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'

updates

We've had an eventful week and are behind on our updates and pictures! This week Tessa met her Aunties and her 3 year old cousin Vicki. They came to visit for a long weekend and we all had a great time, mostly sitting around the house and oggling at Tessa.

She also went on her first trip to church on Sunday and I celebrated my first mother's day. After church we all went to the Japanese steakhouse.

Tessa continues to change more and more all the time. Yesterday I caught her sucking her thumb so she must be discovering her hands. She also had a hold of a big tuft of her and hair and was pulling it, silly girl! I think she is going through another growth spurt because she's been eating non-stop, which makes it fun for me to not get anything done during the day ;)

On the homefront we have getting our new heating and air conditioning system (basically we wouldn't have made it through the summer with our old one) so our house is kinda crazy. Luckily it's cool today but yesterday when the living room hit 87 degrees Tessa and I headed for Target, and 2hrs and a cart load later decided it was cool enough to come home. Can't wait to get it done though and have our first summer here with fully operating AC-- yay!

More cousins to meet- Eva Marie stopped by to see us!

Entertaining company makes me tired

First bathtime- well documented by Grampie

Grampie and Mommy

Let the tshirt do the talking

I like this Grammie lady

Auntie Jessica

Hayden likes Vicki too!

Cousin Vicki

Vicki helped Jeremy plant our garden and water the lawn!

Party Girl

Hi everyone- Tessa here! Actually I'm snoring really loudly right now so I gave my Mommy permission to write my blog for me.

I went to my first party yesterday! My cousin Bob and my Uncle Andy had a birthday party. Yes they have the same birthday, cool huh? It was my birthday too- 3wks! My mommy is sad that I am getting so old and now fit into my 0-3 month clothes, but don't worry she's getting lots of good cuddle time while I'm this little.

My Aunties and cousin Vicki are flying tomorrow. I can't wait to meet them. I wonder if they will hug and kiss me alot?

My cousins like to look at me- I must be pretty

No Mommy I do NOT want to wear a party hat!!


The birthday boys- Uncle Andy and cousin Bob

Bob is 2 years old! Mommy hopes I never get this big :)

Out on the Town

We've been venturing out more and more these days and Tessa has been seeing more of the world and meeting more family members! Grammie and Grampie Bennington were here this past weekend from Boulder, CO and we had a great time.

On Saturday we drove up north so Jeremy and Grampie could spend lots of money in a wine store, and Tessa made her first trip to Ritters custard stand! On Sunday we all went on her first trip to North Vernon to visit her (great) Mamaw's farm and spend the day with family. We had a beautiful day and got lots of sunshine, fresh air, and baby cuddles.

This morning I took Tessa to her 2 wk doctor appointment (which was supposed to be last week but our doc had jury duty). She again gets perfect marks all around and now weighs 9lbs- a 1.5 lb gain from birth! With her weight and height she falls into the 75th percentile for growth.

I am especially happy because Tessa has now drank expressed breast milk from a bottle three times with no hesitancy or nipple confusion- yay! This is good because I don't have to 'whip them out' in public if I don't want to, but also means I can easily leave her with Jeremy or other babysitter with no worries.

4 Generations

Mamaw with her great grandaughter- 18 days old

A beautiful weekend to be outside!



Don't worry- with all the baby love the boys didn't get ignored. Mark and Bob played with Uncle Jeremy

*stay tuned for more great pictures from Grammie and Grampies' visit!*

A Day in the Life..

Hi everyone, Tessa here. Life is so good here at my house, here's what I've been doing the past couple of days...

I've been going for walks in my stroller!

(Really the walks are for mommy and her big butt, I just sleep)

I've been basking in the sun

I've been taking sponge baths- how embarassing!

And this nice lady is here visiting me! She is my grandma but goes by Mom-mom. I like her!

I've also been dirtying my cool cloth diapers called fuzzy bunz. Mom and Dad seem to love them, so I do my best to keep them dirty. Check them out...www.fuzzibunz.com