Baa

I've been trying to catch some of T's skills on camera, but not surprisingly, she isn't too cooperative in performing on demand. She can tell us what a sheep says when we ask, but hasn't caught on to repeating any other animal sounds yet. I ask her all the time, cause I think it's so cute, and luckily she still humors me with an answer. And she lo-oves sticking her tongue out at us. She thinks it is hilarious and will stare at us with her tongue out until we return the gesture, at which point she just cracks up.

Anyway, these are just short. She kept getting distracted by Marc in the background. And in the super short one she is headed after Marc who had the nerve to try and take a shower with the bathroom door closed. Because, you know, T has to be involved in every thing that goes on around the house.

New Parent Support

Last week Teresa and I had a visit from the New Parent Support Program from the Naval Station here. They sent me an email and when I didn't respond followed up with a phone call. Because I had recently "filled out some paperwork indicating my interest". This was true, but only because their paperwork was crammed in with all the other hundreds of pages of paperwork I had to fill out before I could actually get in to see a doctor (seriously, I had an hour long appointment that was dedicated solely to paperwork).

Anyway, apparently the Navy has a program to 'support' new parents, they have classes and other resources to help people adjust to being parents and such. And they also do home visits. I didn't really have any interest in this program seeing as we've already lasted over a year with Teresa. That's why, you know, I didn't respond to their initial email. But when they called to try to set up a home visit I ended up agreeing to it. Mostly because I'm really bad at telling people no, but also because I was a little interested in the developmental assessment she said she could do for Teresa. And also, we're leaving in less than a month, so I knew I wouldn't have to commit to too many regular appointments.

Of course most days I think that Teresa is so smart, and just the most brilliant baby that's ever walked the face of the earth. But then lots of other days I worry that maybe she's not talking as much as other kids her age, or maybe she's behind in some other way. Then there was that time a few weeks ago that I had myself convinced she was autistic (she's not). But anyway, I think it's pretty normal to worry about comparing your child to others, so I was interested to get an assessment done on her. Especially since it was free, and it's not like we had anything else going on in the middle of the day.

The visit was pretty interesting. We were already doing most of the activities they recommended for T's age, so that part of it was kind of a waste. But, T took an ASQ assessment for a 14-15 month old,(the categories were communication, gross and fine motor skills, problem solving, and personal - social) and I was relieved that she was a little above average for three of the categories, and right on average in the fourth. We have another appointment for next week to do the 16 month assessment, and I don't think she'll do quite as well on that one - some of the questions include whether or not T can say two word sentences and if she can say at least 8 words other than 'mama' and 'dada'. She can't do either of those yet, so I'm not expecting she'll get that done in the next week.

The most interesting part of the visit to me was the fact that it really seemed like the kind of job I could do with my degree. It was all about making sure parents take advantage of the different stages of children's development, and what they can do to tailor activities to age and brain development, etc. Being products of good parenting ourselves, and the fact that we both have degrees in human development and a fair amount of common sense, I don't really think it's a program Marc and I need, but it seems like it would be really good for a lot of new young parents out there.

And, just because I can't make a post without a picture of our girl - here she is waiting patiently for the cookies to cool. This was the only batch we made before she smeared the rest of the dough all over herself and the carpet. Oh, and the chair was there so she wouldn't open to oven door, which she's been doing lately. I didn't realize she could climb up on the chair like that, but I wasn't really surprised when she did.

Just some pictures

I realized recently that we've really cut back on the amount of Teresa pictures we take! Poor neglected child...

Here are some pics (a lot, actually) from the past few weeks:

She still loves the bath, she's started 'scrubbing' herself if we let her have a washcloth.




She's been very insistent lately about feeding herself. Some days she'd rather go hungry than let me feed her.



I caught her with my lotion one day. I'm not sure how she got the lotion mustache, but it made me laugh.




Just a cute girl. She's dancing in this pic.


She loves to sit in this chair....until she realizes she can't get out on her own...


She's just so happy in these pics, I couldn't choose just one...Also, I think she looks SO old in these pictures.






She loves to stick her tongue out at us and will hold it there until we do the same.




Dancing again...

Well, she loves Bluegrass

Teresa loves to dance. She dances to commercials, she dances to the radio, she dances in the car and even when we sing her bedtime songs. She's expressed some preference before by dancing to one song more than another (e.g anything by Lady Gaga), but we might found her favorite today.

My Dad sent me several Bluegrass CDs in the mail and I decided to put them on for fun and T had a blast! She bobbed around on each song I played, but when I hit track 6, she was going! Enjoy a little clip below (she even dances to the clip of herself dancing :)




This is only a sampling as she won't really perform when she spots the camera, but if you're ever lucky enough to catch a live showing you're in for a treat.

