This week.

Well, we got rid of the cat. She was making Marc too sneezy and itchy. She lasted a whole week, though, and T certainly had a great time with her. I was letting her watch this video of the cat and she kept pointing to it and jabbering at me. Probably asking me where it had gone ;).



Do you see all the diapers T so generously emptied out of their box and spread around the floor? She's awesome like that.

She's really into hats right now, she's always bringing me a hat to put on her. It's a big change from a few months ago when she would scream and cry if I even got near her with a hat. She likes our hats because she can put them on herself.







She finally got a crib, this week, and was excited to have a real bed, instead of a pack n play. Contrary to what the picture would have you think, she actually likes it a lot, she slept so much better in it the first night, and at naps. She just always looks like that when she wakes up. She's not one of those babies that wakes up happy, she just wants out of bed as soon as she's awake, and will cry until that happens. She was not pleased about having to stand there while I took her picture :)



Teresa is a big help to Daddy in the mornings. She always brings him his boots or shoes when he is getting dressed. She was getting impatient holding his shoe up to him before he was ready to put it on. Wow, our house looks really messy. I promise it's because T has to empty any laundry basket she finds. See the laundry basket back there? All the clothes on the floor are supposed to be in there. Anyway, she will also just randomly bring me shoes during the day. Usually not a matching pair.

Just some stuff.

Every once in a while Marc decides we should get a cat, even though he is allergic to them. This time he figured he might not be as allergic to a kitten as he is to a fully grown cat, and we figured T would really love a kitten, so Monday night we went and picked up a cute little gray kitten we found on Craigslist. Unfortunately it turns out that kittens have just as many allergens (who would have guessed ;) so we'll be looking for a new home for the kitten. But we've had fun with her while she's been here. Unfortunately whenever cat and T are being cute together, the camera completely distracts them, so we haven't gotten any good pics of them together.

Teresa is so funny with the cat. She's pretty good at being soft with the cat, except when she tries to pick her up. Then she just squishes the cat to her. She definitely has a love/hate relationship with her. She will stand and giggle at the cat for ages, and think she is the funniest thing. She will follow her around trying to pet her, and has even gotten pretty good at dangling string for her to play with. But then she will randomly turn against the cat. It's pretty funny, like flipping a switch. All of a sudden the cat offends her and she just starts crying. Sobbing and bawling and crying so hard she gets hiccups. She will let the cat play with her lanyard (she carries around a jump drive that we have on a lanyard and likes to wear it around her neck), and then all of a sudden decide she doesn't want to share and will burst into tears if the cat gets near it. Once that happens she doesn't want the cat even looking at any of her stuff. Anything the cat gets near, T will go and collect and bring it to me to protect it. It is so funny! The cat had the nerve to bat at T's sunglasses and a cup she plays with. So T scrambled out of my lap to rescue them. She came back crying and insisted I put her glasses on her. Then she just sat snuggled in my lap, wearing her sunglasses and crying. I have to try hard not to laugh at her too much.

Speaking of her sunglasses, she has recently rediscovered them, and loves to wear them now. She'll walk around with them on for a while and then pull them off and bring them over to us to put back on.



This is why she can only have chocolate in her high chair:



T has always been super interested in my hand weights. She only recently has been able to actually pick one up all the way (they weigh a whole five pounds). I love these pics cause you can really see the effort in her face. She actually took a few steps across the room with it before she dropped it.







Poor Marc fractured his wrist tripping over one of T's toys, but he's still happy to read her a book. He can't lift more than 15 pounds for the next few weeks, which is lame-o since T is 22 pounds now...



That's about all we've been up to. Nothing too exciting, just regular life!

Foto Friday

I'm a little late getting this Foto Friday up, but hopefully the subject of the photo makes up for it. T loves this chair and let me take a few pictures of her in it. This is one of my favorites.

Babies!

We had fun having both of Teresa's same-age cousins here for her birthday weekend.

They had fun playing with T's new toys...



And then we lined them up so we could take pictures...



That didn't go so well...



I think this is my favorite progression of pictures...







Good thing Auntie Aislinn was there to save her.

