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.

Wanting to Walk

After trying to crawl for the last 3 and a half months or so, I think Tessa has decided it's just not happening - time to move on to plan B and just start working on walking. :P

She loves to stand and practice walking while holding on to our fingers. If we try to put her on her hands and knees to practice crawling, and she's in the mood to walk (which she often is), she'll get pretty upset. It's pretty cute how excited she's gotten about trying to walk but we're definitely still working on crawling with her as we don't want her to skip the milestone. Our girly is growing up fast!

My Gummy Girly

At 7 months Tessa still has absolutely no teeth and I don't mind. It means I can keep letting her get away with chewing on cords -

- which she loves!