* Tristan is doing well in his center-based program, aka preschool. He’s finally getting comfortable with the idea of mommy disappearing for two hours at a time. Mommy has, in turn, had her hair cut and her back massaged this week as a result.

* Tristan’s finally showing interest and aptitude for pointing at pictures in books or at objects for them to be named. He is interested in “orange” (fruit) and “ball” mostly, and can answer by pointing to the objects when you ask him where an orange or ball is. It’s hard to get him to perform this, but he has done it! Anyway, he’s learning words. He tries to say the words, as well. He’s shown that he notices two oranges on the page are the same by pointing to both of them. I really hope this continues because it finally gives me some rote academic work to go over with him.

* Tristan’s also been interested in the alphabet. He’s been pointing to letters for them to be named. He’s managed to say L, D, and O so far.. probably more!

* I can point in a direction and say “Go this way” and for the most part, Tristan will comply. He tries to be contrary at times, but I’m ok with that. As long as he is capable and does it most of the time. He is not interested in walking while holding my hand unless he needs help with steps, but he is very good about following the pattern of where people walk (like staying on the damn sidewalk, not running into too many roads, etc.). We should practice this indoors at times and see if it’s as reliable..

Within the past ten minutes, Tristan has been a little thief. He stole my chicken soup – my rare chicken soup now that I’m dieting a lot these days. But that’s ok.

HE ATE IT FROM A SPOON!!!

He ate from a spoon for the first time since about 12 months. Not even cashew butter, yogurt, fruit, or chicken rice could get him to do this in the interim. He came over to ask for some of my soup and with James manning the actual spoon, many of the noodles made it into Tristan’s mouth.

Even more impressive is what it is that he ate – noodles in broth. You may or may not recall, but Tristan has eaten things that resemble pasta about twice in the past, making this time number three.

I’m NOT surprised that this was his choice to accept on the spoon. This child seems to adore all of my favorite foods, which are foods that pretty much nobody else eats or likes. And he’s getting fairly picky about his preferences lately, too, so I don’t think it’s mere hunger speaking in any way. He just “cracks out” on certain foods.

In other communicationy news, Tristan has begun to grab my wrist to manipulate my pointing finger to designate something he’d like to have. Now, it would be neat if he just stuck out his little index finger and pointed as a next step!

* Tristan sort of points at small holes, like those found in metal benches and grate coverings. He especially enjoys exploring things like that, too. Anyway, he pokes the holes and I praise him for the “point.” I’ve seen a feeble point or two since then, but he doesn’t connect the gesture with indicating or thinks he does just fine or will learn suddenly or something. Or it won’t even matter. Or it’ll be the all important autism indicator. Who knows? I don’t. Anyway, pointingish behavior. Yay! It’ll be useful if he catches on.

* We have had a good day so far. We had a good evening yesterday. Before that, we’ve had some nasty temper crap that has been stressful. The “Fast Food Rule” from The Happiest Toddler on the Block is pretty remarkable at calming him down when we’re vigilant about it. We are still developing good strategies as situations with discipline change daily. For the most part, he is curious or bored when misbehaving as opposed to blatantly defiant or “evil.” Sometimes he’s saying something like “no, I waaaant it!!!” but without any of those words that would lead me to believe I’m right, so it sounds more like an overdramatic scream and crumpling of the body. I can pretty quickly stop that by saying to him “you WANT IT! You want swing!” in a very passionate voice (same method I use to sing, really). About thirty seconds of that over and over and he wanders off to do something else, bored, or tries his case again more quietly (walked over to the swing after stopping the tantrum). Yay! I can think of other ways to deal with that, and other ways I have dealt with it. Most of the “obey me now and stop screaming or we leave” sorts of methods do not work with him. He’d rather leave, so there is no lesson in stopping the behavior in that case. So silly-sounding toddler acknowledgement of feelings to stop tantrums it is. By the way, it’s useful for a lot of other opportunities to communicate.

* I think his teeth are really hurting him right now. This likely explains some of the nasty temper crap. We’ve been tossing him Tylenol for sleeptimes and will continue until those two bottom pointy teeth come through. And speaking of teeth, he tried to resist my cleaning his teeth yesterday – he tries to bite but I will open his enough to avoid him biting me. We still clean teeth with a cloth and mostly in the shower. I figure that I enforce teeth cleaning once every several days, so when it’s done I try to make it count. (Yes, we’re nasty like that and don’t necessarily bathe every day. We just spend an hour in the shower and play in bubbles when we do!) We’d been making headway on the cooperative teeth cleaning and with him even showing curiosity about his toothbrush. Anyway, teething sucks. I understand when these canines finish showing, we’ll have even more molars to work on. Le sigh.

* He seems to be understanding and trying to say more and more words. He’s trying to distinguish between “Ninja” for the cat and other things that could maybe be “no” or maybe even “mama.” He says “the” and “that” clearly. He’s starting to say “hi” to people sporadically but it sounds nothing like how humans say “hi” in English so they don’t know to say “hi” back (and he doesn’t learn to sincerely greet yet, and he rarely waves, like once per month.. le sigh ) He tries to say “drink” and I will really be pleased when he has SOME way to say it.

* For a digression: I discussed a parenting methodology called Raising Godly Tomatoes with a mom from a web community I participate in. She’s Christian. Our family’s atheist/agnostic. The main impression James and I have is that the author does have some good points with discipline but that she’s a bit of an extremist. Applying most of the methodology is fairly counter to anything we believe in, but who knows if I’ll go back and eat my words later if Tristan turns out to not take our free spirit lifestyle properly? Anyway, we don’t spank as a general policy, but we do act swiftly when we mean business. We just don’t pick many fights with him. The author of this is dead on when it comes to being consistent as a parent in your goals with your children and that you must outlast a child if you intend to make a point of an order. But I personally like his spirit as it is and feel that training him to “obey me no matter what” will take a possible future engineer and turn him into a mindless servant, which is not what I need. I don’t mean that in a “my special snowflake” sort of way. I mean that I intend to train him to negotiate and demonstrate in order to work his way up, which is not really compatible with accepting my word no matter what. I also mean that in the sense that one who unquestioningly obeys authority does not take apart radios, learn secret passages, design innovative products.. that sort of thing. (I will require that he learn to speak to people as respectfully as the situation requires, at the very least, in due time and age appropriateness.)

Babbling about toddler accomplishments and parenting methodology takes up most of Tristan’s nap when I decide to engage in it. I can only hope that Tristan reads this in ten years and laughs at it, or is happy he knows who his mom is as a person and not just who he sees as mommy.