The problem with drafts...

Is that if you're working on a draft and you post another post while you're still working on the first draft, is that they end up in the order you started them anyway... so please look after Tristan's entry for our latest blog update!
Love,
Marcy, Will, and Tristan :)

Tristan's first post!!!!

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Update on Will :-)

Well, we never technically said which weekend the posts would be up by...

So Will has been quite busy since the last post (in July!) He has since quit his job at Dell (for those who have been completely out of the loop) as he got accepted by the Canadian Forces! He has joined the Air Force, in the ATIST position. We celebrated our 10th year anniversary (of togetherness, not wedding!) on Wednesday, September 5th, then left on early Saturday, Sept 8th to make the drive to Borden, Ontario where he has been since for Basic Training (he comes home on December 14th and I'm counting down the days!!!!)

Here he is on his second weekend visit from us looking very handsome in his combat gear (I'm not even sure if that's the right term... still learning the lingo!)... this was before he got his "brass" (a shiny pin that sits on his hat - he actually had to pass a test to receive it!)

And here we are in our first picture as a military family :-)

So he had "visitation" for the first 4 weeks of their training - they were only allowed to have visitors from 1-4pm on Sundays, and they were confined to the front of their barracks (the building where they live) and a relatively good-sized meeting room on the first floor of their barracks. So the first two weekends, we drove about 6 hours (little more with baby/food/rest stops) and spent the night in Barrie so we could see him for 3 tiny hours! Let me tell you folks, it's all so worth it though! One of the big things I realized is that after spending 10 years together where I think the longest time we've spent apart has been no more than 10 days, those 3 little hours are so precious, I'd gladly drive more just to see him. And seeing how Tristan reacts to seeing his daddy is an even bigger and better reason - he misses him terribly! He's so cuddly with Will when he does see him, that it just breaks my heart. We're almost done though!
We spent 3 weeks without seeing him at all - since his building had their visitation priviledges revoked (due to some 'young ones' acting up during one of the Sundays they were allowed to have visitors)... but the next weekend we got to have him all to ourselves from Friday night right through to Sunday afternoon! We booked a hotel room in Barrie and had a nice mini-holiday just the three of us. It was great to be a family together again. Last week we had the same thing (and on that trip we brought Watson with us - boy was he ever happy to see Daddy!)

Here are the 3 boys taking a nap at the hotel (Watson's at the foot of the bed...)

Poppa Doug drove Will's car down on the next Sunday so from then on Will's been getting to drive home!
His platoon (all 4 platoons in his building actually) came to Ottawa for Rememberance Day (hurrah for living in the Nation's Capital!) and we got to see him all spiffied up in his dress uniform (I was REALLY looking forward to that! There's just something about a man in uniform...) We got to visit the War Museum with him and then Tristan and I had the honour of joining him and the rest of the platoons for dinner at the Mess Hall where they were staying here in Ottawa - it was so great to be able to be part of his military life, even if it was for a bit! (For now anyway!)

Here he is at the Military Cemetery - it's a bit of a "Where's Waldo" type of picture! (he's smack in the middle, and you can't really see the blue of his hat because of a shadow)

So very, VERY handsome... don't you agree??? (oh, and he looks serious because they don't allow them to smile for pictures in uniform! Seriously!!!)

The Oliver family after the Remembrance Day ceremony:-)At the War Museum (Tristan had a camouflage sweater so he could match with dadda... ) :-)
Well, other than buffing up, learning to maintain a spotless room (yippee!!), how to make proper hospital corners on the bed, to fold a tshirt into a perfect 7" square (in 20 seconds! It's a neat trick!) and learning everything there is to know about the military, Will's been busy making a great impression with the commanding officers there, and being quite a leader among the young ones (he's one of the 'older guys' there! Hee hee!) and overall, really embracing the military life... we're all so proud of him!
Till next time...

Love,
Marcy, Will & Tristan

Sorry we've been gone for so long!

My goodness, we've been so busy!

A thousand apologies to all our families and friends who've been waiting...

So rather than putting one giant blog post, we're splitting them up into an update per person/dog... and we're going by age, so no favouritism is showing :-)

We should have all the posts in by the weekend... please be patient! :-)

Love,
Marcy, Will & Tristan

We all knew this would happen sooner or later...

Tristan has gone on his first date!
Mommy had been hoping he'd wait until he was 30 or so, but we all knew that being that much of a handsome, charming little man, that the girls would be swooning early on...
So Tristan's first girlfriend is Miss Callie Mae. She's quite a sweety... she likes to blow kisses, give hugs and kisses, say hi and bye (while waving), long walks in the wagon and eating sand :-)
Their first date was a picnic at the park with some fun on the swings, and the sand (Tristan apparently likes to throw it... oh dear!)
Mommy was not a chaperone at this date (it was while he was at day care), but our good friend Amanda (Callie's mom) was... and he was very well behaved :-)
Here are some shots - thank you very much Amanda for the great pictures!

