Tessa is ONE!

Yes, that's right, Tessa turned 1 on Sunday 4/3! I still can't believe my eyes and how fast the year went by. She has been the light of our lives this past year. Not that Landon hasn't been, but so many things are new with her and watching an infant grow into a toddler all over again has definitely been exciting and interesting to see how different babies are. She has grown up so much. She can now say 4 words (Mama, Dada, Dog, and Ball)...which I have to say is more than Landon could say at his first birthday. But then again, Landon was already walking at his first birthday, and Tessa still isn't. She's close though. I love having a little girl where I can dress her up like a doll and fix her hair. She loves to give kisses and cuddle. She is such a calm little girl, unless she sees something that she really wants. When she sees my iPhone, she immediately wants it, which is frustrating, but cracks me up at the same time. She's into everything, like my bathroom drawers and cupboards. She loves to unload the already folded laundry, which I can only laugh at cause she's so stinkin' cute. My favorite is that when she is concentrating on stuff, she always has her mouth wide open with her tongue sticking out. I really can't get enough of it.

You can look at the rest of the pictures in my Facebook album: www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2215219&id=193303664&l=55f2559030

Tessa is 10 months!

This little girl is a big 10 months already! I can hardly believe that she is going to be a year old in only 2 months! Where has the year gone? Tessa has been the light of our lives the past 10 months. She's learning new things and growing every day. She FINALLY started crawling...2.5 months late, according to the bar her brother set before her ;) But now she is unstoppable. When she wants something...SHE GETS IT! She's very determined to say the least. She loves stealing fishy crackers from her brother and just today tried macaroni and LOVED IT! I never thought I could love another child as much as I love Landon, but this sweet little girl is proof that it's more than possible! Just looking at this picture below as I type makes me want to run into her room and wake her up from her nap and hug her and kiss her to death ;)
Some more things about her....she LOVES to play with the pretend kitchen stuff and stands up and tries to destroy the setup of Landon's train table. Every day, without fail, she crawls under the barstools and gets herself trapped under there. I keep telling her not to and that she'll get stuck, but she just doesn't listen, haha. She can clap and wave on command without me showing her what to do first. She is GAGA over her daddy and gets so giddy when he walks through the door after work. It is also evidenced by the fact that she constantly says, "da, a da da". You know her constant whereabouts because she does raspberries with her mouth all day long! I couldn't have asked for a better baby! I love her to pieces!!!

Here she is experiencing her first cupcake (with purple frosting) at Landon's friend's 3rd birthday party.(It makes me so excited for her first birthday so I can see her dive into all the cake and frosting...when Landon turned 1 he didn't really know what to do with it)

Look at her sitting ups like a big girl, in a big girl chair! I can hardly believe it!!!

Landon's Dream Come True!

At the end of January we went to Mariner Fan-Fest at Safeco Field. Landon had the time of his life! It was freezing and rainy but Landon enjoyed every minute of it and I'm so glad we took him. He has such a passion for baseball and wakes up and asks to play baseball every morning, I just couldn't pass up this opportunity for him to experience the real deal.

Warming up in the bullpen

Got a picture with the new catcher Miguel Olivo!

Batter up!

Catching pop-flies!

Fireman Landon?

Well Landon turned 3 today! Still can't believe it. I love this little man so much and he make my life so much better, I can't imagine it without him. Over the summer he was really into this cartoon called "Fireman Sam", so I decided that if he was still interested, we'd do a fireman themed birthday party for him. Time went by so fast and suddenly it was December and I still hadn't planned his birthday party, so I asked him if he wanted a Fireman party...Luckily he said YES! So anyway, it was a hit. We went to the local fire station for a tour of the firehouse and firetrucks and then we came back to our house for pizza and cupcakes. After pizza, my cousin Todd, who is also a fireman up in Everett, brought kid sized bunker gear and wore his own uniform. The kids got dressed up, went out back and fought the fires of Lakeland Hills (putting out flares on our back patio with the garden hose ;)). It was priceless and the kids loved it. Happy 3rd Birthday Moose!!!

Tessa is 9 months!

