The First Year

Did you know that Teresa turned one year old this morning? At 5:20 to be exact. I can't believe she is a year old already. This year flew by, and we have loved every minute of it. We thank Heavenly Father every day that we have this beautiful, sweet, crazy, stubborn little girl in our family. We are so grateful for her, and for how healthy she is! In case you weren't paying attention, here's a look back at Tressa's first year.

The hospital:
Look at that chunker!




And because I've never blogged about this, or written it all down even....Teresa was due May 25th, but (not surprisingly) didn't arrive on her due date. We went into the hospital at 7:00 pm May 28th. The plan was to start with some Cervical that evening, and then start Pitocin the next morning to get her moving. After getting settled in, and hooked up to all sorts of monitors and machines, our nurse realized that the air conditioning in our room was broken, so we ended up getting to move rooms and start all over again. And, as always, T didn't feel like sticking to the plan. To make a long story short, I got the Cervical at about 10pm, and started having contractions about midnight. The anesthesiologist arrived around 1:45 with my epidural. That wore off about 3:15. I got more shortly thereafter, but not as soon as I would have liked ;). The real action started at about five til five. I looked at the clock at exactly 5:00 am and thought "I'm not doing this for more than thirty minutes". Hah! As if I really would have had a choice! Luckily, I didn't have to, Teresa arrived at 5:20. When I called to tell my Mom she had a new granddaughter, she didn't believe me at first. She thought I was calling to tell her we were about to start the Pitocin. We were pleasantly surprised by how quickly she got here. Very pleasantly surprised, indeed. (Although, when Aislinn first commented that she was glad I'd had an easy labor, I was quite offended. But, turns out that as labors go, mine was not so bad) After a brief stay in the NICU due to worrisome levels of oxygen saturation, we brought her home with us on Sunday the 31st.

One week later she looked like this:



(No, she wasn't smiling already at one week, that was just a lucky shot)

One month:



Two months:



Three months:




Four months:
(and one of my favorite ever pictures of T)


Five months:



Six months:



Seven months:



Eight months:



Nine months:




Ten months:



Eleven months:



And here she is this morning.


(Please excuse the apple juice and strawberry that she already got on her outfit)

We just love this little girl. She is so much fun. She loves to play and laugh (she thinks she is hilarious), she loves to make us laugh, she loves to be chased, she loves the bath and reading and food. Oh my goodness, does this little one love food. Especially bananas. I've mentioned it before, I'm sure, but she just loves bananas more than anything. We have to be so careful when we're grocery shopping that she doesn't see the huge display of bananas. One day, I must have left the laundry room door open a crack (yes, we have to keep them there so she doesn't see them), and T managed to get herself a banana and had bitten through the peel before I found her. Little rascal. She's stubborn and independent, and crazy sometimes. But, we love her so much. She can say 'ma ma', 'da da', 'up', 'duck' (which she usually shrieks), and our favorite, 'no'. She's already showing preferences for her clothes, if I put her in an outfit she doesn't want to wear she will tug and pull on her clothes and complain until I take them off. She is always, always busy doing who knows what. We are so blessed to have her in our lives, she brings us great joy with just a touch of anxiety.

Happy Birthday Tressa!

Grapes Gone Wild

We left the grapes out last night and apparently they had too much fun. Happy Foto Friday :)

The Weekend

Like most of you, we LOVE our weekends around here. Marc works REALLY hard all week. He leaves for school by 6:30 every morning. He usually gets up around 4:30 or 5:00 to shower, do the dishes, study, or do something else somewhat useful. He brings me Teresa when she wakes up. She had been sleeping til 6:00, but for the past few weeks has decided that 5:30 is the latest she wants to sleep to. Marc's first class is from 7:00 to 11:00. Then he gets an hour for lunch, (he comes home most days) and has another class from 12:00 to 4:00. Then most days he has PT from 4:30 to 5:30. Which means we don't usually see him back here until close to six. He had two tests this week, which means he came home for dinner, played with T until we put her to bed, and then went back on base to study until 10ish the night before each test. And these tests are pretty darn hard. Luckily he's nerdy enough to do really well on all of them ;). So, you can see why we're pretty excited when the weekend rolls around. Not that we get any more sleep, because T doesn't care one way or the other what day it is, but we get to do LOTS more relaxing. For some reason, Tressa is willing to play a lot more on her own when Marc and I are both home. If it's just me, she requires a lot more interaction.