5 days to the last Harry Potter book!!!
Happy Harry Potter week everyone!

Love,
Marcy, Will and Tristan

We're so late!!!

Sorry everyone! Been totally crazy around here, so blogging's falling FAR behind in the list of things to do... Geez, how do we update everyone without completely going over the edge with info? Quick list... here's what we've been upto: 1) We have gone on our first official family trip. Whoop whoop! We had the great pleasure of driving to Toronto (only stopped twice! Once to nurse, and once to eat! Yippee!) to spend a weekend with the Abuelos, Tio/Primo Humberto, Tia Fanny and Zio (sp?) Joe visting at the African Lion Safari and Black Creek Pioneer Village. It was an awesome trip, the only downside: No pool at the hotel! Here are some shots of our trip:

First, a couple of all the "dogs" (Tristan calls them "GA") we got to see:

Old Macdonald had a farm... and on that farm he had a sheep!

Here is Fanny and Mommy and Tristan hidden in the Mei Tai that Mommy made ALL by HERSELF! He fell asleep (he's facing mommy) so we put the hat on to keep him nice and cozy... Mommy's glasses on the back of his head is just the cute bonus :-) It's blurry, but you get to see not only Tio/Primo Humberto, but the little adorable giraffe bag that Tia Fanny bought Tristan! Tristan was moving around from person to person on the tour bus (we weren't too keen on having baboons pee on our side windows, so we took the bus), so Humberto made a buddy to hang out with :-)Here is Zio Joe and matching with Tia Fanny (except he had no goofy hat... and wouldn't tell us why not???)

Tristan playing peek-a-boo with Mommy's hat (isn't he adorable???)

Here is Tristan being oh so subtle at bedtime (he's so tired, can't you tell???)

One of the funny things that occured is how Tristan realized that one of the difference between cloth & disposable diapers is that with disposable diapers, Tristan could reach his toes much better! So he had a great time chewing on them whenever possible (including the car!) He has to use both hands to bring his foot to his mouth now that he's back on our beloved cloth diapers (we are really big fans of big booty!)

So, some yummy feet shots:

2) Mommy's back at work... although not with her old job... which is the main reason why the blogging's fallen of the wagon...

She's just started as a research consultant with an awesome firm that works with the government, and it allows her to work from home, and therefore stay at home with Tristan... it's crazy hard and she feels like she's working every waking moment that she's not with Tristan, but it's so worth it because she gets to be with him... that being said, she does need her sleep (as little as it might be) so Tristan started homecare for a few hours a day, four days a week... It was so hard! For mommy! Tristan seems to be loving it now, but mommy still hates the empty van feeling after she drops him off...

This is Tristan and his friend Callie Mae (we're not quite at girlfriend status, but she keeps trying to hug & kiss him... he's quite coy) going for a ride in the car (he LOVES that car! Luckily, we have the same one at home)... Callie wanted a ride too, so they doubled up!

Here he is painting a card for Daddy's birthday... you can tell he's our son, because he's barely getting dirty! He's a neat freak like us! :-)

3)Our first official Mother's Day was amazing! Daddy and Tristan got mommy a beautiful necklace with Tristan's birthstone (which Daddy hid in a box of yummy chocolates!), and we went for a walk to the park, played in the swings, went down the slide and played with the sand... then we went out for Vietnamese (Tristan got to play with bean sprouts) and when Daddy kept trying to get Tristan to say Mamma, he said DADADADA! The monkey got it backwards! :-)

4) We've also celebrated the first official Father's Day! Mommy and Tristan got Daddy a tshirt (that says "Dad" on it), some books, a teddy bear, a Daddy sculpture, and a great framed picture of Daddy and Tristan (both with big smiles!). We started having a picnic, but Daddy had to work, so it got postponed (a couple of times again due to the weather...) Tristan also decided to start saying MAMAMAMA again today :-)

5) It was shortly thereafter that we celebrated Daddy's birthday (he's pushing 30 now!) We're planning on going for a picnic to celebrate, but just haven't been able to get coordinated with the weather!

One final thing... we've realized Tristan spends WAY too much time around the dogs... we think they may be starting to rub off on him... what do you guys think?

Well, that's about it for now! We'll keep you updated more often - promise!

Love,
Marcy, Will and Tristan :-)

Weekly update...

