Tessa Smiles

Trying to capture a clear picture of a baby smile on camera is like trying to herd cats. Here is an example of what I mean....

She Did It!

Tessa slept through the night last night- yay! She went down at 10pm and instead of waking up at 3 or 4 to eat like normal, she made it all the way until 6am. Yes that's 8 hrs!

Too bad Jeremy and I couldn't thoroughly enjoy this evening of sleep. We were both tossing and turning and blowing our noses, as we have both caught a bit of a summer cold. This is my first illness since Christmas and I've got to say being sick while pregnant is easier than being sick while breastfeeding! Mainly because doc said no to any nasal decongestants because it will dry up my milk. So I get tylenol and plain Claritan and that's it- and frankly it's not enough! :(

Luckily Tessa hasn't gotten sick so she's happy and smiling like normal. Yesterday I captured a great series of pics of her doing her morning smiling and cooing routine and Jeremy's computer somehow ate them! So no pics today :(

Empty Nesting

...Nest meaning our bedroom. Tessa spent her first night in her real crib last night- and not in the bassinet in our room. I was a little sad a bed time and missed her when we were all going to sleep, but we did just fine. She got up at 2 and I fed her in the nursery and she slept again until 6:30. She's starting to outgrow her bassinet and since she's only getting up once per night, it's really time.

In other seperation news Jeremy and I went on our first date Tuesday night to celebrate my birthday. We went to the Clay Terrace shopping center and ate a Kona Grill which is a seafood type restaurant. I decided to 'pump and dump' so enjoyed those forbidden things- jalapeno peppers, onions, wine and coffee...yum! We were gone for 4.5 hrs, the longest I've been away from Tessa since she was born, while my mom babysat. Apparently she only cried for a little bit at bedtime but was otherwise a good baby! Yay!

And now for a couple of random pics....

First Veggies

Our first Zuchinni from the garden- with Tessa for a little comparison. There's many more coming, time to make some bread!

Thanks for a Great Birthday!

Okay my birthday is actually tomorrow (6/26) but we celebrated it yesterday with a little cookout with some friends and family. Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and gifts! We had a great time and even kept our food all WW friendly :)

We got an outdoor rocking chair from Mom and Dad which is great. I just need to paint in and put it out on our patio and Tessa and I can rock outside! Then Jeremy got me another great present- a gift certificate to a local spa! Combined with some other birthday money I recieved I think I can afford 3 one hour massages.

We had another PACE class this morning and the teacher was very happy we returned ( I guess some people have gotten scared after the first class). I was again trailing behind the bunch but was brave enough to jog for about a block- baby steps!

I forgot to post on Friday that Tessa had her 2 mo doc's appointment. She is 22 inches, almost 12 lbs and doing great. She had her first round of injections which gave her a fever for the rest of the day. But after some baby tylenol she was less grumpy and even slept until almost 6am :)

Jeremy grilled chicken and shrimp skewers

Bob made a new friend in Josh from church


We had lowfat brownies instead of cak-yum!

Dustin's kinda scared of babies :)

4 generations standing in order

swimming and drooling at the pool

Tessa had her first shots this morning so is in a bad mood today- so she had her first dose of baby tylenol because she had a fever. She is now happily playing bobblehead with her dad- hopefully this will last!


Below are some pics from our trip to Ceraland a few days ago (a park and pool for employees of Cummins where my brother works). We put Tessa in the pool a little bit, but since we woke her from a nap and the sun was awfully bright, she wasn't sure if she liked it or not. If nothing else she got to show off her bikini :)

We visited Papaw at work on the way home

PACE myself

This morning Tessa and I had our first PACE class (parents and children exercise) and oh man was it a workout! When my mom referred to it as 'mommy and me', I corrected her that it should be called 'fat ass bootcamp with strollers'. The 95 degree temperature (it was outdoors)probably had something to do with it but I was a sweaty worn out monster when I got home.

The nice thing was that the other ladies were all very nice and encouraging. You know that fat kid in PE class that could never keep up with the rest of the kids? Yeah that was me today! But unlike PE class nobody made fun of me- the encouraged! And they also swooned all over Tessa since all of their babies were many months older.

So we'll be doing this every Monday and I'm glad. The exercise I've been doing has really helped with weight loss. I can tell when I don't walk I don't lose.

