We're Sick

All three of us.

And for the record. Tessa is a much happier sickie than either Mommy or Daddy. You know you've got a good kid when she gives you a BIG smile - barfs - then gives you another BIG smile.

(Ewww gross...don't you just hate the word barf :P)

Tessa's Daddy

During the time I was adding hyperlinks to the tour guide post and writing the post about our Halloween costumes (all in all about a half an hour) I thought Daddy was sleeping on the bed with Tessa. After all it is very easy to fall asleep yourself when you are putting the baby down for a nap. However he surprised me when he finally came out of the room and I asked if he had been sleeping. "No, I was reading that nursery rhyme book..." ...to himself! He he he.

A note about the costumes

I just HAVE to brag. (As if going on and on about how cute my baby is isn't enough.) The impetus for our bat family came when I was perusing the Halloween clearance racks last year. I made sure to buy something gender neutral considering the fact that I was only 11 weeks pregnant at the time! So as silly as that is I DID get a great deal. 1 baby bat costume originally priced at $19.99 on sale for 95 cents!! When I left the store I called Aaron and thought he would make fun of me. Instead the first thing he said was "I'm going to be BATMAN!" And there you have it.

The other brag is that I was out of time and didn't make it to the fabric store like I wanted to in order to get the felt and stuff need to turn ordinary black clothes into bat costumes. So we stopped at JoAnn's Fabric on the way to the ward party. So instead of homemade costumes they are car made costumes! Take that Martha Stewart!

Holy Center of Attention Batman!

I tell Tessa she is beautiful/cute/sweet about 25 times a day, minimum. Sometimes I think I should cut back a bit so that she doesn't become completely spoiled, but the truth is, she is too beautiful/cute/sweet for me to resist. Add that to all the old ladies at the grocery store coo-ing over her, oh, and to the problem I have controlling how many pictures I take of her. The result is she knows how to work a room and what to do in front of a camera.

Last night we all got dressed up and went to a Halloween party at a co-worker of Aaron's who lives near us. Don't tell the paparazzi but we had our baby out pretty late (with a long nap before hand.) Daddy couldn't even get beyond the front entry for 10 minutes because of the crush of admirers Tessa had. And oh did she preform!! We also wore the same get up to the ward Halloween party the night before. It was such fun to dress up and show off (as if we don't do that enough).

If you look to the right...

...You'll see a list of the blogs I check often. This is actually going to be very helpful to me so I don't have to remember web addresses...so much work. Now...I feel like I'm taking a big risk here because I haven't listed ALL the blogs I go to...its late, I'm tired. So I'll add more later, and I beg you to please don't think I don't love you if you aren't on the list...because I do, deeply.

Tour Guide

At the beginning of the month "Auntie" Mindy came to visit. She left her two girls in the able hands of her husband for 5 days and came and played with us. She got here late late on a Tuesday night. Wednesday morning (she'll kill me for posting this but she's not a blog reader so she may never know) she had a bad reaction to flying, food and weak stomach from the flu she'd just gotten over...but luckily she recovered by noon-time and we got to go look around downtown Salem.



Thursday we did the required, and enjoyable, tour of the Minute Man National Park with stops in Lexington and Concord. We made sure she had a sub at one of the local sub shops. I got to show her off to my book club (and vice versa).

Friday we trekked into Boston and went to the Museum of Fine Arts. That is a great museum. It is huge and with a new addition in 2010 will be even larger. Tessa slept through most of it but woke up in the Contemporary Art section (Mommy's favorite) and was thrilled with the art! If you think about it, contemporary art does look a lot like a children's book.

My driving made Mindy car sick. I think if you asked her that she'd agree. (Now that I think about it my Mom got car sick with me as a driver too...odd.) So Saturday she wasn't too thrilled about going back into Boston so we stayed local, visited the beach at Marblehead and drove around there, then we came back home made bean dip and invited another college roommate and her family up to watch a movie.





It is great how hanging out with a long time friend can be so easy and comfortable!!



Mindy left Sunday morning then Wednesday afternoon another friend, Jen, flew in. This was Jen's 3rd trip to New England so we had to dig deeper into the tour guide books to find new things to do. As a result I have a long list of fun things I've just seen for the first time. So, those of you who may have already come to visit...never fear, if you come again I'll be able to keep you entertained.

This was our itinerary while Jen was here.

Wednesday night we went to Salem Beer Works for dinner. Yum yum. Thursday Jen, Tessa and I headed to the Minute Man National Park for a recap of the events and some stops at the smaller sites there. Then we drove up beautiful New England roads filled with fall leaves to Lowell to visit the fabric mills there. Now, if you have lived in New England you may be thinking. Lowell?!? But you'd be surprised, the mill tours are very interesting and informative and I recommend them. I'm putting them on the list for when Aaron's parents visit again because there is a Quilt museum and a streetcar museum near the mill sites and I'd love to spend more time there. Not live there, just spend time there.

