Visit to the Aquarium

Dad and daughter enjoying the shark tank at the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium.

Happy Birthday Tessa!

Our little girl is one years old! It's crazy that it's been a year already since we brought Tessa home from the hospital. She is so much part of our family. I love being her mom and it has been so amazing watching her grow up so far this past year.

We had a fun birthday party for Tessa. We had it at Pioneer Park. Tessa loved the splash pad and received some wonderful gifts. Thank you everyone who was able to attend and for the great gifts we received. Tessa has already been enjoying them.

She is walking full time now and has been for the last month or so. She'll still sometimes want to hold hands but it's more for social reasons than balance; she uses it as a means to drag you around where she wants you to go with her.

She has become so communicative. She can hold up her arms or pull you down by the arm to say if she wants to be picked up. Then she can grunt or point at things to tell you if she wants something or if she sees something she's excited about. She has also taken to saying something that I think is supposed to be "this". It's basically a sound somewhere between "th" an "z" but she consistently says it when pointing at objects or when handing us objects. She'll say "mama" and "dada". Sometimes seeming to say "mama" more when I'm holding here and sometimes pointing at David when she says "dada". Then she sometimes says "da" or "do" when she sees animals. It's hard to know if she's technically saying real words where she understands the meaning of them but we can definitely tell that she is trying to communicating more.

She still loves animals. She notices birds now too. She'll point at them in the sky. At David's last work party they had these people in some pretty realistic looking dinosaur costumes and Tessa thought they were so cool. I thought she might be scared of them, but she excitedly walked right up to them. She even tried to climb up on their feet and chased after them when they left.

She still loves to spend time outside. Incredibly she's been wanting to spend even more time outside lately. We play out in the grass and ride her bike and go on walks and play at the park all the time. She'll request to go outside by banging on the back or front door as early as 6:30 am as soon as she wakes up or as late as 8:30 pm before bed. I'm nervous for it to start getting cold as it will be harder to just pop in and out of the house.

She loves playing in the water. We've enjoyed taking Tessa to the Lehi rec center swimming pool. We also got a little inflatable swimming pool for Tessa to splash around in in the backyard.

She likes the to play with the most random things. She loves brooms, dental floss, toothpaste, and toothbrushes, small spice containers, and camelbak water bottles. She loves anything with buttons - remotes, the garage door opener keypad, the thermostat, etc. She likes to play the piano. She loves to hand you a cell phone and hear you pretend to make phone calls.

Holding two containers of dental floss

For Tessa's birthday we went and got pictures taken. Here are some of my favorites:

I know - way too many pictures! I just couldn't narrow down my favorites any more than that. Our little girl is quite grown up. Dare I say David and I have a toddler! That sounds so wierd to me. I think I still kind of think of Tessa as our baby. She's growing up so fast and is such a joy.

Tessa's First Parade

This past weekend, we took Tessa to her first parade. After collecting two pieces of candy (one peppermint for each hand) and being scared by the loud fire engine horn, Tessa seemed satisfied that she had got all that the parade had to offer.

Maybe we'll try the whole parade thing again next year when she's a little older.

Raspberry Picking

Tessa likes picking the raspberries out back.

Mind you she doesn't actually like to eat the raspberries. She just likes to 

pull them off the bushes and squish them.

Silly girlie! 

Hot Summer Day

Someone get this poor baby some AC . . . 

after 45 minutes riding in a car without AC

Don't worry. She was doing much better after getting home to the AC and a lot of water.

Walking Machine

In the last week or so Tessa has started walking on her own a lot more often. In fact, the other day, she was even able to follow me around a little bit while grocery shopping. I used to think getting errands done will be so much easier once she's walking more on her own . . .

                                                                                              . . . now I'm not so sure. :P

Bicycle Riding

Tessa riding a bicycle for the first time!

Or at least the baby equivalent of riding and bicycle. :) Isn't she cute! I guess I need to see about finding her a tiny helmet now.

10 Months

At a little over 10 months (I know, I'm way late in getting this posted) Tessa is doing great. She is getting to be our big little girl. The time has gone by so fast but at the same time it feels like Tessa has been part of our family forever.

She is walking a bit more on her own but she still prefers to hold onto a finger. She is slowly gaining more and more confidence though.

She's saying 'dada' more lately and has even said 'mom' a few times and said something that sounded like she was trying to say dog.

She has learned how to wave bye bye and hello and if you wave at her she'll usually wave back. She loves to wave at animals, other kids, and the even the garbage truck.

Another new thing is she likes is playing at the park. She's always liked being outside and has enjoyed walking around on the grass for a long time. Recently though she has started enjoying playing on the jungle equipment.

She likes going down the slides and crawling through the tubes that are there.

And yes that very sloped tube in the background is one of the ones she likes to go through. It's been fun to be able to take her to play at the park lately. She still just loves playing out in the grass and just outdoors in general. She can even tell us when she wants to go outside by walking us to the front door and fussing. She generally spends 2-3 hours outside daily. Here she is enjoying the outdoors with dad at the Thanksgiving Point Gardens.

