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.

My Little Cutie!

So Tessa has been doing enough cute things in the last few months to dedicate a whole post to all the cute things she does! :)

First off, Tessa came up with her own joke for the first time. I asked her to throw her dirty diaper in the garbage can, and she opened her mouth really wide and pretended like she was going to eat her dirty diaper. I knew she was just joking since she didn't actually try to eat it and she was looking at me watching for a reaction. I joked back with her about that being yuck and she laughed her head off and I laughed too. She's since branched out with the joke from just dirty diapers to boogers and then most recently to the junk pulled out of the bottom of the vacuum cleaner when cleaning it.

Tessa learned to that snakes make the sound "sss". She'll identify snakes in books and say "sss". Then the other day we had soup with noodles. She pointed to the noodles and said "sss".

She'll also do this adorable thing where she'll treat statues of animals like they are alive. She was a little scared of this statue of a dinosaur at the dinosaur museum but she was intrigued by it. In this picture she is keeping here distance but she's calling to it to come to her with her hands.

The little otter statue at the zoo wasn't quite as scary; here she is giving it a hug.

Lately Tessa has been doing this other really cute thing. We have some train tracks laid out in her room and she'll walk along on top of the track and say "choo-choo" and make the train choo-chooing gesture.

Other small cute things she'll do include she'll cuddle her teddy bear and pat the bear's back. She'll also try to share her sippy cup with her bear. A few days ago she rode around on her little barbie car and thought it was so funny.

Wearing mom or dad's shoes around the house is always fun too!

Then the other day when it was time to change diapers and put on pajamas she thought it was really funny to hide in the closet.

Then just yesterday we went to the Gardens at Thanksgiving Point. Tessa saw a goose there. She got really excited seeing it and started shouting "guck! guck!" which is how she says duck. She decided she wanted to kiss it and proceeded to chase it around with her lips puckered. The goose was pretty good at out-running her and juking her by waddling into the small creek. At one point Tessa did manage to get kind of close but then the goose flew away.

Here Tessa and Daddy are showing off their pucker-faces for the camera.