Friday night we went to a baseball game. We thought it was a triple A team, the Pensacola Pelicans. When we got there, we felt really confused, as the stadium was WAY smaller than expected. And our twelve dollar seats were right on the field. Seriously, we could touch the players. We didn't, but we totally could have. Turns out they're just part of some independent league, but it was still pretty fun. We were a little concerned about the signs warning us to pay attention in case of foul balls, but other than that it was good.

There's the foul ball warning sign. Oh, and Tressa...


Teresa had a lot of fun, there was plenty of room for her to walk along the fence line, and lots of people for her to make eyes at. She made friends with a couple behind us, and during the third inning the husband brought us a foul ball. He said he had pulled some strings to get it for T because she was such a cutie. They were so nice, and Tressa just loved her ball. She had been getting sleepy and was just sitting on my lap, but when he handed her the ball she perked right up and played with it for about thirty minutes. She kept dropping it in my hands and waiting for me to give it back. Then she would walk up and down the fence showing it to whoever would interact with her. We only lasted til the 5th inning. Tressa just wasn't going to make it much longer, she was already an hour and a half late for bed.



Just an FYI, if you let your baby wear her cute little nylon leggings on a day when she will be crawling up and down on concrete, they will get ruined. Sad day.

Saturday, T thought she was super hilarious and refused to give Marc any kisses. She would kiss me a ton, and then when Marc would ask for a kiss she would turn away, or push him away, and then just laugh her little head off. Silly girl, she kept it up all day. Marc was relieved this morning when she was willing to kiss him again.

I got to speak in church today. I was pretty irked last week when I was asked, and Marc wasn't, but I guess they figured they would leave one of us free to take care of Tressa. Am I the only one who always, always knows when I'm about to be asked to speak? Last week I was sitting enjoying sacrament meeting until I thought "it's about time for me to speak soon". And sure enough, I got asked later in Relief Society. Every time. Oh well, it wasn't that bad, actually. The least nervous I've ever been, possibly due to the fact that we only have about 20 people. Or maybe because I don't really know any one here, and we won't be sticking around long enough to get to know them. After church we fed the ducks some bread and leftover rice. T loves ducks. Friday she officially said 'duck' for the first time. Now she shrieks it whenever we see one. They make her laugh. They freak me out a little, they definitely have no boundary issues, but Tressa isn't scared of them, so that's good.

And we got good news this week! Originally, every one at Corry was supposed to get both Friday and Monday off for Memorial Day. Which would have been awesome because Marc's family gets here Friday, and I would have loved to have his help finishing up the preparations for T's party. But then Marc was told that his class wouldn't get Friday off, just Monday. We were pretty bummed. But, as of this past Friday, we found out he will get it off! We're crossing our fingers it doesn't change again!

We let Teresa feed herself dinner last night. It was her first time with spaghetti (don't worry Mom, it's whole wheat...) and she absolutely loved it, of course. We had fun watching her, and then she had a nice, long bath afterward.



Click here to see some pictures of her mess.

Stay-cation

We decided to hang around this house this weekend and have some cheap family fun. We managed to get some strawberries and Teresa was pretty excited to have some sloppy fun with fruit.





Then we just lounged around...



Can you tell T loves the green chair? She can sit and play around it for hours.







'Til it was time for church on Sunday...

Foto Friday...a day late.

Making the second installment of a brand new series late probably isn't a good way to do things, but we were having technical issues last night. I was taking some pictures of loose change in my pocket(I don't know why) when a little hand model decided to help me out. :) Below is the latest Foto Friday photo.

