Baby Ty: 11 months - 1 year old!

Although Ty's 11th month began with an unpleasant overnight hospital stay, he cheered up quickly when granny and grandpa Hunt came to visit. Fortunately Ty's never shown an attachment phase yet - when he only wants mommy or daddy and is scared of everybody else. So far Ty loves everyone, especially when they play with him. Granny and Grandpa were happy to oblige!

They couldn't stay long, but Ty's spirits were still high after they'd left. While Amy and I were off at the Tulip Festival, Deception Pass, and Fort Casey State Park, Oscar stayed home with Tyler. I just love Tyler's belly laugh! He's had a fantastic laugh since he was only 3 months old.

Cute clean boy!

Ty had several milestones that month, including standing on his own, eating solids like a champ, beginning to wean, and saying his first words. There's no food Tyler flat out won't eat, though at 11 months he preferred pureed fruits to pieces of fruit, like bananas and strawberries. Some days he'll like certain foods more than other days, but if he turns it down one day he may very well eat it the next. He likes his vegetables and has even turned down crackers and cereal pieces in favor of peas and corn. He loves kidney beans! Oscar and I like saying "big beans!" because it makes Tyler giggle like crazy. Ty is always searching for food on the floor and manages to find it no matter how much I sweep and vacuum. Often he'll find other things to stick in his mouth, like lint and pieces of carpet. 

Ty's first syllables were "da da da." Later came "ma ma," "na na," "la la, etc." He doesn't know what they mean, but he babbles them all the time. Right now it's just learning to make intelligible sounds. Oscar beams with pride whenever Ty says "da da."

By 11 months Ty had weaned down to 4 nursing sessions a day, and those were all fairly short. He rarely fell asleep nursing anymore, so on one occasion when he did, I snuggled him and savored the moment. In the middle of it, he gave a cute little giggle in his sleep. Precious!!!

How Oscar addressed our tithing envelope

Ty is a fantastic sleeper, but 9am church followed by 1pm choir practice became a real challenge. He's used to getting a nice 90 minute to 2 hour nap then and has a hard time sleeping anywhere but his crib. In church sometimes he'd fall asleep in Oscar's arms for about 30 minutes, though once we got lucky and he actually slept an hour and 40 minutes on one of the pews. 

Ty's doing reasonably well with the sippy cup. He can drink from it when he wants to, but holding it up is not his favorite thing. He prefers the kind that just have little holes in the lid and don't require as much work, but if I leave him alone with one he'll pour it all out just to watch it drip. Without supervision I'm only willing to give him water since he inevitably ends up throwing it on the ground and spilling liquid everywhere.

Cute Kitties!

Ty loves playing with the cats. He giggles like crazy when I pull out the laser pen and the cats (and Tyler) all chase the red dot. Any time a cat reacts playfully to anything he is thoroughly entertained. One time Nibbler put Tyler's binky in his mouth and walked away a few feet with it. Tyler thought it was the most hysterical thing he'd ever seen.

The best moments, though, are when Tyler is happy and giggly for no apparent reason. We still laugh about one afternoon he spent crawling laps around the couch, giggling away the whole time. He's so much fun!

On May 10th we celebrated Oscar's 31st birthday with delicious lemon cake and Thai food. Those candles were recycled from my 31st birthday the year before. I'm a year older than Oscar, so if we go with numbered candles, he can just reuse mine a year later. Then 11 days later Tyler can still use the 2nd number from Oscar's candles (i.e. when Oscar's 32 Tyler will be 2).

I don't like putting Tyler in the high chair anytime he wants a little snack, so sometimes I'd put crackers or cereal pieces on the tray of his walker. This worked for awhile, but then he realized how much fun it was to throw them all on the ground. The walker went to storage when he started learning how to walk without it. Several other things have been put away as well, like his baby swing and his bouncer. I tried strapping him into his bouncer while I took a shower once, but he managed to push himself out of it.

Along with the fun milestones we're also getting some extra fussiness. This is partly from teething and partly because everything is now a fun toy to him, and he doesn't understand why he can't have whatever he's wanting to play with (hence why I never wear jewelry anymore). One time he became very upset and threw a tantrum when he couldn't put the toilet seat down while I was using the toilet. Fortunately his distress was quickly calmed by discovering the fun spring that keeps the door from slamming against the wall.

