Tessa Says the Darndest Things II

Tessa: Tessa sick. Tessa need these medicines. (while pointing at sprinkles)


Tessa (while rubbing Jenny's head): I pet her.

Tessa's Two and a Half-ish Photos

We took Tessa to get her pictures taken. She was a little shy with the photographer but we think they turned out pretty cute any way.

Tessa Says the Darndest Things

Tessa says things that crack me up sometimes. In what I think what will be a continuing type of blog post, I'll note some of the funny things she says. Here are a few funny things she's said in the last few days:

Tessa (holding a foam Q): This is?
Mom: That's a Q. It makes the "Qu" sound like Queen.
Tessa: Ooohhh...Queen. Tessa loves Queen. Queen best princess.


Mom: Tessa when you get a little older you'll be able to go to preschool. I'll go with you at first but then you'll go on your own.
Tessa: Tessa need help drive.
Mom: Mom or Aubrey will drive you and will drop you off at to preschool.
Tessa: Help doors.
Mom: We'll help you open the doors to your preschool.
Tessa: K.


Tessa (giving Jenny her Minion toy to play with): Don't spit up.
Mom: Oh, Jenny can play with your minion as long as she doesn't spit up on it?
Tessa: Uh huh.


I'm sure there are more that I can't think of at the moment. I'll add more as they come up.

Two and a half months

Jenny is about 2 and a half months now. She is doing great. We feel so lucky to be blessed with such a wonderful baby. At her two months doctors appointment she weighed in at 8 pounds putting her below the third percentile. She was in the 74th percentile lengthwise though. We took her to see a lactation consultant who informed us that she is needing more to eat than I have been able to produce so we have switched to formula. She has been taking to it really well and has been putting on weight rapidly. She currently weighs about 9 and a half pounds and has seemed stronger. She wears both and newborn and she 0-3 month clothes. Neither actually fit her exactly right though as the newborn clothes aren't long enough and the 0-3 month clothes are baggy.

Jenny is such a social baby. She absolutely loves it when people smile at her and talk to her. She seems to just bask in the attention. Even if she is just chilling in her bouncer seat, she likes to have someone sitting next to her. She has started smiling and smiles easily when talked to and smiled at. 

Tessa and Jenny have been getting along pretty well. Tessa will give Jenny toys to play with so that is always cute. (Don't worry - I picked Jenny up right after snapping the pictures.)

We're really glad Jenny is doing well and feel so lucky to have our girls.

Two-year-old Tessa

At 2, Tessa is very active. She loves getting out of the house and goes a bit stir crazy if kept at home all day. A good day is one where we get out to the pool or park or to one of her favorite places - "Tait's house" (her cousin's/best friend's house). She also loves going to ride the ponies at Thanksgiving Point and going to play at the children's museum. She loves going on walks especially to the mail box. This week after going to the park on Monday, the pool on Tuesday, and a different park on Wednesday, I told Tessa that we were going to have a stay home day on Thursday and told David he could take the car to get to work instead of riding his bike. On our stay home day, Tessa and I ended up playing an elaborate game of pretend where she buckled her bears in and out of their imaginary carseats and drove us around town. We went to the park and pretended to swing on the swings and go down the slide. We pretended we went to the pool and swam there and we went to Tait's house where we talked to and played with a pretend Tait. Later we went to the library, a farm, an icecream parlor, and a candy store - quite the eventful pretend day on the town.

At 2, some of Tessa's favorite toys are her baby doll (referred to simply as 'baby') and stroller. She'll take her baby on walks in the stroller and likes to have baby come with us the park. She'll "breastfeed" her baby from her belly button which is pretty cute and put her baby down for naps. 

She also loves her two teddy bears named green bear and pink bear. She has become quite the little mommy with them. She'll swaddle them in Jenny's blankets and give them Jenny's pacifiers.

She also really likes these toy plates and cups she has. She likes to pretend to cook and eat with them at her little table in her play room.

At 2, Tessa has lost her nanny she's had since she was 3 month's old. She talks about her often saying "Rachey gone." or "Rachey help. Rachey's dad." She'll also draw pictures with Rachel in them. It's been hard to lose her but we've been grateful that we were able to have her for as long as we did and that Tessa was able to have a secure, loving bond with her caregiver. In this picture she is practicing writing the letter 'S' with chalk and making differently sized S's calling them 'daddy S', 'mommy S', 'Tessa S', 'Rachey S'.

Tessa can talk so well now. She says longer and longer sentences. She sometimes even uses the plural 's' correctly. She is such a chatterbox; though if you're a stranger talking to her you'd never know it as she is rather shy until she warms up to you.