Just a tiny little video

This is the best video of the Bear walking that we've been able to get. She, of course, refuses to perform when we pull the camera out, little rascal! She is walking more and more now. It's fun to watch her. She will walk to stuff as long as it's not too far away. Anything requiring more than 6ish steps she crawls to. It's a week or so old, I've been trying to post it for awhile, but blogger hasn't been the most cooperative :(. Sorry about it being sideways, we just can't seem to remember not to tilt the camera for videos!

She likes him

She likes to hang out with him when he FINALLY comes home from work:



She crawled into his lap and made him share his oatmeal this morning. Because, you know, if you're eating something, she should be too:







She likes to eat snacks with him on the couch:



She likes to read with him:







I like him too ;)

Adventures in Swimming

We got to take Tressa swimming today and snapped a few fun pictures while we were there. She wasn't a fan at first(see frown), but warmed up to it once the sun came out.

Foto Friday

Since I've started getting back into photography a little bit, Tara thought it would be fun to have a "Foto Friday" on the blog. Foto Friday will probably end up being just a quick post and a picture taken during the week that we either like or is just fun to share.

The above photo was taken while I was bored one Saturday, and was just snapping away at objects in the house. I like taking pictures of common objects from an uncommon angle and this one was one we liked. This is a bunny Tressa is getting for her birthday and the light hit it just right while it was on the desk.

The Perfect GCS

I've been quietly and patiently working on a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich (GCS) for some time, and I think that I struck gold tonight. I can't take the credit however, as butter and Boar's Head Pepperhouse Gourmaise did all the work.

What is this Gourmaise you ask? It's deliciousness in a bottle. Every sandwich product it has touched in our house has been quickly devoured. Boar's Head describes it as, "a savory spread of mayonnaise, deli mustard and [a] house blend of peppercorns". We're both mustard haters, but we were instantly won over by this sauce when we sampled it at our local Publix (Tara's new favourite grocery store). Hopefully you can find it at a grocer near you. Below is the recipe for our new favourite GCS:



Ingredients
2 pieces of bread (we recommend whole wheat)
Thinly sliced Medium Cheddar Cheese
Boar's Head Pepperhouse Gourmaise
Sliced Yellow Onion
Butter

Directions:
Pre-heat a medium-sized skillet on a stove top (medium heat). Take 2 slices of bread and spread a light coating of Gourmaise across one side of each slice (a little goes a long way). Cover one slice of bread with slices of the medium cheddar cheese. Note: thin slices melt quicker and allow for the bread and cheese to be ready at the same time. Place slices of yellow onion on the cheese and place the other slice of bread on top of the other. Spread a thin layer of butter on the slice of bread facing you and place the buttered face of the sandwich on the warm skillet. Butter the non-butter side (should be facing up). Flip frequently. Grill to golden perfection. Enjoy :)

I would have included a picture of these wonders, but we ate them too quickly. :)

Crawfish

Have I mentioned that the humidity level in Florida is always at about 1000%? It's ridiculous. I don't even bother straightening my hair here, since it poofs up as soon as we walk out the door. On the plus side, T's hair gets these cute little ringlets in the back and all over that I just love.

Anyway...we went to the Pensacola Crawfish Festival on Saturday. It wasn't especially festival-ish, it was mostly just a bunch of people eating crawfish together outside. We had fun, though. Marc and Kevin ate a ton of crawfish (three pounds each...), I ate a couple of crawfish, and T yelled at us a lot for not giving her any crawfish. We did let Teresa try alligator for the first time while we were there. She reacted to it the way she does to all food: she wanted more. Sometimes I think she doesn't even taste what she's eating, she just loves to eat anything!



Tressa just happened to be wearing her 'I heart Cheerios' shirt that day, and the Cheerio's Nascar just happened to be at the festival too. Of course we had to take T's picture by it. She wasn't as excited about it as we were. She was pretty ready for a nap at this point.



Marc and Kevin are growing moustaches. They started the same day, but as you can see, Marc is definitely falling behind...he only has until Tressa's birthday, then it's coming off!



And, especially for Bran: