Tristan: Six Months

Summer has flown by, and so has the time with my little baby!

Tristan is becoming quite the animated little guy. He absolutely LOVES his big brother and will giggle at him for really no reason at all. I love that they like each other so much right now, and although I know that will inevitably change, I can see them being quite the pals during their childhoods at least.

At six months, Tristan is around 20 pounds. I have no idea where this big boy came from, but soon he will be closing in on Brady's lean 32-pound frame! It's hard to keep him in any one size of clothing, shoe, or diaper (size 4!) for very long.

He is wearing 12-month or 12-18 month clothing, although I still squeeze him in some 9 month items if I can. I just can't wrap my mind around his size - he is outgrowing stuff at six months that Brady wore at 1+ years. The one thing that ISN'T large - his head :)

Even with his size, the kid still loves to stand. He finally started rolling over back to front at around five months, but if he could have his way, he'd stand all the time.

Tristan is a bit of a mama's boy - in the evenings, he will watch me like a hawk and hates to be away from me. It's cute and all, but hard to be gone for very long. And he's stopped taking bottles of any kind, so yeah, we're mostly a package deal these days!

Little man is really good with his hands. He loves batting and shaking toys, and grabbing his toes. Patty Toes (aka Patty Cake) is his very favorite, and I even found him grabbing his toes and patting them together a few times when I would sing the song - it's so precious!

As much as daddy really wants a ball player, T-man might just be another musical type (not that he can't be both!). He is terrible at riding in the car, but a few weeks ago I discovered loud rock-type music with lots of guitars and drums will quiet him immediately! Unfortunately for Gamma Lauterbach, I forgot to pass along this handy little tip the other night when she drove him from downtown to her house....whoops!

I think he is going to be teething soon - I sound like a broken record, but he's so slobbery, and his gums are rock-hard. He's got a constant runny nose this week, so I'm betting something will break through soon. Oh, joy.

In case you couldn't already tell, Chubber LOVES food. It took him two times to get the hang of eating with a spoon, and now he hoovers it. I can't shovel it in fast enough. He loves peas, carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, rice cereal....everything I've given him, he's loved - EXCEPT the sweet peas I made for him. Awesome.

We are going through a phase now where he constantly wants attention. He loves to be held, and that includes while he falls asleep. I really don't hold him all the time and let him fuss quite a bit, but it's a bad habit he's developed and it needs to be stopped! In fact, he's screaming right now, has been for at least a half an hour, and it's almost 10:30pm. Did I mention he's strong-willed? He's exhausted but just won't give up - I even put the pacifier back in, but he just wants to be held. It's hard to know if he's just being a stinker, or if he's not feeling well from his teeth. 

When he's not screaming endlessly, he really is the happiest, smiliest baby alive, I swear. He is constantly grinning from ear to ear, and just loves to interact with people. I think he might be a little distracting at church to those who sit behind us, but who can resist a cute, toothless grin from a baby :)

It's so hard to believe he's already six months old. It feels like I just brought him home. Our nephew Jaxon was born at the end of August, and he weighed the same as Tristan did when he was born. I just shake my head in amazement, and a little sadness, that Tristan went from less than 7 1/2 pounds to the boy he is today in so few months. God truly is incredible.

Tristan: Three Months

I know it's a tired expression, but in this case, the time really has flown by. I don't know if it's because I have two kids, or we've kept busy, or maybe because Tristan is just gargantuan, but I feel like my little baby is gone already at 3 months!

Tristan is such a joy and at such a fun age right now. He is such a happy, smiley, LOUD baby. He will tell you all about it and then some, competing to be heard over big brother's constant jabbering.

At three months, Tristan weighs SIXTEEN pounds. yes. sixteen. He's very tall and has a budda belly as well as some mega-thighs :) I would swear he is older than he is if I didn't know better, he looks more like a six-month-old than an infant half that age!

He has great control of his arms and found his thumb a couple weeks ago. I know it's not a good habit, but it is just adorable to see him sucking his tiny thumb. He loves to lay on the floor and play with toys suspended over him. He is quite good at batting or pulling on toys, and loves when people play with his feet.

He seems to look less like Brady all the time and more like me. But one thing that is a total deja vu moment for me is when he gets excited about something. He stands up (with assistance of course!), gets this serious, Zoolander "Blue Steel" kind of look, and shakes his arms. It's really cute, and exactly what Brady used to do when he was excited, too.

Praise God the colicky phase is over, but now he might be teething....it's early, but he chomps and drools, and just gets kind of crabby. He loves gnawing on my knuckles, and kind of seems like he might be trying to cut some teeth soon.

I figured out I wasn't drinking enough water to keep up with his appetite. Since I have been forcing myself to drink more, I've been able to keep up with nursing much better. Obviously, his weight isn't suffering :)

Tristan is in size 2 diaper, and is in size 6 month clothing, although I think he will be out of that pretty soon. I can't get out the next box of clothes and get them washed up fast enough, he starts outgrowing them immediately.

I feel kind of bad that all of his nicknames revolve around his size. chubber, chubber cheeks, budda belly, chunky monkey, to name a few :) 

He may be a big boy, and I do miss my little baby, but he's super snuggly. My favorite is when he rests his head on my chest, wide awake, and just lets out a few coos and gurgles. He's just happy and content to lay with his mommy, and it's those moments that I wish I could just bottle up and cherish forever.

The Pursuit of Happiness

What is this perpetual pursuit of happiness to which our world is addicted? What does it even mean to achieve true happiness?

I've spend a lot of my days trying, and failing, to attain a level of happiness I thought I should have, that others had. You know what I'm talking about: those people who always seem to have everything together. Like nothing could ever rock or phase them. How did they get so....happy.

I actually think the problem lies in the question itself: "How do we achieve happiness?" I mean, the very word 'happiness'; is the culprit. If we strive for constant happiness, we are going to be constantly disappointed.

The Bible clearly states this life will not be without it's struggles, disappointments, hurts.  "Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows" - John 16:33. So it would be impossible to attain pure happiness in a world where bad things happen, where evil exists and temptations lurk.

Pursuing happiness will always result in dissatisfaction, in UNhappiness. We should instead strive for an underlying joy that supersedes happiness, which allows us to be thankful in the midst of suffering, find beauty when we are hurting, rejoice in the Lord when our flesh tells us we are down.

Back to those people who have it all together. They have happy days and sad days, great days and horrific ones like we all do. But their underlying joy in life is what takes them away from the pursuit of what the world says is true happiness (cars, money, houses, wealth, good looks, career, etc.) and lets them rest in the fact that the next thing God says after telling us this life has it's burdens is to "Take heart! I have overcome the world." He is giving us permission to be unhappy with life on Earth at times, and assures us that underlying joy can co-habitate with unhappiness because of salvation and His eternal promise. 

To help do that and remember the things that bring me joy, I've made a joy list. In the hustle and bustle of life it is easy to forget the very things that we love most about life: a list helps bring those to the forefront of your mind so that when you see a newborn puppy or a rainbow or get a kiss from a loved one, you don't simply take it for granted but remember to recognize the joy simple things bring to your lufe, and to thank God for the joy, even if it's hard to be 'happy'.

I'll be sharing my joy list over the course of a few postings as it's quite lengthy - I hope you'll make your own, and even find some on my list to get you started.