She loves animals more and more now too. She used to be more scared of dogs but now she doesn't even get scared when they lick her on the face. She loves to pet any dogs or cats we pass on our walks. She also loves to feed the ducks and geese.

The other day on a walk, we came across 6 domesticated ducks and Tessa wanted to pet them. They were scared of her though so she ended up chasing them. Attempting to get away, one of the ducks waddled into the nearby pond. Undeterred, Tessa followed the duck right into the pond. I think she took about 2 steps in before she realized what she had done but she loves the water and splashing around so she actually didn't mind.

Recently she started making this funny face where she would purse her lips. Sometimes she'll do it when she's upset and other times she'll do it for seemingly no reason. 

It's fun to watch her as she grows up. I almost can't believe that we're coming up on her one year birthday but it's coming up soon.

Steps

The other day, Tessa started taking a few little steps. Erin and I would play the game where she would walk just a few steps. Then, she surprised me with walking about 10 to 15 steps in a circle around me after I let go of her. We coaxed her to do something similar afterward on camera. Here it is.

Then, here are some photos for fun!

8 Months

Tessa is 8 months! She is growing up so quick. She is 18 pounds and wears 6-12 month clothes and 9 month clothes.

The big milestone she's recently met is she can now crawl. She has gotten pretty good at it, but still doesn't love it.

She prefers walking much more than crawling. She'll spend several hours everyday just walking around the house, the backyard, around the neighborhood, the grocery store - wherever we are. Lately she's been able to travel short distances holding onto the finger of just one hand. It's neat to see her balance improve daily. David and I both think she has the strength and interest necessary for walking and now it is just a matter of her gaining the necessary balance.

Her other new thing is that she'll regularly say "dada". I'm not sure if she actually means David or me or anything at all by it but it's cute nonetheless.

Her favorite things are probably cell phones, computer mice, laptops, remotes, and the washer and dryer. She likes to watch the clothes spin. She of course loves to walk and she likes to run. She likes to doink the doorstops and loves to lick the windows. I'm not sure if she just likes licking windows or if she's trying to give the baby in the reflection a kiss.

Then she also loves water and trying to drink from camelbak water bottles. We try to only give her a few sips a day.

She also loves eating real food - particularly whatever you're eating. She'll eat pizza, waffles, strawberries - whatever. She still doesn't have any teeth but she'll just gum anything. She especially loves chocolate. Here she is after licking a chocolate covered pretzel completely clean.

She makes a huge mess but if you want to eat something in front of her, she'll want one too. She always has to hold it herself too instead of just being fed it from your hands. Give her a biscuit though and she won't even take a bite of it. In her defense the biscuit was very crumbly and I think she was fascinated by how it crumbled in her hands.

Mostly Tessa loves exploring. She just wants to walk around looking at and touching everything. She is very squirmy and playful. I'm often pretty worn out by the end of the day after spending so much time helping her walk as she explores and plays but I love that she is so curious about the world. Here she is exploring the cat's food.

It started out innocent enough . . .

(the cat coming over concerned)

                                                                          . . . and then got very messy! Tess Mess strikes again!

Probably the biggest change in Tessa is that she has become opinionated. If she wants the remote or doesn't want to sit in her carseat or whatever, she'll let you know.

We love our sweet baby and enjoy seeing her personality emerge more and more every month.

We're Moving!

Tessa has learned to get around a little bit. It's slow and not a conventional crawl yet. It's been referred to as doing the worm or a seal flop. :P

Here it is unveiled in all it's glory!

My loving girly

Tessa is such a sweet and affectionate girl. I feel like lately she has developed more of an ability to show affection and it has been really nice. For instance she now can do this flopping motion to slowly get around and if I set her down she'll often flop over to me and climb onto my lap instead of going for her toys I've laid out in front of her. Then she'll just look up at me and smile especially when I enter the room. Best of all, Tessa has learned to give kisses. She'll grab my face with one hand and pull it toward her open mouth to give me a wet, gummy kiss on the cheek. Or if we are face to face she'll sometimes lean in to plant one on my mouth. They're slobbery but I love them!

Bryce Canyon

A few weekends ago we took Tessa to Bryce Canyon. We decided that it would be nicer to take her while she was still a bit lighter so she'd be easier to carry. We did several hikes and had a lot of fun. We took a bunch of pictures so it was hard to narrow down just a few to show on the blog so here is a ton of pictures.

Tessa had a really good time. I think her favorite hike was the popular one we went on as we passed lots of people on the trail and she loves interacting with others. She would do her normal stare and smile at everyone until they smiled back at her and told her and us how cute she is. It was funny; we probably had atleast 20 people tell us what a cute and happy baby we had. We'll have to do stuff like this more as I think she had a really good time and David and I did too.