Has it really been 3 months since the last time I posted anything. I guess the holidays were just so busy :P

Tessa is now 9 months old and we couldn't be happier with our life since she entered the family. She is such a sweet spirit and makes me laugh all the time. She is almost crawling and loves playing in the toy kitchen stuff in the playroom. She does these little shreek sounds when she is happy and loves to laugh with her brother. She's a really good eater, as you can tell from the photos...she's not as skinny as her brother was at this age, which I love because that just means there's more to love :) She really likes eating those little puffs and Mumm crackers. To her it's like catnip for babies cause she goes crazy over them.

6 months & Charlotte

Wow! Tessa is 6 months old! She's now sitting up on her own and babbling and playing with things. She actually sat up a week earlier than her brother did at this age. She loves jumping in her jungle bouncer, the same one Landon used to use and loved as well. She's such a joy to have in our family. She makes every day brighter with her adorable smile and funny noises. I wish I could get a video, and some day I might, but she does this funny thing where she scrunches up her nose and mouth and breathes really hard through her nose. It's hilarious. We went to Charlotte recently at the beginning of October and all her Aunts just LOVED her! We went to the pumpkin patch and rode on a huge tractor and we went shopping and hung out as a huge family. It was awesome. Landon loved playing baseball everyday because it was stil 80 degrees over there. Papa Dirt took him to the golf course 5 times while we were there too. He LOVED that! Landon loved all the animals that Papa and Lola have in there house, but he still doesn't understand that Teddy (the big orange cat) doesn't like being tormented. Teddy gave Landon a battle wound right across his left cheek, but Landon kept coming back for more as if he had never been touched. I guess he'll learn one of these days.

Family Camping for the First Time!!!

This last weekend we joined some friends who invited us to go camping with them. We have never gone camping before as a family, except an overnight (more like a sleepover) with our church that was literally 5 minutes away from our house. That was a nice warm up to see how the kids would do, but this weekend was 10 times better and it was actually 2.5 hours away from our house. We went to a place called Wenatchee Confluence State Park. We did your traditional camping activities: roasting marshmallows, eating hot dogs, dutch ovens, and we even got to go out on our friend's boat. The kids were great and Landon loved every minute of it!

5!!!

Tessa Elizabeth is 5 months already! I say this every month, but I truly cannot believe how fast time flies. She of course got to be 5 months old much faster than Landon did. Of course, that's probably because it was just me and Landon last time...Tessa is such a sweet little spirit and she's brought a lot of joy to this household. Landon absolutely adores her and she can't get enough of her handsome brother either. She constantly stares at him. She loves bouncing in the jumperoo that her brother once used when he was a baby and she's now able to sit up in the bumbo and eat rice cereal mixed with green beans. YUM ;) She rolls and babbles and makes spit bubbles with her tongue and lips. She gets so happy when daddy comes home and makes her smile. She really is quite the perfect baby. I do say my prayers and thank my Heavenly Father for bringing me such a wonderful and well behaved baby. I think he knew that I wouldn't be able to handle a fussy or colicky baby. I have been truly blessed with two very well behaved babies.

August 2010

Hey everyone, sorry I haven't blogged in quite a while. So many things have been happening. We had my family in town at the beginning of August and then I had my 10 year highschool reunion, we went camping, and did a lot of other stuff. The kids have been keeping me pretty busy and this last week everyone including myself was sick. If you'd like to see some pictures from the past month click on these links below. One is from the reunion and the other is from the rest of August.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2175561&id=193303664&l=9fb6796902

and

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2177453&id=193303664&l=77d2b8fb41

I'll be posting soon about Tessa being 5 months old....stay tuned :)

Tessa's blessing

Tessa was blessed on the 4th of July when she was 3 months old. Ben's family and some of my friends came to take part in this special day, it was wonderful. Tessa giggles so much now and she has so much personality. I got a video of her...and of course I'm looking like an idiot to try to make her laugh. It's worth it though! Ben and I also celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. Boy, time flies! Here are a few pictures or Tessa and how big she has gotten.

Baseball...BASEBALL!!!

Calling all pro scouts.....I think we might have a new professional in town. Of course, he's only 2 and a half, but he's got a bright future ahead ;).

