Don't you wish...

...that you had a sister-in-law that's as fabulously talented as mine is? Melissa made this ridiculously cute outfit for Teresa. Yep, even the bow. Love it!

Blast from the Past

My mom was doing some cleaning and organizing recently and came across a box of heirloom clothes she had put away for her grandchildren to wear one day. She pulled out a beautiful sweater that just happened to be Teresa's size. It was made by my beautiful, wonderful, rich Auntie Helen WAY back when Erin was small enough to fit into it. So...28ish years ago. Mom and Dad both had fun remembering a little Erin wearing it while we were admiring Tressa in it. And, of course, we had to have a photo shoot with Teresa once she got it on.









Just so you know, in real life, her bow is almost exactly the same color as the sweater. For some reason they photographed different colors.

Who needs bibs?

Not us! We need something much, much bigger than that. Here's the thing. Teresa likes to grab stuff. Especially stuff that's headed for her mouth. She'd rather put it in there herself, you know. Except she's still working on that whole coordination thing. I was pretty naive when I thought "she'll just wear a bib, that should protect her clothes". Wrong. I'm pretty sure the food got everywhere EXCEPT on her bib. So we had to improvise. Because her clothes are just too cute to be getting mushy sweet potatoes on them. Now we just wrap a big dish towel around her and pin it in the back with a chip clip. Not only does it protect her clothes, it keeps her arms down too. No more grabbing! I expected her to protest her lack of arms, but it's been surprisingly effective so far. Plus, it makes me smile to see her like that.

Have I mentioned...

...how fun it is having such close cousins?

Graduation!

Marcus graduated from Basic Training! Teresa and I flew out to South Carolina this past week to attend. Teresa was a dream on the first plane, she was just perfect. She nursed during take off, so her ears wouldn't pop much, and then she was happy and playful for a while, until she fell asleep next to me for the rest of the flight. I had to wake her up for landing, and she was all smiles for that part too. She was pretty much the exact opposite on the next flight. Although, I'm thinking the main reason for that was because our plane from Atlanta to Columbia was one of those tiny little Delta Connections planes. I know I felt the pressure changes a lot more on that plane, so I'm sure Tressa did too. Coming back she did pretty well, she squawked a bit on the last leg of our flight, I think she was just done with the whole traveling thing by then. People were SO helpful the whole time we were traveling, we had lots of help from random people at the airport.

Playing at the Atlanta airport



Thanks goodness for our GPS...pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me. Well, top three, at least. Because Teresa wasn't very helpful when it came to finding our way from the airport to our hotel, and then to Fort Jackson.

Thursday was Family Day. We started out in a big auditorium, where we sat on ridiculously uncomfortable benches for over an hour because we were told it started at 9:00 am, but it really started at 10:00. They started the program with a prayer (shh, don't tell the liberals...), which was nice, and then they had a little slide show with pictures from training. Which I thought was nice, but it would have been nicer if they had just let us go then to see our soldiers in real life. They introduced all the drill sergeants and important people, and talked about stuff for another 15 minutes or so before they excused us and we got to go find Marcus. We got to spend the rest of the day together, but couldn't leave base.

I'll just warn you now that there are about a million pictures in this post...

Feeding T her bottle. She doesn't get a bottle very often, but she loves it. She gets VERY upset when it's empty. And don't even think about taking it away from her if there's still something in it...







Teresa was pretty interested in the trees...she had to taste the leaves, which she (surprisingly) didn't like.









Marc and Teresa in front of our tiny, tiny rental car.



The next day was graduation. It was freezing! We were totally under-prepared, since the day before was nice and warm, and the news said it would be the same way on Friday. It wasn't. It was super windy and cold. Luckily, some nice people sitting near us gave us a blanket to use. They had a little more than 1200 soldiers graduating. The little ceremony was really short, they just talked for a little while, presented a few awards, and then had the soldiers march by us. I tried getting a picture of when Marc was going by, but Tressa was not cooperating, and my fingers were frozen, so I was unsuccessful. Here are some other soldiers, though, so you can just pick one and imagine that it's Marcus.





Teresa had so much fun finally getting to hang out with her Daddy again! I think she recognized who he was. She didn't really show any preference for me over him, except for once after waking up from a nap. I think she was a little confused then. Marcus got to re-figure out how to change her diaper. I guess I should have helped him put her tights back on...I think she looks a little concerned in some of them ;)









We celebrated Marc's 27th (wow!) birthday while we were there. It's actually today. Happy Birthday Marcus! We went to Outback, where Marcus had a partially cooked steak and Teresa had a bottle. For his birthday, I let Marc change Teresa's blow out. You know you're jealous.






We forgot to have someone take a picture of all three of us, and T doesn't know how to work the camera yet, so we had to use the self timer.



Teresa was all kinds of tired at the end of the day



South Carolina was beautiful, and we had so much fun visiting Marcus and seeing him graduate! I'm so proud of him, I know Basic Training was really, super hard, and all three of us are glad it's over with!