Conference Weekend

I love me a good family tradition and since this is the 3rd General Conference in a row that we've gone to the sea shore between sessions it looks like I have a new one to add to the list. (I say sea shore because that sounds so much more reverent and Sunday-worthy that "gone to the beach")

This year we went to downtown Marblehead and to the park there (name escapes me).

My little dare devils...


Of course its not as steep as it looks in the photo but Tessa did climb the whole thing by herself.

Meg finally decided to become a walker. This was her first outing with her new skill.

{There was a family photo here,
that a nice woman volunteered to take, but I look like an ogre so...
...no.}

We got home from the shore just in time to eat our soup and sandwiches in front of our big screen.

Photo Catch-up Meg's Birthday

Someone just (as in 6 weeks ago) turned ONE.


Meg shares her birthday with a little boy in our ward. When his mom and I talked about doing a joint "party" I warned her I had an idea for a theme but it might be a bit girlie (as in, not trucks). She gave me carte blanche so I went ahead with my idea.

Last year the kids were born on a 90 degree day in April and all the trees blossomed at once. So the theme was "Popcorn popping on the apricot tree" and I spent a good deal of my day making this...



Which as you can see had three cupcakes at the top that could be pulled off to make 2 birthday "cakes" and a pity "don't feel left out" cake for Tessa.

Which she enjoyed

Tessa's Birthday

Having a child old enough to anticipate her birthday is so much fun. Tessa was excited for friends to come, for them to wear birthday hats (I had to go out the night before the party to find them), for cupcakes, and of course, for presents.

I let Tessa pick her theme and it was "Pink and Purple." Gotta love simplicity!

The theme is evident in the pictures.

Sweet as can be.

Its not me, its you...

Yes, I did in fact turn thirty this January. And with little emotional fanfare as I tend to look forward to my birthdays (although I did freak out a bit when I was turning 27 and had no idea how to take care of my soon to arrive 1st born). I attribute my ability to ease gently into my thirties to the fact that I am in just the perfect spot in life. Not too many kids, not to few, good guy at my side, a cozy little house in a great cit - and - unless you look really closely in the right wrong light, no gray hair.

However.

What is really wigging me out is that all of YOU are turning thirty. I can turn thirty. But when my entire peer group, in a single years time is blogging, facebooking and txt msging about the big 3-0 I suddenly realize - I am friends with old people.

So, I'll continue to age gracefully, thank you very much. But if the rest of you could stop, that'd be great.

Happy Birthday to me, from my my raisons d'etre.

My Hair Blog

Its time I let you in on a secret. I have another blog. Its called www.1,000,001-ways-to-not-comb-let-alone-braid-your-daughters-hair-for-around-the-house-or-special-events.blogspot.com. In addition to creative ways to not comb your child's hair there is also has a special section on ways to not wipe yesterday's breakfast off of your daughters' face.

Its a niche blog.

But, if my subscribers saw this picture they'd abandon me in droves.

Behold the first ever pig tails AND keeping barrettes in hair all day, to the point of wanting to sleep in them.

-------

I could tell she knew she was cute when she actually took the binkie out of her mouth and smiled when I asked.

You'll never guess what Tessa did today

She went to her first day of pre-school.



Ack - I just felt a shower of stones. Yes, I did send my barely two year old to preschool. It is through the early intervention program and is basically the next step up from the parent-toddler group we've been going to. I'll continue my justification by saying she had a great time.


No tears when we told her good bye - thanks in part to church nursery and being in the same building that been going to for a year and a half for the parent-toddler group. Oh, and the rockin' play kitchen they have. When we picked her up we watched via the 2way glass as she finished her snack and took her chair over to the circle for a story. I did get the feeling she was wondering when, or if, we were coming back...at the very end of the class she was watching to door - and OH the smile and clapping we finally showed ourselves.

(The obligatory craft - I'm so proud)

Hold on - I'm sensing a second shower of stones falling in my direction. Yes, I am supposed to be resting - but all I did was drive a mile and since the medical community sees fit to schedule me for 3-4 medical appointments a week (yes, I'm serious) that involve just as much effort I'd be okay. Alicia did all the getting into and out of the car seat and coat putting on/taking off and I wasn't going to send my BAY-BEE to preschool on her own - come on!

New Bed

Well folks, the princess not only has her own room, but two beds on which to sleep. She is still sleeping mainly in her crib but we've had two nights that started in the big girl bed and went nearly all night.

Can you tell she likes the bed?

Turns out it is also a good place for Daddy to take a nap (I'm still working on getting him to sleep there for the rest of the pregnancy ;) ) and is terribly convenient if your mom is on bed rest!

28 weeks + 1 week

28 weeks
When I first went into labor with Tessa and before everyone realized that we would be lucky to get 48 hours till her birth the doctors told me that they were going to try and get me to 28 weeks. I didn't make it there until 2 years later...but YEAH for that.

So - here is what I look like at 28-ish weeks - and YEAH (did I already say that?)

29 weeks
Oh - and - btw - I was in the hospital for observation for a few hours Monday morning. I was having contractions 6-10 minutes apart from 3-9 am. No change in my cervix though so I got an IV then home I came. The contractions are pretty much non-existant now so - whew. I'm taking this as a subtle reminder to keep taking it easy and not get to cavalier about this whole thing. As glad as I am to be at 29 weeks (YEAH) it is still way to early to have a baby...plus we haven't picked a name yet.

Tessa's Update

Just before we left town to go to Idaho Tessa had a NICU follow-up evaluation scheduled. Very unfortunately our trip into Boston involved some throwing up, followed by an incredibly long trek to a gas station in order to clean up. Luckily for me (very very luckily indeed) Aaron was a passenger so he handled most of the gross-ness. I'm not going to get to details but suffice it to say, my pregnant stomach would not have handled it well.