So it seems that Fridays are somehow the days we get a chance to blog... so here's a catch up.
First above anything else, Tristan and I are completely alone this weekend - and by completely alone I mean with the 3 dogs and my parents whom I'll be sharing many meals with, and my sister and my niece whom we'll be helping fundraise money for her walk and hopefully Aunty Samantha will have time for us to visit for a bit - but other than that, completely isolated. Okay, so my sad lament is due to Will being twice lucky and getting to go to New Jersey for the Sens game tomorrow night... I say twice because he got to go with his dad to see the one on Wednesday night... but I'm not jealous one bit (although I have to say, Tristan is a much cuter fan in his jersey and that if anyone with connections to the Sens read this, I think he'd make a great asset to the game and we will consider accepting any playoff tickets...) so we'll see how the weekend goes...
So to catch everyone up on our little cutey, here are things we've learned this week:
1) With crawling baby, it's much harder to fold diapers with him in the room - he likes to help, but can't understand why pulling diapers out of the laundry bin doesn't help... and diapers are somehow way more fun than any toy!2) Some people move a lot in their sleep... including our little boy... so as cute as he looks:
...it becomes a little difficult to sleep when he takes over your side of the bed! Especially when you just can't make yourself move them (did you see how cute he looked???) Luckily, I didn't need anymore sleep - it was already 8am that Saturday already (and who needs to sleep in on the weekends?!)Oh, for anyone worried about the whole baby not sleeping on his back - Tristan's been sleeping on his tummy for months now - he learned to roll over in his sleep and likes it that way, so it's okay!
3) Personal hygiene is very important (okay, that's not something we learned this week, but Tristan likes to help now with his teeth brushing, and looks so cute doing it!) 4) Turtles are yummy (fake, fuzzy ones... the real ones deserve to live!) and mommy has a lot of them! Tristan found Crush last night (Squirt's dad - from 'Finding Nemo'...) and really took a liking to him! Wasn't too interested in Squirt, I think because Crush was much bigger :-)

That's all for now... we missed our strollercize walk this morning - Tristan and I woke up early to say goodbye to daddy and being up that early got him tired a little earlier than he's used to, so we decided that taking a nap was much better than getting him dressed and out the door... so we're hoping to go to our ball exercise class instead!
Lots of love,
Marcy, Will & Tristan

Oy, a week's passed already...

We've been bad and not updated in a week, but in our defense, we've been quite busy chasing after a CRAWLING baby! That's right, he's crawling! Just getting the hang of it, so he looks quite cute while doing it... and still likes to crawl backwards first... of course, me being sentimental and thinking about my friend's baby Skyler who likes to crawl to her mommy, I was silly and hoped that he'd crawl straight for me the minute I left his side ... I forgot that we have three much more fascinating things:
1) We have dogs. And sometimes, they like to lay down and sleep... within crawling range
2) Those same dogs have bones... and Watson who's trying to show what good faith he has in Tristan, likes to drop his bones within Tristan's reach...
3) The crib has springs for the side rail (to bring it down)
Oh well...
So quick catch up...
Tristan's teething seems to be coming to an end! He's got a 5th tooth out (and the 6th any day now) - the top left centre one (so that's how many left now???) so he's back to being his happy-go-lucky self again in the evenings (never really changed during the day this time around, so it is getting easier! Yipee!!!) Here are some shots of things he liked to chew on, especially in the evenings when he was really, really itchy...

My pj pants string (while I'm still wearing them!) and my body pillow (it was within grasp)...
So this weekend we visited with Tristan's grandparents pretty much all weekend since the Abuelos are still out of town (but coming home soon!) and his Aunt Tricia surprised us with an incredibly cute (yet very, very tough) outfit... he got to wear it with no jacket or sweater since it was such a wonderfully warm weekend! We reached 20 degrees!!! He also got to show off his sandals that Aunt Kate bought for him (before he was even born) as it was definately sandal weather :-) I think these are my favourite Robeez... And some pictures of him crawling in his room...
"...two hundred and nine... two hundred and ten... hey, new number for how many push-ups I can do mommy!"
Shoulder push-ups! Okay, he's actually moving his feet to try to get up, but can't get the balance with his arms still glued to the floor...
Smile for mommy!
Since he's a pretty good walker he gets it mixed up with crawling, so he'll walk with his feet but try to crawl with his hands (how his brain pieces everything out little by little is just amazing!)
Okay, and to finish the picture show today, I have to say that Tristan sometimes lifts his one arm up and tries to sit from the all-fours position, but is pretty big & heavy, he can't quite get the balance yet, so instead he shows off his incredible strength by balancing on the one arm and turning his body sideways (he's got most of us at the dojo beat!) and sometimes crosses his legs infront of him to balance better... when I went to take this picture, he was originally on all fours, but heard me sneaking up on him, and not only did he turn sideways and cross his legs, but he actually grabbed onto his little thigh to stabilize himself... does he not look just like a perfect little model???
I could just eat him up! Happy Friday everyone!
Love,
Marcy, Will & Tristan