The Princess and the Countess

Today while dropping the dogs off to be dogsat in NV we saw one of my oldest friends Melissa and her kids. The Princess(Grace) and Countess (Tessa) are almost exactly a year apart. I can't imagine Tessa being this big!!

We leave tomorrow for CA and Tessa' first plane ride. Lots of fun things planned. Wish us luck and stay tuned for pics!

And for some fun perspective- Here's July 2007

And March of 2001!

(Look there's my goal weight! :)

Another New Toy

....well not 'new' but new to us! It sure is nice to have older cousins :) Here are some pics of Tessa with her newest discovery- her walker. She mostly likes to look at the toys but her enjoyment only last 10-15 min max (enough time to do dishes)

I wish I could say we had an eventful 4th and have pics to show but no. Still recovering from our colds, Jeremy and I stayed home, made zucchinni muffins for our neighbors and shot off about 10 minutes worth of fireworks in our driveway.

To answer any questions on whether she's actually walking in the walker, see below....

Hayden would like to remind everyone she's not the only cute one around here (Yes he spends about 80% of every day under a blanky)

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!!