The point of the vomit story is to tell you that we postponed the follow-up appointment until we got back from Idaho. This time we used our "key to a throw-up free trip" = pack an extra set of clothes...if you are prepared for a disaster it will not happen. Anyone want to scientifically test that statement for me?

Tessa did really well at her evaluation. Of course she started out shy, but eventually warmed up and had a fun time playing. The bottom line = she was 22 months and tested at 21 months. This is in keeping with the idea that a preemie catches up to her adjusted age by 24 months. I figure that she does more stuff with me at home so that puts her right on target and I couldn't be happier. She tested just a little lower on her expressive language, we are working on that and I keep feeling like she is just about to start talking up a storm. Actually she already talks up a storm, unfortunatly we can't understand what she so expressively tells us.

Hello...Hello...?

Thrilled. To. Death. To be wearing Momma's shoes.

Here is our big little girl helping Momma make taco soup.

Too Big for her Britches

Tessa is turning into such a toddler! I'd like to pleasure you with some anecdotes...

The other day I was deep in a phone conversation for work, pacing the length of the condo as I talked. After dodging Tessa a number of times I realized that she was following me, with her hand to her ear babbling to herself.

She's started pretending. Over the weekend she feed Aaron with a fork a whole serving of who knows what from the empty lid of a Pam cooking spray container.

Because the cat dishes were empty I let her play with them (I know, not enforcing positive behavior!) and found her kneeling over them, biting the side as if eating from them.

Same thing happened with Quincy's water fountain (if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't ask), except it wasn't empty and she was wearing Daddy's knit hat. She ended up with a stripe of water from the crown of her head to her belly button.

While I was eager looking forward to so many milestones, rolling over, crawling, walking. I was NOT looking forward to climbing. I know it makes me seem selfish to hear that I would not help her learn to climb, if she started trying to pull up on a chair I would pick her up and set her there. NO DEVELOPMENT OF BICEPS FOR ME PLEASE! But alas, you can't stand in the way of progress and now she can climb up and sit on a chair, as smug as you please. So now a lot of my day is spent saying "Sit down...sit. Sit down...Tessa, on your bum...sit." She has yet to try climbing on the counter - and I am counting my lucky stars as long as that lasts.

100% increase

In TEETH!

After months and months of waiting I can both see and feel two shiny new top teeth in Tessa's mouth. Those pesky things have sure taken their time showing up and I think two more are on the way. I hoping for some relief from the late night fussing that the still-sleeping-Tessa has been doing for the aforementioned months and months.

Speaking of Months

As of next Monday Aaron and I will have been married for 85 months.

16 Months = 16 Months

Yesterday Tessa had an evaluation by a therapy team through Early Intervention. She's been in the program for a year and they do an eval every 6 months.

Yesterday she "tested" at 14-16 months on everything except Gross Motor skills. That is only because she isn't walking...yet.

Do you know what this means? It means that when people ask the simple question "how old is she?" I can drop the inner struggle over which answer to give.

There is a struggle you ask? Trust me its there.

Let use Tessa at 11 months as an example. Keeping in mind that at 11 months she looked and acted like a 8/9 month old when a grandma at the grocery store would ask I could either say "She's 1 months" and get the my-granddaughter-who-is-11-months-is-bigger/talking/waving look. Or I could say "She's 8 months" which is technically a lie (but not in my mind). Of I could say "She's 11 months but she was born early so she's small" which is a mouthful and frankly, over-sharing in a grocery store situation.

But now I need agonize no longer. Particularly because it is fairly common for 16 month olds to still be working on walking (and at the grocery store she's sitting in a cart). Now I can just say her AGE and be done with it.

Monkey

Tessa is just starting to show signs of "I can do it myself!"

An example is shown here. She won't eat banana if it is cut up into pieces. She will eat almost the whole thing if she can hold onto it though.

Baby

Guess what.



We bought Tessa a dolly.


It took us approximately 30 minutes to choose...

...and to be honest, I'm having buyer's remorse...we should have gotten the other one.

But luckily Tessa is happy with it...

Standing

TESSA CAN STAND ON HER OWN!

Actually the big news is that this morning she let go of the chair, stood for about 30 seconds and clapped while she was doing it!

Then she started giggling because she was SO pleased with herself - and fell over.

Tessa's First Architectural Convention

The AIA convention came to Boston and we went to the AIA convention. Tessa really seemed to appreciate many of the vendors...particularly those that had flashy lights or gave her a pen.

One of our friends from school was in town for the convention. Aaron showed him around town a bit, took him on the highway to give him a good scare (we like to make people feel welcome) and the whole family went to dinner with him on Friday night. (His wife is a blogger so I'll give a shout out to her for managing all five kids while he was away!)

After the convention we went to the beach to eat our lunch. But it was too windy to really have much fun.


While we were walking on the floor of the convention I realized how I was nearly completely out of touch with the "practice" part of architecture, This was emphasized when we were perusing the AIA bookstore and I was enthralled with the stacks and stacks of books on architecture and urban theory. I guess one more example of how Aaron and my experience and interests are complimentary, as opposed to equivalent.

Cheap Thrills

We just bought Tessa a big girl car seat...but that is not the cheap thrill (believe me!) Wonderfully, the car seat came in a box that was perfectly Tessa sized!

I'm told this feeling will wear off

But for now I am so proud of my girl...look at all the things she can do now that she is army crawling with the best of 'em.

Inspect Cat bowl (Quincy is NOT pleased to have to share)


Help Mommy with the filing.

Life of a One Year Old

Wake up:

Take a bath:

Bust some chops at the office:

Fight traffic: