18 Months

Tessa is turning 18 months shortly. It's fun to watch her grow and change. In the last 6 months her biggest development has been how talkative she has become. She can say a handful of words, knows a few signs, can make a few animal sounds, and has become really good at communicating though pointing, etc.

I feel like when you only know a handful of words, the words known can be telling so I'll share the words she knows. They include: hi, bye, ball, book, bath, dog, kitty, shoes, mom, dada, hat, bottle, that, bubbles, diaper, juice, and probably a few other words I'm forgetting. She's even said a two word sentence: "Dad ball" (David was holding a ball).

As far as signs she knows she'll regularly sign water, more, milk, bed, cat, bye/hi, cheese, and all done. She can sign many more signs when we go through sign language books together but she doesn't sign them in regular conversation. She knows the animal sounds and can say them for the following animals: dog, cat, cow, bug, and snake. Then she can also identify several body parts including toes, feet, nose, eyes, and mouth. She loves to point out the eyes on her stuffed animals and then touch her own eyes and mom's or dad's eyes.

The other big change is that Tessa finally has teeth. She got her first tooth at 15 months and in the matter of a few weeks three more came in. She now has the top two front teeth and bottom two front teeth. I thought we'd be able to sing "All I want for Christmas is my 2 front teeth", but her teeth eventually did come in before Christmas.

Here is a rather current picture showing off her four front teeth.

One of her favorite activities is reading. She'll read books on her own and will request books be read to her. She has a handful of favorite books that she'll ask to be read to her again and again. She also enjoys coloring and just in general playing with her toys. She has a fairly short attention span though so she'll pull out a toy and play with it for only a few seconds and then want to pull out another and repeat.

Since it's been so long since I've last added a post I thought I'd go back and post pictures from the last few months.

Our cutie in her birthday girl shirt.

Here we are visiting Antelope Island. Tessa loves hanging out outdoors.

It was neat to see the buffalo and fun to wade in the Salt Lake. It's been harder lately to get outside now with the weather being as cold as it has been, but we still go out for short walks and play outside occasionally.

Here Tessa is enjoying playing outdoors at a small, traveling carnival.
 

 

Here we are outside the new house under construction.

Here Tessa is enjoying playing in the new neighborhood.

Tessa loves helping!

Tessa enjoyed fun activities with her cousin Ashton! We went to the aquarium as well as BYU campus. Tessa loved feeding the ducks at the duck pond!

This summer, we also went to the state fair. Tessa enjoyed seeing the animals. Here she is showing off her climbing skills. She loves to climb. She'll even request that we get out the step ladder so she can climb it.

Tessa can't get enough of playing outside.

In preparation for moving and selling our home, we finally had to get the balloon down from the top of the upper cabinets in the kitchen that has been there since her cousin Megan's first birthday. Tessa enjoyed playing with it for a second but it rapidly deflated upsetting her.

With the weather getting colder we've been spending more time at one of Tessa's favorite places, Cabela's. She loves seeing the taxidermy animals there.

Here Tessa is enjoying yummy pie at Thanksgiving.

Here we are enjoying the natural history museum.

Tessa has really come to enjoy riding the ponies at Thanksgiving Point. She used to be frightened of riding them but now she'll ride the ponies for up to 5 minutes at a time.

We enjoyed some fun Christmas festivities this season.

Tessa loves seeing Christmas lights so we took her to temple square. She seemed to enjoy it. They had a nativity scene set up. Tessa liked pointing out the animals in it.

We took Tessa to see the ice sculptors and the reindeer at Thanksgiving Point. She had a fun time looking at the reindeer.

Tessa got the hang of decorating a gingerbread house pretty quickly. There were probably more candies eaten than made it onto the house but that's why people decorate gingerbread houses anyway, right? It was a lot of fun and I think we've discovered a new family tradition.

Christmas morning! Tessa took all day opening her presents. She would open one and then want to play with it. I think the last present was literally opened at 5:30 at night.

When my family came into town over Christmas, we went to the Nickelcade. Tessa liked the little merry go round.

Then in probably the biggest news since we last posted, we found out that Tessa is going to be a big sister. Here we are taking a belly shot with the fruit to show the baby's size. Tessa is also for some reason showing off a sock.

And finally here is a recent picture of Tessa showing how long her hair has been getting. Sometimes she looks so grown up it surprises me. She has been growing so fast. We sure love our girly.

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.