At 2, the weirdest food Tessa has requested and eaten has been cubed sharp cheddar dipped in mustard. Followed closely in grossness probably has to be when she asked for mustard on her toast. Of course, the frozen peas eaten straight from the freezer (I offered to cook them) were pretty weird too. Her favorite foods are noodles, scrambled eggs, milk and of course sweets like chocolate, icecream, and chocolate milk.

We threw a little party for Tessa's second birthday. Thank you to all that were able to come and thank you for the kind gifts.

It's hard to believe David and I have a 2-year-old. It's all gone by so fast. When I think about how fast it's been going, it makes me feel like before we know it, we're going to be dropping Tessa off at college and it makes me almost want to cry. I love Tessa so much. She's so creative and playful and funny and kind. She has become such a cool kid. Sometimes I just desperately wish there was a "pause" button to pause life as it is know so I can just keep enjoying the awesome kid that Tessa is at the age she is now.

Jenny is 6 weeks old

Time is flying by. Jenny is already 6 weeks old. She has put on about a pound since she was born and is nearly 7 pounds now. She fills out her newborn clothes now. She seems longer too but it may just be that she's not scrunching her legs up as much. She still sleeps a lot but she'll have a few longer stretches during the day when she is awake. She likes to nurse to sleep and is still sleeping next to me in bed at night. She seems to give some limited eye contact now which is neat. She has the prettiest dark blue eyes though they'll likely change. She has vocalized a little bit too. She'll make this "ah" sound and I'll talk back to her and she'll make the sound again. So that was really neat to see the first inklings of communication. She likes her swing though she is so light the various settings that are supposed to swing at different intensities all just swing fast and high so I think sometimes she gets scared on it; she has her startle reflex sometimes while on it atleast. She likes her baby gym and has been able to bat at the toys on it a few times. Whenever I'm out and about with her people will generally say "oh, a brand new baby" or when people ask how old she is, they are surprised when I tell them a month old and they remark at how small she is. To me though she is getting so much bigger. We're glad she is doing well and love our Jenny girl.

Toddlerhood

Well we have the quintessential kid injury out of the way. Hopefully, now that it's happened we won't have to worry about it happening again. You guessed it, Tessa stuck something up her nose. It was a small, smooth bead. One minute she had it in her hand and the next she is fussily saying nose. Sure enough it is jammed up there way further than we could hope to extract. We suggest taking her to the doctor to have them get it out and she fussily agrees. She was a little shaken up about it but was a brave little trooper. To get it out, they put a catheter up her nose past the bead, blew air into the catheter to make it blow up like a balloon on the end, and then pulled out the catheter removing the bead with it. She started crying as they were inserting the catheter and I could see she was uncomfortable and scared. Thankfully it was over fairly quickly. As soon as they finished getting it out, I was quick pick her up and reassure her that they had gotten it out and it was all done. She was happy and relieved when it was over and has since mentioned it many times in the last 3 weeks since it happened saying "bead out; all done!" We've since gotten the bill in the mail and go figure there is actually a medical code specifically for billing getting a foreign object out of the nose. Also of note, that billing code bills $225! Luckily this happened in a year we had already met our deductible so we only paid about $25 but wow - that could have been expensive!

Jennifer is 2 Weeks

We had Jennifer's 2 week appointment. She weighed 5 lbs 12 oz so she made it back to her birth weight which is what the doctor said he likes to see at the 2 week appointment. She's still in the fifth percentile but she's doing healthy.

I can't really tell if she looks plumper in the face . . . maybe?

Our Talker

Tessa has become a regular chatterbox which has been alot of fun. Some of her favorite phrases are "Tessa do it", "I did it", and "See that" (which means lift me so I can see something). She loves to do things on her own like trying to put her shoes on on her own and loves to help especially helping in the kitchen with stirring and adding ingredients. She also often says "Baby hold you" (which means she wants to hold the baby). She's really become able to communicate her opinions and wants extremely well. She'll often tell us that she wants to go outside or to the park which she calls the "swings slides" or the pool or splash pad. She can tell us what stuffed animals she wants to sleep with. She requests specific books to be read to her and asks for us to turn on her favorite show "Daniel Tiger" and can even request a specific episode. In the car, she'll request that we turn the radio on saying "song". She'll dance and sing along to songs. When she sings she'll generally sing made up words or will sing the phrase "Let it go". Commonly in the car she'll say, "Sun bright". She hates when the sun gets in her eyes particularly in the car; we bought her a sun hat we keep in the car that has helped some. She'll use that phrase when there are bright lights indoors though too. One funny thing she's started doing is saying "k" as in okay. She'll ask for something by saying something like "swings slides". We'll repeat back what we think she said in order to clarify that we heard and understood correctly by saying something like "you want to go to the park?" Then she'll say "k" as if going to the park was your idea the whole time and she's just agreeing to it. She's a funny kid. We love that she can talk so well now though. I love feeling like I'm really communicating with her and being able to see her personality and preferences.

