Tyler decided to give me a truly unique gift by coming down with a severe case of the hives. He actually looks good in this photo, they got much worse and covered about 50% of his body. Luckily, they didn't seem to affect his happy disposition too much, I can't say the same for myself as I freaked out about what caused them (still unsure, maybe an allergy, maybe a virus) and how to get rid of them (more or less just had to wait the 5 days for them to recede on their own). Needless to say, I've told him that this sort of gift need not to be repeated for Christmas or my birthday.

Before the hives took over his body, Tyler's major development was that he has started talking up a storm. He is a huge chatterbox, clearly taking after his daddy! We have some very poignant and thought-provoking discussions about all sorts of things: global warming, peek-a-boo blocks, U.S. foreign policy, doggies, the pros and cons of making your own baby food, Po the Polar Bear, and metaphysical existentialism to name a few. Here he is waxing philosophical about the big hub-a-ba-loo the Da Vinci Code is causing.

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Oh, and belly laughs are a much awaited development, too. The strangest things are absolutely hysterical to Tyler (like a stuff chick falling out of an oatmeal container - that one had him rolling forever). Regardless of what it is, both John and I make complete fools out of ourselves just to hear this little guy giggle. It's the best sound on Earth!

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Sittin' up today. Tomorrow, the Olympics!!!

The view up here is soooooo much better!

Since we returned from Telluride (has that already been over a month ago? Yikes!), Tyler's been quite the busy and social little man. He got invited to his very first birthday party by the little girl, Emma, who lives up the street and was turning 2. Emma had a petting zoo brought in for her birthday and Tyler was seemingly interested in the animals, although not as interested as one of the pygmie goats was in me. It was fun seeing all the kids go crazy for the animals they've only heard about on Old MacDonald's farm, or at least some of the smaller ones (sorry, Tyler, no cows. Cows seem to be his favorite). There were, however, chickens, roosters, a tiny, squealing pig, lots of goats and a few bunnies. He also got invited to a cool beach bbq birthday party for one-year old Brogan. He had fun down at the beach with his buddies, but was particularly interested in the balloons. To view more photos of Tyler and the animals and the birthday parties, you can click here http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=17b7zi65.5gzersih&Uy=2mlml9&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&UV=724884471410_847733595305

Here chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken!

So, when you turn one you can eat string cheese? Cool!

On Friday of this past week, Tyler earned his first $100 by being in an exercise video. We were told it was a shoot for Baby Einstein, but I guess they needed older babies who could walk and play peek-a-boo. Instead, Tyler got to help out this nice lady, Michelle, with her workout. I think he dribbled a little bit on her while she was doing arm raises. If he makes the cut, he'll earn another $100! I think his days as a star are limited, though. They told us we had a "hard call time" of 1pm but they didn't get to him until 3:30 and by then he was fried, and so was my patience.

If being in the movies means I get to hang with hot chicks, I'm all for it!

Tyler's main development lately has been his ability to sit up by himself, which he is proudly displaying here in this photo. I wish I had as good of posture as he does! If he lurches for a t0y, however, he falls over and does a face plant on the carpet. Ah, the forces of gravity surprise us all.

Sittin' up in my kingdom!

Sittin' up from the back. Check out that hair.

Here he is from the back. He's starting to get thicker hair, except there's a bald patch on the very back of his head from where he rubs it off tossing his head back and forth while he's trying to sleep. Sleep is something we are still very much struggling with and something I could write another complete post on. Once he gets over his current cold, we're going to be doing a little "sleep training." In the meantime, he continues to be rocked to sleep and to wake up every2 hours or so, usually just needing us to go in and reinstate the binky. He's up by 6 or 6:30 and ready for his breakfast. On the weekends he gets to eat breakfast out at the Ocean Diner. It's kind of mean to take him to a place that smells of bacon and pancakes and then give him sqush, but oh well!

Open up, T.D.! It's good, really!

The big news in our household right now is that our beloved Clippers have made it to round 2 of the NBA playoffs. People used to joke that once we had a baby, the Clips would then have three fans. Ha! Just get on our bandwagon, now, we say! Go Clippers! You can see Tyler is a really big fan. He especially likes to talk about the Clips their game strategy, the players, who he'd be putting in if he were coach, etc while he's in the tub with his big red cup (excuse the sideways camera action, Dad didn't know it was for the blog!).

I've been a Clippers fan my whole entire life!

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