"baby Teresa eating birthday cake"

Yes, finally, the post you've all been waiting for! Or, specifically, the post some twins I know have been waiting for ;). I would love to say that T's birthday cake was her first experience with refined sugar, but, I would be lying. That was the plan, but in the week or so leading up to her birthday Marc and I found ourselves saying things like 'well, she's almost one, we might as well let her...'. Anyway, she still loved it. She started crying when we all were singing happy birthday to her. She tried to hide, but there's only so much you can do when restrained in a high chair. She settled for burying her face in Marcus. She wasn't quite sure what to do with it at first, and didn't really make as big of a mess as I thought she might. She was so cute, she picked off all the little flower decorations and ate them first, then she made quick work of the rest of the cake. Half way through she started offering fistfuls of cake to people. She had some strawberry ice cream after the cake, and experienced her first brain freeze, poor baby :)

Before we get to the pictures of T eating cake, here is the cake in the process of being made.

The directions called for 80 of these little flowers. I had to make many, many more in order to get enough good ones...









Almost done...


The finished product: Her name came out a little crooked, but it turned out better than I expected it to. She definitely won't be getting a cake this involved every year.






And then we ate it.


Now on to the Teresa pictures, there's a lot of them, I just couldn't narrow it down anymore than this!

She liked the candle, but not so much the singing...




"It's all for me?!?"







"Anyone else want to try?"


"I'll give some to Mom!"





"Hmm, this is kinda cold..."


"okay, it's REALLLLLY cold!!"


"totally worth it..."


And that concludes our birthday party posts! Of course, there's still the rest of the weekend. We crammed 20+ people into our apartment on Sunday, and had some fun with the Mellor's on Monday and Tuesday. I'll get those pictures up one of these days ;)

And, for those who are interested, T had her twelve month appointment on Tuesday. She weighed in at 21 pounds 10 ounces and was exactly 30 inches long. The doctor said she is taller than average, weighs slightly more than average, and has a slightly bigger head than average. In other words, she's perfectly proportional :). Her hemangioma looks good, the doc thinks it's starting to go away, so good news on that front!

The one with all the present opening

Before we get to all the present opening festivities....Teresa and I totally got locked out of the apartment today. Marc was leaving early for school, so we decided to leave at the same time he did for our morning walk. I grabbed the set of keys hanging from the key hook, assuming they were the set I grab every morning. You know, the ones with a key to our front door? They were not. I didn't realize it until we were about half way done with our walk. I crossed my fingers and prayed that Marc hadn't locked the door when we left, even though I had stood there watching him do it. So, we left our house at 6:15, and finally got let back in about 20 after 8. Awesome. Actually, I was afraid we would have to wait until 10, when our apartment office opens, but I was able to flag down one of the maintenance men. Ugh, I know I've complained about this before, but I'm going to do it again. It is SO DARN humid here! Teresa and I were both soaked, just from being outside. Poor T was crying for a bit of it. It started pouring down rain shortly after we got inside, which explains why it was even more humid than usual, and we were glad to at least have gotten inside before that! Tressa took a two hour nap after that, I guess the humidity really took it out of her, poor baby.

So. Now, on to the present opening. Teresa was only mildly interested in opening presents. We debated doing it before or after cake and decided to do it before. I think she was still a little groggy from her nap at the beginning, so maybe we should have done cake first. But she got into it eventually.





This one was cute, she ended up actually crawling into the bag to get to the bottom of it.



Once she got to the bottom of that bag, she pulled out this outfit. She loved it. She cried when I took it away so she could open the rest of her presents. And then she carried it around the house for two days. I finally let her wear it on Monday and she applauded herself in the mirror when she saw it on.




She LOVED this box. Loved it.



This was the big one. When T saw this toy at the store, she practically jumped out of her skin with excitement. And whenever she would come across it at home, before it was all wrapped up and ready for the big day, she would bounce up and down and squeal. She didn't disappoint with her reaction when it came time to unwrap it.







Eating one of her birthday bananas next to the awesome shirt Uncle Kevin got for her



And the rest of them:

The Party

We had Tressa's first birthday party on Saturday. We were a little worried about the weather, but the storms held off until we were done. It was seriously perfect timing, it didn't start raining until we were driving away. We had a little barbecue down on the bay on base. All of Marc's family came, as well as some of his friends from school. Marc grilled hot dogs and chicken kabobs and we swam and kayaked. The place we had her party was so fun, Marc and I will definitely be going back more this summer. Teresa loved playing with her cousins in the water. We didn't try her in a kayak, maybe next time...





Teresa hated her life jacket, but loved the water. We ended up not making her wear it, since we were just in shallow water with her.


Here we are with our one year old! Not T's best picture, but unfortunately for her, she's not the one that chooses the pictures that go on the blog ;)


And, T just woke up from her nap, so I'll have to post the cake and presents part later!