For clarification my weight loss ticker above isn't total loss since Tessa was born- it's total loss since I started WW the week of Memorial Day. Since my last day of pregnancy I've lost 30lbs! So only about 10 more of it is 'baby weight'-- Unfortunately the rest of it is all mine :(

Father's Day

Yesterday Tessa got to spend some time with two of her favorite guys- her Daddy and Papaw. We went to church and then out to one of our fave restaurants.

Happy Father's Day Daddy and Papaw!

What do you mean I slept through Bonefish Grill?

Zoo Baby

Hi everyone- this is Tessa. I want to tell you about my day at the zoo yesterday. It was really HOT, but I went to the zoo with my Mom, Mamaw, Aunt Becky, my cousins Mark and Bob and their Grammie and friends Sami and Gabe.

I wore my sunhat!

After we went to the gift shop this strange creature appeared in my stroller, but I wasnt' scared cause he looks pretty nice

Mark was very brave and fed a giraffe and some birds, and petted a shark!


My big cousins protected me from scary animals all day

Mommy's friend Beth had a little baby this week. We went to his baby shower when I was only a month old. His name is Deegan- isn't he cute??

Gardening Time

I just wanted to show off my little garden, one of my summertime hobbies. Even though we're in a drought right now our garden is doing great- it's the only thing we're watering, so our grass is all brown and crunchy.

Tessa and I have a busy week coming up- zoo tomorrow, several lunches out planned with friends and fam, and we are starting our PACE class on Monday (Parents and Children Exercise)...the aerobics class with strollers- yay!

Our Rosemary tree- a gift from Grammie and Grampie Bennington. If anyone out there has any good recipes using Rosemary please pass them along. I love it, especially the way it smells...but I'm not real creative in using it in the kitchen

Our 'postage stamp' garden...2 tomatoes, 6 zuchinnis, 4 bananna peppers, 3 eggplants, basil, dill, parsley and thyme. The little buds coming up in the back right corner are okras!

For the 5th year in a row I've got one of Papaw's hanging tomato plants. Why continue to do a hanging mater now that I have the yard room for a garden?- tradition that's why! No I will never tell how I get those tomato seeds to grow upside down ;)

And to truly show my recently honed domestic diva-ness, I offer a good summer recipe:

In a reynolds wrap pouch combine:

-- a small bag of shrimp

-- 1/2 cup diced fresh basil from the garden

-- 1 tbsp diced fresh garlic

-- 1 tbsp olive oil

-- 1/2 cup chardonnay

-- pinch salt

Seal pouch and grill for 15 min

Serve over 3 cups whole wheat pasta tossed with 2 tbsp olive oil and 1/2 cup parmasean cheese. Serves 2 people.

If you measure it precisely this way the whole dish is 12.5 WW points!

Everywhere a Blog Blog...

It seems that family or baby blogs are sweeping the nation. Check out my cousin Amanda's new family blog!: http://aclunger.blogspot.com/ .as well as some other friends pages I have links to on the side here.

I told Tessa about her internet fame and how so many folks love reading about her, but her response is to obliviously suck her paci, oh well :-)

Shopping time with Mamaw and other updates

Hi all! Yes I know it's been a long time since my last post (my apologies to the ladies at ACA who are axiously awaiting updates :)

Things are pretty good around here. Tessa and I have been walking alot, and she's had a busy week of getting out in the town. She's become pretty acustom to going places in her stroller and always seems to sleep through restaurants or shopping (which is nice for us!).

We've been planning out our summer and we have a couple of vacations lined up. At the beginning of July, Tessa and I will join Jeremy for a business trip to California- yay! I haven't been in so long. There are lots of people I want to see and restaurants I want to eat at, etc. So Tessa will have her first plane ride at 2.5 months. Then at 3.5 months she'll fly again for our family vacation in Colorado. There will about 15 of us in a big cabin- should be fun! At the end of July we're going to head up to northern IN to Gramaw and Grampaw's lake cottage. Andy, Becky and the nephews will be there as well as Mom and Dad. So we're going to have a fun summer!

BTW- I can't log into tickerfactory.com for some reason today but since I made my weight loss ticker my scale says I have lost 7.5 lbs since I joined weight watchers. Yay!

Jeremy has been in Korea all week and mom (who is now on summer break from school) came up to visit. We did lots of shopping (and by we I mean she shopped and I watched :), eating WW food and playing with baby.