On May 21st we celebrated Ty's 1st birthday with a small "Despicable Me" party. I'd brought Ty home some new toys, including this cute Thomas the Train play table. The Relief Society in our ward has started doing an annual swap meet for the 3 congregations who use our church building. I missed the one last year since I was busy giving birth to Tyler, but I found some great stuff this year. How sweet that every year just before Ty's birthday there will be a Relief Society swap meet! Free birthday gifts for Tyler!

I found some reasonably priced Despicable Me party hats, party favors and balloons on Amazon. Ty wasn't too thrilled about wearing the hat, though the minion balloon didn't mind it ;).

Lia and Hana came up to celebrate with us and picked up Thai food. The little rice soup with vegetable ends they give out at lunch made the perfect meal for him. We also gave him small pieces of our food. He didn't love the spice level, but he sure enjoyed the coconut ice cream!

There were lots of extra party favors and cake, so I invited my neighbor and her 4 kids to take them off my hands. They happily obliged and sang Happy Birthday to Ty when he woke up from his nap.

He also thoroughly enjoyed his yellow cake with key lime frosting! Hana came around the table to help him blow out the candle, but it snuffed itself out right as she was arriving. It looks like 3 birthdays is the most these candles can take.

A Sandy Beach at Fort Casey State Park

After touring Deception Pass, we stopped off for some munchies at Dairy Queen. They always give too high of a ratio of ice cream to toppings, so we poured the extra ice cream from our sundae into a cup and made a float with orange soda (they were out of root beer). A few of the peanuts and some of the hot fudge unintentionally mixed in with it, which made for an interesting taste. Hot fudge and peanut orange creamsicle anyone?

It was still nice out, so we continued south down Whidbey Island looking for Ebey's Landing. Oscar and I had taken a hike here in 2011, and I'd noticed there was a place you could drive to right along the beach. I wanted to take Amy to a sandy area where we could put our bare feet in the sand. We veered off the highway to look for it, but later realized we'd turned off too early. Fortunately we inadvertently found another beautiful area - Fort Casey State Park.

Amy almost squealed when she saw these deer on the trail out to the beach. I'm no stranger to deer with all the forest hiking I've done and the summer I spent out in Leavenworth, but I've never seen deer this close to the coast.
We kicked our shoes and socks off and had a great time in the sand. You can guess how cold the water was from the looks on our faces.

But I adapt to water temperature pretty well.

We hung out for a bit and enjoyed watching the waves roll in. It was great, until we had to put our shoes back on. I wish I'd had my flip flops...

Later we took a stroll around the pretty park. 

Distant view of Mt Ranier

Amy blowing out the fuzz on a dandelion

Amy had been really eager to take a ferry sometime during her trip, which worked out really nicely since the Clinton/Mukilteo ferry was the easiest way to get home from here. Washington ferries don't charge the $7 per passenger fare when you're traveling from an island to the mainland, which made it only $8 to take the car back home. Unfortunately we'd just barely missed the previous ferry and had a bunch of time to hang around the ferry dock.

Distant view of Mt Baker from the ferry

There was a map inside, so I pointed out to Amy all the places we'd traveled that day and snapped some more pictures until we boarded the boat.

The front of the boat was crazy windy!

The wind wasn't a problem from the back of the boat, but either our pictures were in shadow or we had a hard time keeping our eyes open in the direct sunlight.

For dinner I took Amy for some delicious Thai food and homemade coconut ice cream. Yummy! 24 Star Thai in Lynnwood never disappoints!

Oscar chose not to come with us since it was close to Tyler's bedtime and he'd already made lots of homemade chili. This is what he wrote on his Facebook wall.

Dear Stacy Jinks Hunt,

I need to apologize for being the worst husband in the world. While you were out with your friend Amy Foster eating Wienerschnitzel and Thai food with coconut ice cream today, I made Chili. While that's not a sin, I added onion to BOTH batches, which I seem to recall is one of the unforgivable sins. I'm Very Very sorry-ish. I hope you still decide to come home, but won't be surprised if you decide to move to Mississippi with Amy.

Kind of Regretfully,

Your Husband.
Oscar

I dropped Amy off at the airport early the next morning. In spite of Oscar's unforgivable use of onion, I did not fly back with her. Even though her flight left at 8am and it takes about an hour to get to the airport, we veered off the freeway to visit the first Starbucks coffee shop. This one has an extremely limited menu because they get so much foot traffic from Pikes Place tourists. We wanted to stop at the Macrina Bakery for breakfast, but they didn't open until 7am, so we grabbed some doughnuts across the street. Amy's leaving was hard, but Krispy Kreme's amazingly delicious Key Lime Pie doughnut definitely helped ease the pain!