All Landon talks about is BASEBALL! His favorite words right now: NO and BASEBALL! When he wakes up in the morning I ask him what he wants for breakfast and he says, "No breakfast, play baseball!" When we get home from our morning errands or play dates, I say, "guess what time it is?" (alluding to nap time) and Landon says "play baseball". Then when he finally gets in bed for nap time he tells me, "nap time, then baseball". And after his nap, Daddy gets home and first thing when he comes through the door, Landon says, "Daddy, play baseball".

We'll take him to the park and play for at least an hour if the weather is nice and he just can't get enough. He just doesn't get tired of it. He's got a pretty good swing and he throws pretty well for a 2 year old too. It's amazing that he actually makes contact with the ball after Ben pitches it to him, I don't know too many 2 year olds that can do that. Check out the video. He's such a funny kid. He HAS to stand in the same place when he's batting, he HAS to do the wind up when he throws the ball, and Mommy and Daddy HAVE TO wear baseball hats if we're playing with him. Oh and I forgot to mention that Landon LOVES to watch the big boys play baseball at the park too. It's the only time I've ever seen him sit for more than 30 minutes straight. I LOVE THIS KID!!!

2 Months...

and TOO CUTE! I know I always say this about my kids, but I just can't believe how fast time goes by. I guess it's because when you have kids, your life is just so much busier so you don't really have time to sit back and say "gosh I wish time would go by faster"...although, I am kind of saying that in the midst of being busy because I wish the "terrible two" stage would be over already with Landon. Anyway, back to Tessa. At her check up on Thursday she was 11 pounds (50th percentile), 22.5 inches (50th percentile) and her head size is also in the 50th percentile. Basically she is a perfectly average baby. I really love this little girl soooo much. She's started talking and smiling. I love it.

Wild West...

We went to The Old Cannery and Fudge Factory in Sumner today for their Memorial Weekend Sale. Landon LOVED it. There were trains galore and he found bunk beds and wanted to get them so badly, but we had to pass for now. They had raffles, free hotdogs, pop, popcorn, and we had our western family photo taken. I just love the expression on Landon's face and he loved holding those guns. Thank goodness we don't have any of those at home though. We had a great time.

RSV :(

Tessa started sounding congested this past Friday so I called the consulting nurse and she said that it's very possible that she was spitting up milk into her nasal cavity. I wasn't too worried and it made sense since the color of the stuff I was suctioning out of her nose was the same color as my milk. So I was really calm over the weekend until she started coughing too, but then part of me thought that it was probably just the mucus draining down her throat. But this morning I had a gut feeling that I should bring her into the pediatrician to have her checked out just in case it had gotten into her lungs or something. It turns out that her oxygen levels were pretty low (at 91 and they'd like it at 95-100) so they put her on an oxygen tank. We were transported to Children's Hospital by ambulance (which was honestly kinda cool because I'd never been in an ambulance before, but I was still scared for my baby girl, so it wasn't THAT cool) because she had to stay on oxygen during the ride to the hospital. While they had her on oxygen at the Dr. office, they decided to test her for RSV, which is a lung infection, just to be on the safe side. Turns out that she tested positive, so that's why they admitted us to the hospital. I was pretty scared because I didn't know the details of this infection and I really didn't want to be in the hospital again after just having been in the hospital to give birth to her. She has to be monitored over night and we could be here as long as this Friday. I know that she will pull through because she is a strong spunky little girl, I just need to be patient and let this thing run it's course. Patience is probably one of my worst qualities and I have a feeling that Heavenly Father is trying to help me get better at being more patient.

She's FINALLY here!!!

Little Miss Tessa finally arrived on Saturday, April 3rd at 12:38pm. She was 7 pounds 4 ounces and 19 inches long. She's absolutely perfect...in her parent's eyes. She's such a good sleeper (11pm-3am then up again at 7am). I'm seriously so spoiled. She's only had one complication so far, which is spitting up into her nasal cavity which makes her sound like a little snorting pig. I can't get over how precious she is and how much I love her. I never thought I could love another child as much as I love Landon, but it's obvious to me now that it's definitely possible. Landon is SO good with her. He loves to hold her "all by himself."

Happy Easter!

Easter pictures I had taken of Landon last week. He looks so grown up.