Jenny's First Few Days

Jenny was born a few days ago after a fairly easy labor. When she was first born she screamed the loudest, most angry sounding screaming for about 20 minutes straight. She had apparently swallowed a fair amount of amniotic fluid and had to cry it out. At the time, David and I didn't know that was the case and were a bit freaked out. She was able to eventually get enough of it out to calm down and nurse though. And since then she has hardly cried much at all. Here she is with David minutes after birth: 

At birth she was 5 pounds 11 oz and 18 inches long. At the fifth percentile for weight, the doctor categorized her as SGA or small for gestational age. We have her in newborn clothes and diapers though she is swimming in them. Sometimes she'll even scrunch up her legs and then when stretching them back out she'll get both of her legs in one pant leg of her sleeper.

She lost weight in her first few days of life, like many babies do, and was down to 5 lbs 4 oz, but she is gaining now and is up to 5 lbs 7.5 oz. Other than her being very small though, she is perfectly healthy.

She is also perhaps the world's easiest baby. She has been eating well so far and sleeping a ton. She has a very calm temperament. We can already tell that she is a binky baby; she loves to be sucking her binky much of the time. She likes to be held but has already been able to sleep in her crib on her own a few hours at a time.

We've already done tummy time a few times for a minute or two at a time. Jenny doesn't like it but she tolerates it without too much fuss. She has been able to lift her head up enough to move it from looking from the left to right. She also managed to one time kick her legs with enough force to fling her from her tummy to her side.

Tessa has seemed excited to have Jenny join our family. The first few days after Jenny was born, Tessa was just this huge ball of energy. She would run around flying from activity to activity almost seeming like she had more energy than she knew how to deal with. 

She's also wanted to hold baby Jenny a lot and has helped give her her pacifier. Here is Tessa holding Jenny for the first time:

Tessa has been a little jealous of the attention we've had to spend on Jenny, which we've just seen as a bit more crying, but overall she has been doing really well.

We feel so grateful that Jenny is healthy and happy. She has been a joy of an addition to our family.

Introducing Baby Jennifer Jane

Baby Jenny has joined our family! We are so excited to have her. Brace yourself for cuteness; here are her newborn pictures:

Catching Up

Tessa has been growing up so quickly lately. Her language abilities have been improving rapidly. She can understand pretty much anything we want to try to say to her. Then she learns how to say new words everyday. She's also started using 2 word sentences with increasing frequency. She'll say "mom glasses" or "Tessa shoes" or "dada up". It's fun to be able to communicate with her more.

We recently visited a reptile zoo. Tessa was a bit scared of this guy.

Though I can't say I blame her. He looked like he was trying to escape pushing his head and arm up against the glass.

She was really interested in the turtles. She kept coming back to look at them again and again.

It was a pretty small zoo, but we still stayed and looked at the animals for a while as Tessa really enjoyed it.

About a month or two ago Tessa and I visited my sister in Oregon and parents in Washington. We had a lot of getting to meet Tessa's new cousin Adam and play with family.

Tessa had a lot of fun at a bounce house to. Here she is riding down this track on a car with a steep down hill decline. I thought she would be too scared to ride it but she absolutely loved it.

We also went to a fun children's museum. Tessa loved trying on the different costumes.

She was quite scared of this HUGE bear at first. She'd walk past it and look at it and back away. With grandma by her side, Tessa mustered the courage to sit on the bear's lap though.

Tessa really loved playing with her cousins. She had a lot of fun with them and it was cute to see her hugging them all goodbye when it was time to say goodbye.

Easter was a lot of fun with Tessa this past year. We went to two different egg hunts. Tessa caught on pretty quick as we had been filling up plastic eggs with candy in the weeks leading up to Easter so she knew they had candy inside.

She really liked the Easter Bunny they had at one of the egg hunts. She kept going back again and again to see him. We had to keep waiting in line to see the Easter bunny for a minute or two at a time as it was just supposed to be a quick photo opportunity.

At the park the other day there was this soccer goal post and Tessa really wanted to climb up it. Here she is making an attempt. 

Tessa is funny. She tries to climb straight up things often. She'll even try to climb straight up a wall.