We had to hurry back from Lowell because we were going to the show Wicked at the Opera House that night. There were some nail biting moments in traffic when we thought we'd miss it but we got there in plenty of time. The show was great. Jen had seen it before, and she and I had read the book. Aaron hadn't seen it and whispered to me as it began "This isn't a musical is it!?" but he liked it a lot also. The musical itself is done well - it gets the same point across as the book. But the book is also very good and much more in depth so even if you've seen the show I recommend reading the book.

Friday Aaron took the day off. We had to get to Boston early for a follow up visit with Tessa's neurologist. She was a little show off and did all her tricks really well for the doctor. She is meeting all of her adjusted age milestones and the doctor is still thrilled with her. We had a little scare earlier in the month that required another MRI just to be cautious but there was no reason for alarm.



After Tessa's appointment we walked through Beacon Hill to the Charles River and walked along the Esplanade, then trekked up to Fanueil Hall to Wagamama. When Jen, Aaron and I went to London last year we ate a Wagamama. Then the opened a store here in Boston and Aaron and I ate there the first time I took Tessa into the city just for fun. We bragged to Jen...so she had to come out here to eat there also. After lunch we got rained on heading back to the car, then we went south to the JFK Presidential Library and Museum. Once again Tessa slept through a lot of that but woke up during the Cuban Missile Crisis and enjoyed the rest of the museum. I was amazed at this point that she was still being cheerful after more than a week of entertaining people.



Jen made us spaghetti for dinner that night. The plan was dinner, movie and assemble the Revolutionary War puzzle I bought when my family was here for the 4th of July. (Jen and I were both surprised that we had never put a puzzle together before since we were both so excited to find someone to do one with). The movie we were going to watch was Casino Royale because Aaron and I had never seen it and there was a scene in it Jen wanted us to see. However, we rented that movie from Blockbuster and then went to return some DVDs to the library...yes, you can guess what happened. We returned the DVD we had just rented. So we watched Liminy Snicket instead.





Saturday we picked up the DVD from the library then headed to the Cape. We got a bit of a late start but still did a lot of things we wanted to. First we stopped at Plymoth Rock then continued to the Cape. That means beaches and lighthouses. We saw Marconi's radio tower location, the Cape Cod national seashore. Yes, Aaron did swim in 65 degree weather in October....I'll try to get the video of him getting beat up by waves. We saw 2 working lighthouses and 3 that had been moved and didn't work any more. We also so a fox, 2 wood peckers and a TON of sea lions.



Sunday Jen ran the Witch City 5K (finisher 226) while Aaron, Tessa and I went to church. Then Jen and I went to the Stone Zoo, a long with 5,000 trick or treaters, it wasn't quite the quiet Sunday activity I had imagined. Aaron cooked us some Chicken Masala for dinner.

Monday Jen, Tessa and I once again headed south of Boston. Jen humored me as we went to the Adams National Historic Site. In case you didn't know, I LOVE John Adams. He's right up there with Bon Jovi if you ask me. The site was great. We took a trolley ride and got 1.5 hours of guided tour for five dollars. And to top it off, the parking garage was free with our validated ticket. You really, really can't get better than that!

Home again for dinner at a local restaurant. Tuesday the tourists extraordinaire (Jen, Tessa and I) hit the Peabody-Essex Museum in the morning, the Boston Hot Dog Company for lunch, and Salem Cycle and Salem Beer Works for souviners. Then off to the airport and woosh then Home.

Tessa is bored today..."Aren't we going to go anywhere?" But then again she is also taking a very long nap so perhaps she's just recuperating.

So...who's coming to visit next?

The tide has turned...

...And Tessa is now heavier than our cat...I think he knew that before I did. He has started acting a bit more deferential to her: hanging out in the same room, sleeping on the bed when she's on it, he even sat close enough for her to pet him. Poor Quincy, we tried to warn you buddy.


Even if he's not king of the castle any more, he is still a handsome boy.

So thirteen and a half pounds it is and two feet tall. She is a strong stander and is actually very near sitting up by herself. We are finding that we are not the parenting type that races our child to the next milestone. I am of course thrilled when she discovers her toes, or passes a toy from one hand to the other, or any number of other minor milestones...but each one makes her less and less of a baby.

Hair and Toes

This is a little bit about me and a little bit about Tessa.

First of all - Tessa finally found her toes. Despite the fact that I've been showing her toes to her everyday for the past two months, last Friday she suddenly looked at them, looked at me and said "Hey Mom, have you seen these things!! Why haven't you told me about them!?"

Well, that should have been the second of all because if we are thinking chronologically I got my hair cut 4 days before Tessa discovered her toes (the two are not related in any way, but these are the milestones that I live my life by). Here is a before and after. It will probably never look like that again but miraculously it looks even better when I do it myself.