And now for....fun baby things that only Grandmothers and Aunties buy.....

tiny Converse tennis shoes

(no her foot is not that big- it only fills up about half the shoe)

tiny bikinis

tiny sunglasses

and wrist rattles

And finally I'll leave you with a pic of Tessa's favorite recently aquired skill...

Smiling!!

eeek...

Look at my new ticker above and let me just say sheesh!
Like the lady said at Weight Watchers- one day at a time! Wish me luck :)

Memorial Day Pics

Hi all! Well we have finally returned to a normal schedule after a whirlwind Memorial Day (and a couple of sleep-little nights). Jeremy's mom and step-dad were in town and went to their first Indy 500. What a race too, including a few hours of rain delay!

Mom and I took Tessa for a day of shopping while everyone else was at the race, and hit some good sales. While I don't want to buy any clothes until I lose more weight, I really had no choice as very little fits me. I am very close to getting into a pair of regular jeans and then the maternity jeans have to go! I weigh in for my first week of Weight Watchers tomorrow night but according to my scale I've lost 4.5 lbs. Woot!

Monday we spent with all the fam down in North Vernon. Here are some pics!

The Fam

What's Memorial Day without Cheetos? Mark, Ashley and Dad

Mom getting in cuddle time

Tessa are you sure you're ready to join this crazy brood of kids?

Janet, Jeremy and Crybaby

I see a resemblance here...

Neglected dogs who like to tell people they haven't been fed in 6 wks...not true

Relaxing after a long day of shopping....

.....swinging....

....and looking around

Tessa and Terri

At the baby shower Mamaw gave me a baby dress that had belonged to my mother, as a well as a shawl that Papaw had given her and an invitation to the baby shower held for Mamaw in 1952.

The picture below is of Mom in that dress with the shawl as the backdrop. See any resemblance?

Terri's baby picture in 1952

Tessa recreates it in 2007

Ducky Picture 5 weeks

I meant to take this on her one month birthday but am a little late. I also started a blog that day on everything we've learned in the first month but never finished it. Oh well! Here's Tessa with her Ducky at 5 wks old

Discovering New Things

Hayden stands guard while Tessa enjoys her new toy



We're enjoying lots of new things around our house, like....

---Our HVAC system- woot! Our house in finally 72 degrees for the first time since we've lived here. Long story short our air ducts were all kinds of messed up from an add-on the previous owners had done and the system was on it's last legs. So we're super poor now because we had to fix both. But no more space heaters, electric blankets or box fans!!

-- The pacifier. I had hesitated to give her one at all, and waited until 4 wks but it's now our best friend. She was 'snacking' a little more often than I liked. She would sometimes nurse for 5-10 minutes only every hour or so, and I think alot of it had to do with the comfort of suckling. With the pacifier we've been able to space out her feedings better and calm her down more easily at bedtime. Yay!

-- The play mat. Okay so she doesn't really care about the play mat yet but we got one. She's supposed to be doing tummy time on it right now but just fell asleep. The dogs are interested in it though.

-- Weight Watchers. It's official, I am a member! I started yesterday and will attend my first meeting this week. With breastfeeding I get a whopping 43 points...which translates into about 2200 calories. So dieting will be alot easier than it has in the past. Wish me luck!

-- A walking partner. Many thanks to my friend Traci, also a stay at home mom, who has offered to walk with me in the mornings. Today was our first day!

It's Official

We had an eventful day today! We went to my office to visit coworker and yes, clean out my desk! I was waiting to mention it until I made the official announcement to my coworkers at ACA, but am now happy and free to say that I am a stay at home mom!

Jeremy and I have been planning for this for some time, and feel very blessed that we have the resources to make this decision. I'm exicited about my new adventure- so far so good! Jeremy works out of his home office of course and has so far been very disciplined about closing his door and working all day, but it's been nice to have him around at lunchtime every day.

In our 'free time' Tessa and I plan to join the MOPS club at church (Mothers of Preschoolers but really the child can be any age), and I was considering taking a PACE class that's offered at the community center (Parents and Children Exercise). Apparently it's an exercise program based around strollers and of course you bring the babies with you. Sounds cool right?-- I want to learn more about this. In June I will be joining Weight Watchers and am pretty excited about losing a bunch of weight!

So we have some fun summer plans lined up, including lots of Mamaw time when she is on summer break from school. Wish us luck!

Me and my new 'boss'