8 months

Tessa is 8 months old today. Here are her pics with her bear. She's really becoming fond of stuffed animals. She wanted to hug and eat the bear while I was taking her picture. And the hair is looking especially fluffy today! She's almost crawling. Definitely up on all fours moving backwards really well. She flips over so fast now. Her favorite place to do this is on the changing table making diaper changes quite the challenge.

We'll have more pics from her baptism up soon. And hopefully some fun videos of her latest moves in action.

Happy Fall everyone!

Tessa's DR adventure

Last week, Tessa got her first stamp in her passport. Big accomplishment for a 7-month-old. She and I set out for five days in the Dominican Republic. My mom (thankfully) joined us to help out and see the place I've been telling her about for years. The trip was fairly smooth. A quick overnight stay in Charlotte, then a 6am flight started the trip off well. Until Miami. Ugh. First we were delayed an hour. Then another and another. We occupied our seats at gate 36D from 8am until 1:45pm. Then sat on the plane for another hour waiting for the crew to get there to pilot the plane!

Once we did arrive in the DR, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I saw Elliott and Lindsay there to pick us up. There's nothing like a familiar face after a long day of travel. Tessa was such a trooper. She ended up sleeping through both flights. My mom was awesome. She lugged around our carry-ons, fed and played with Tessa, and helped keep me sane as we waited like what seemed forever in that airport.

After a decent night's rest, we started our day in Cielo where I was able to introduce many of my Dominican friends to my mom and Tessa. My mom was a little more excited about meeting people than Tessa was. It's really funny to see people talk to a baby in a different language/culture. They still talk in high-pitched voices and call her things like "doll," "chi-chi," (I guess short for 'Chinita' which is 'little Chinese'), and my personal fave, "caballita (little horse)." The latter is due to her hair that sticks straight up all over her head. Like an Asian afro. Needless to say, they loved her even though she wasn't so happy at the sight of them. It was more about her being tired than not liking them. She doesn't like anybody when she's tired.

Anyway, the Women's Co-Op spent the few days working on a jewelry project with Caroline. She had been down in June and started working with them then, but decided to return to really help jumpstart the business. The products are beautiful. I'll post about them soon. We hope to have them ready to sell for the holidays.

We visited Luma and her family every day. We had some good quality time with Elliott, Lindsay, and Avery. Tessa and Avery were able to get to know each other as we hope they will grow up to be best friends! (We'll have to put a few more stamps in our passports to make that happen.)

I'll leave you with a link to all the pics. I've already put them on Facebook and I'm too tired to post them here. So just click here and you can see them. Thanks everyone for your prayers as we traveled!