Fun Family Day

We had a lot of fun on President's Day. In the morning we toured a chocolate factory, Mrs. Cavanaugh's, which was fun and tasty. Then we visited the Tracy Aviary. Tessa was way too interested in looking at the 'mincos' to turn around for the picture.

And here is David and Jenny. I promise she really had more fun over the course of the visit than the picture lets on.

Then in the evening we went to a children's play at the Scera. I don't know if Tessa really enjoyed it too much. She did sit through the entire thing (it ran for about an hour) which she doesn't really do at all so that is saying something for her. Afterward we asked if she liked the play and she said it was too boring. Though we met Alice after the show and she was really excited about that.

Playing Together

The other day the girls were actually playing together. It was really sweet. Tessa was riding her little bicycle up and down the hallway and dining area and Jenny was following her walking holding my fingers. Whenever Jenny would catch up she and Tessa would start cracking up and Jenny would excitedly jump up and down. This has become a daily game now in our house except it's morphed into losing the bike and just running around the dining room table.

Jenny really loves Tessa. I think Tessa really is her favorite person (probably with the cat as a near second favorite). Jenny wouldn't babble much at all by 6 months when babies generally start babbling. However, when Jenny turned 7 months she all of a sudden started babbling her first consonant sound saying "T, t, t". I don't know if it is a coincidence or not but it's neat that it was the T sound almost as if she was trying to say Tessa. I don't know if she really was or not but I thought that was a little bit of an unusual first consonant as it's usually the "D" or "M" sound. It's been so neat to see the girls chasing each other and cracking up laughing.

Jenny's 6 Month Pictures

Christmas Time

We had a lot of fun at Christmas time this year.

It's been super cold here in Utah and we've been getting loads of snow. We've played out in the snow a little bit. Here is Jenny in her blueberry. Thanks grandma for knitting it.

We had enough snow to make big snowman. I thought Tessa would think it was cool to have a snowman as tall as her. When I tried to get her to stand next to the snowman for taking a picture, she wouldn't unless she was sitting on my lap so that is the picture we got. The funny thing though is once I saw the picture I ended up getting, I could see the snowman from the angle she was seeing it and I see why she found it scary. 

Here are the kids 'helping' with the holiday cooking.

Everyone enjoyed the Christmas tree this year.

Here we are cutting out snowflakes for more ornaments to decorate the tree with as Tessa really enjoyed decorating it and she kept wanting to keep decorating it more and more.

The funny thing was Tessa wanted to decorate the tree with the scraps instead of the actual snowflakes. I guess that gave her more ornaments to decorate the tree with. 

Here we are doing our annual gingerbread house decorating.

Santa sent the elves this year and they got into plenty of trouble. Tessa loved finding them every morning. Thanks Grandma!  

Then we had lots of fun visiting family in Washington. Here we are decorating gingerbreadmen.

In the last picture we got of Jenny and her cousin Adam, she looked absolutely tiny and Adam looked giant. It's nice to see Jenny has caught up some. 

Tessa asked for one thing from Santa - pink sunglasses. Thanks for being such an easy kid.

Then both girls together on Christmas morning.

Tessa loved her new face paint and had to play with it immediately.

Here we are enjoying more Christmas gifts.

And then of course the traditional baby in the stocking photo! It was a really fun Christmas! It's so fun making memories and seeing the girls having so much fun with Christmas traditions.

6 month old Jenny

Jenny is 6 months. At her 6 month appointment, she weighed in at the 35th percentile for weight. She is also in the 92th percentile for height. So we're really happy she is doing good and growing well. We've also moved her into her 6 month clothes too so we're happy that she is finally fitting into her size group clothes on schedule.

Here she is in all her length!

We've recently started her on baby food and she loves it. She has been really interested in real food. When we eat in front of her, she'll watch really intently, smack her lips and fuss and reach for our food. She seems at least a little bit appeased when we give her semi-real food (baby food).

She is doing really well with her milestones. She can roll over from front to back and back to front. She has even on a few occasions rolled repeatedly and actually got some distance. She is starting to figure out sitting up and can do it for 10-15 seconds at a time. She doesn't get up on her knees to practice crawling at all yet but she does like putting weight on her legs in the standing position. She has also gotten really good with controlling her hands. It's neat to be able to see her roll toward something and reach for it. You can see what she is interested in and see her little personality a little bit more.

Lately she seems especially interested in Tessa. She'll watch her whenever she is playing nearby and reach for her if she is close. Jenny seems to look at Tessa with this thought that she wants to be just like Tessa; she seems to me to really look up to Tessa. You can just see in her eyes this look of love and admiration. I've really enjoyed seeing some sweet sister moments. It's neat to see Tessa reach out on her own to hug Jenny or hold her hand or say that she loves Jenny.

Jenny still loves to be talked to. She laughs easily and is just such a happy and social baby. She still doesn't cry very much and is still such an easy baby.

We feel so lucky to have her!