more fun mostly

Now that Tenzen is nearing 17 months, he is able to ride in the car a little longer, walk a little farther, and enjoy actvities a little more than he used to. This makes hanging out with Tenzen more fun for me. Recently, we went to our favorite place for bobba tea (the only place we know of in Rochester) and enjoyed an avocado milkshake without the bobba. (No chocking hazards Mom!) If you don’t know about bobba tea, I feel sorry for you because it is one of life’s delights. It’s sweet, yummy, tea with tapioca balls. I know it sounds weird but it is delicious.

Afterward, we walked to our car and on the way we met a very cool kid named Gianni (Johnny?) and his family.

What was also a nice surprise was that the dog’s name is Tenzin!

Tenzin is a Lhasa Apso, a real Tibetan.

+++++++++++++++

I see that the photos posted when this site was on typepad.com are gone so I will go back and post them again when I have time. When will that be? I don’t know.

I leave you with a few more photos!

15th month . . . 16th month checkup

This week, Tenzen will be going to his15th month checkup. Th ething is, he will actuallybe 16 months old. The reason for this is because his peds office doesn’t allow you to book appointments until 2 months in advance. This means that I forget and wait too long to book. I’ve learned from our playgroup friends that we will be asked how many words he can say excluding mommy and daddy. Here is a list of words we have heard Tenzen say:

1. down
2. kiss
3. cheese
4. ball
5. shoe

There are actually more but we can’t remember them all because sometimes he says a word a few times then stops.

Joe as been working on body parts and animals too. We ask him, “where is your ear?” and he points to it. He knows:

1. ear
2. eye
3. nose
4. hair
5. mouth

He can also point out mommy and daddy’s ear, mouth, etc.

I think the cutest thing is when we ask him “what does a cat say?” He knows:

1. cat
2. dog
3. cow
4. lion
5. snake

Even though Tenzen has been walking since he was 10 months old, he still a little wobbly and falls often. I’m sure this is normal but I can’t help but wish he wouldn’t fall so much. His knees hace several scabs from falling on the driveway.

vacation – long ago

So we went on vacation in April and I’m just writing about it now. It was fun but much too short and no one in their right mind should take a baby on a plane for a 3 day vacation. When one of those days gets eaten up by a cancelled flight, it’s craziness. When that day is spend trying to renew a passport that had expired unnoticed until trying to board the second flight, it’s insanity. The couple of days spent in Aruba was very nice but will not be repeated anytime soon. We needed a good vacation after that trip.

Change of Address

Hello. Welcome to Tenzen’s new address! We hope you visit often.

Wegmans

People in Rochester know all about the Strong Museum but for those of you who don’t, the Strong is an excellent children’s museum and features a mini-Wegman’s grocery store complete with fake groceries, shopping carts, and electronic checkout lines. I brought Tenzen there about 6 months ago and there wasn’t much for him to do except crawl around a small area where he could put germ-filled toys in his mouth to his heart’s content. You can see why I wasn’t too excited to bring him back but I  ran out of ideas on how to entertain a nearly-one-year old today so off we went. We walked into the mini-Wegman’s just planning to watch the older kids shop but Tenzen had other ideas. You can see for yourself:

"What’s the expiration date on this whipped cream?"

"I love beans – just like daddy."

"Mom’s been slacking on the grocery shopping lately. I’d better stock up."

"For some reason I’m drawn to these."

"I wonder if they’d mind if I sampled some of this Edam Cheese."

"Who left this basket on the floor? So rude."

"Shopping is hard work."

The End.

sideburns

Warning: lots of whining and gnashing of teeth ahead.

We decided that it was finally time for Tenzen’s first haircut. We got so many comments on how cute our daughter was and even though I don’t mind Tenzen being mistaken for a girl, we figured he had to have a first haircut someday. So we picked an auspicious day, Joe’s Birthday, and went to a barber that was recommended to us by our good friend micah

.

Here we are waiting patiently.

See his shaggy hair?

His wonderous sideburns:

There’s the barber in the backjground:

Hey this looks like it could be fun!

This guy is funny!

Next, imagine lots of crying and wiggling around. There are no photos of this due to the fact that I was helping to hold him down.

His sideburns are gone!!! Sob!!! He looks so different!!! He does get a nice certificate though.

I figure that I get to be this obsessive about Tenzen’s appearance because I gave up being concerned with mine a while ago. I mean my hair could be unwashed and I could be wearing the same clothes for a week but my baby must look good. Isn’t that what all mothers think?

For being such a good boy, we went out to Dinosaur BBQ for lunch.

Then we went to the zoo!

We saw the seals.

And we had a GREAT day. Even if we lost our side burns, hair grows back and there are lots of cute hats waiting for us out there.

walking

It’s official – Tenzen is walking! T had been standing and shuffling around for awhile but we figured that it wasn’t officially walking until he took 3 steps. At his playgroup on Valentine’s day, Tenzen walked about 5 or 6 steps in front of all the babies and moms. So, like our pediatrician had predicted, Tenzen is an early walker. I also remmeber him saying that he felt sorry for us. In other words, we will be expending even more energy chasing after Tenzen. Bring it on Tenzen!

Tenzen fishing with his buds.

Getting ready for bed.

Next time: Bath TIme Woes.

There so much to catch up on . . . I will use my favorite lazy writing method and use a bulleted list to describe Tenzen’s latest shannanigans:

• T has 4 teeth now – 2 downstairs and 2 up. He used all his teeth to bite a rice cookie today!
• T can stand and balance on his own for a few seconds. This is old news but it’s still exciting to see.
• T can walk behind the car that Aunt Amy got for him. T is very good at this unless a toy happens to distracts him. Since there are toys everywhere in our living room, this happens often.
• T has been eating out alot lately. Just this week alone he has eaten Thai, Egyptian, Ethiopian,  Chinese dim sum, and American holiday party fare. His manners were mostly good, a little noisy and messy but mostly very civil.
• Joe was able to go to T’s Gymboree class! T was very excited about this and happy to show off a bit.
• T and I attended a diaper-free meeting. This subject merits a whole entry on its own and I hope to do that in the future but long story short, we are going to try it with the support of alot of local moms. Diaper-free uses Elimination Communicatio (EC) or communication with your baby to figure out when he/she has to pee or poop. When you figure that out, you take them to the toilet. This is a VERY simplified explanation and probably faulty too but you get the drift. Many (most?) babies of the world are toilet trained before the age of 1! I really don’t want to wait until T is 2 before starting this.

On to the photos!

Joe with the mommies.

Tenzen with his teacher.

So many cool toys!

Fancy meeting you here!

Joe promises to write the next post. Right Joe???!??!!

studio pics

For some reason, despite the thousands of photos I’ve already taken of Tenzen, I felt the need to get his photo taken at a commercial studio. I think the photographer at Sears did a nice job despite her overly-aggressive cropping job. In any case, T loved the phtographer and smiled like crazy through the whole shoot.

The very next day, we decided to take him to see Santa at the mall. I had visions the resulting photo, T would be smiling and gurgling at Santa and it would be a Moment To Treasure Forever TM. Well, Tenzen wasn’t so hot on Santa and the photo didn’t come out too good either. You can judge for yourself.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All!

 

I am a bad blogger.

I have been a bad updater of this website. So, here are some photos to catch up. There will be more after the holidays if you believe me.