In case you didn't know...

We're going to be adding another little person to our family! I had my first prenatal appointment today. Of all the terrible things I could say about military health care, the worst has to be the fact that they don't let you pick your doctor. Because I definitely would not have picked the super good looking, easily younger than thirty, in fact I was probably his first ever patient, doctor that the Navy assigned me. It really made me miss good old (emphasis on old) Dr. Fitzpatrick.

Anyway, it wasn't too bad, he actually seemed like a really good doctor, I'm a little bummed I won't be here for the whole pregnancy, but I'm sure it will be fun breaking in a whole new doctor once we get up to Maryland. We've been a little unsure on my due date, I've heard everything from Feb. 14 to the 19th, but the ultrasound had me measuring ahead of that, so he moved my due date up to February 10th. I won't argue with anything that makes this any shorter ;). I have to say, this ultrasound was way more exciting than my first one with Teresa, for some reason. Maybe because I could more easily decipher what was actually showing up on the screen?

Here's the new little one, it was fun to see and hear the heartbeat, and the baby waved at us, which was pretty exciting. Marc and I have a pretty high-stakes wager on whether it's a boy or a girl, so we're anxious for the next few months to pass so we can see who is right. Not the best picture, since it's actually a picture of the one the doctor printed out for us, but you get the idea. It's a profile shot.



In other news, Marc is doing awesome in his training still. He's getting good grades left and right, and we're excited to finally have a graduation date for him. Assuming nothing changes, he'll be graduating September 15th, which means we only have a little over a month left here. Crazy, I can't believe how fast our time in Florida has gone. I know moving with the Army will be a huge headache, but we're excited to get up to Maryland.

Teresa is growing like a weed. I can't believe she was still in her 6-9 month clothes in April, and now I'm crossing my fingers that she won't be too big for all her 18-24 month fall clothes that we have waiting in the closet. Because, seriously, she has some cute stuff for fall. I can't believe we were ever worried about her not gaining enough weight. We need to make a trip to Austin just to show her pediatrician there how fast she's growing! Here she is at dinner this week:

Stop looking at me!

Just a quick little Teresa story. She's been getting up progressively earlier every day for the past two weeks. Which means that today she woke up at ten to four. When T gets up early, she is usually all wide awake, and peppy and just thrilled to be alive and playing. (Which is the exact opposite of how we feel when she gets up before 4). Today, since she had been up so early, she was pretty tired and grumpy by seven-ish when we were taking Marc to school. She had us laughing, though. I kept turning around in the car to look at her, and any time she saw me, she would push her hand out at me and yell until I turned around. So, of course, Marc and I kept turning around and looking at her, and she would growl at us and yell and push her hands at us until we stopped. She did NOT want us looking at her. She got especially mad when she caught Marc looking at her in the rear view mirror. It was probably really mean of us, but we just couldn't stop laughing at her. Needless to say, she's down for a nap now.

...including yet another dancing video

We've enjoyed having Marc's mom here with us this week, she had some friends driving through to go to Disney World and they were nice enough to drop her off in Pensacola on their way there. Tressa has had lots of fun playing with Gigi, and I've gotten to take lots of naps and change not very many diapers, which is always nice.

Poor little T fell and got her first skinned knee on Saturday. Ironically just the day before I had been pondering how I was surprised she hadn't done so yet. I guess that makes it partially my fault. Anyway, it was very sad, she kept reaching down to rub it like it was bothering her, so we figured we should bandage her up.

Hmm, it doesn't look so bad in this pic, but trust me, it was pretty traumatic.


She was a little unsure of what we were doing...


Once we got Teresa bandaged up on Saturday we headed over to Foley, Alabama to try out a restaurant we saw on the Food Network. We've been burned before by trusting the Food Network (you know, that time we drove WAY down in San Antonio to try the Taco Taco Cafe, which was supposed to have the best tacos in America, only to discover that they were, in fact, some of the worst tacos we had ever eaten) so we were pleasantly surprised that this place lived up t0 all the hype. There was a huge line to get in and we were lucky enough to only wait in the heat and humidity for about 35 minutes. They had really yummy, homestyle food, that we all enjoyed, their 'thing' was that they throw the rolls to you. They just had lots of guys wandering around with hot rolls and they would toss them to you if you wanted more. It was good, if you're ever in Alabama, you should check it out :).

Just a cute pic...shoes courtesy of Aunt Melissa. T loves them, she keeps bringing them over to be put on.


And I know I probably put up too many dancing videos, but we just get such a kick out of watching her dance around. This one features her awesome spinning in circles move. One of these days we'll get a video that lasts more than ten seconds...