Tessa and the girls
Of course we have a ton of toys for Tessa to play with, but her favorite playthings are furry and bigger than she is. Montana and Neela are politely tolerating her so far. Let's hope it stays that way. (You'll notice it's mostly Montana in the pictures. That's because Neela just tries to lick Tessa all the time, so we make her move. Poor Neela.)
On the move
It's happening. Life as we know it is over. Tessa is crawling. First, she was able to push herself up and then lay back down having scooted backwards a few inches. Then, she was up on all fours rocking back and forth trying to move, but not going anywhere. Next came the lean and roll to reach a toy in front of her. Now she's on to the army crawl and the occasional up-on-all-fours legit crawl. And within the matter of a few hours, she went from crawl position to sitting. Then at naptime yesterday, I laid her down only to hear her a few minutes later. When I peeked through the door, she was up on her knees playing with the ladybug mobile (which has now been removed).
We've been trying to catch her on video as much as we can, but our little camera isn't the best at movies. I think a real video camera is on the short list!
Here's our first installment. Backwards:
Baptized
Tessa was baptized on September 20, 2009. It was such a special day celebrating her and all that God will do in her life. We committed ourselves as her parents to raise her as a follower of Jesus teaching her to love Him more than anything. I pray that we will lead her by example everyday.
reunited
A couple weekends ago I hosted 4 friends from college for a girls' weekend. It's been 6 or 7 years since the 5 of us have been together. And none of us can remember when it was. We have a picture from that time, but no date to tell us exactly. We know we've had as many as 4 of us together since then, but living in TN, NC, VA, and MA as well as another country since moving on from Chapel Hill has kept us apart. Well, now we're all back within 2 states so we decided to reunite. We had so much fun catching up on life.
I'm so thankful for friends that I can go years without seeing (which is NOT my preference), but as soon as we're back together, it's like we never left. Love you girls! (Now we have Facebook, my blog, and pictures with dates so we won't forget this time.)
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
