Blizzarding...

We just remembered that we have an interblogs that needs updated. Luckily, we have lots of pictures to put up here. Last month, Tess survived her first blizzard, and got to play in some snow for the first time. We put a bunch of layers on the poor girl. We should have taken a video because she looked just like the kid from A Christmas Story. She couldn't move her arms or legs and if we let go of her, she would just fall over.

It was still snowing when we went out. The girls played for a little bit.


While I tried to clear off the cars.


But it was really all in vain since the next morning all of the snow had been replaced by new snow.


Tess really wasn't all that impressed, and was much more interested in getting back inside to continue her expeditions on the plastic containers in the living room.

4 legs in the morning, 2 in the afternoon...

Over the last week, Tess had started letting go of the couch and trying to take a couple of steps. Usually that is as far as she would get. The best was when she took one step with her left foot, didn't fall and then took two more steps with the same foot. It was like watching a fish swim with one fin. This first video was taken on my phone. It's awful quality. But it was taken right after Tess suddenly decided tonight that she could, in fact, walk. And then it turned into a game. She would let go of the couch, take some steps, fall down and then crawl back to the same spot on the couch to start over.


This video isn't that great, except it ends with Jaime saying: Yay...What a..." And it cuts off. Feel free to assume Jaime said any number of horrible things.


She can even walk in pants.

Chocolate baby...

Tess is a year old. 12 months. Basically a teenager now.

Since we forced her to dress up as a monkey and paraded her around for others to laugh at her on Halloween, we decided to make her birthday all about her. We took her to Target to let her pick out some party favors. Tess wanted us to get this hat for her and to call her "Your Majesty" all night. We did neither.


Afterwards we took her to a toy store, and Tess was in heaven. Her arms were basically flailing wildly from the time we went in until the time we went out. And then there was cake. This is Tess eyeing the cake:

Touching the cake...not sure what it is. Is that chocolate or poo? Chocolate or poo?

It's chocolate. Both hands in. This could be good.

Oh yeah! This is promising. Not entirely convinced yet.

GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY CAKE!!!

Saving some in her hair for later.

This is the best birthday party I've ever had!

And here's a video. Not too exciting. It might have some part of her sucking the cake off of her hands. It was pretty nasty.



And the after party just got hotter...We got her a little walker that also is part awesome four wheeler.



This is a video of her walking with it.

Brass Monkey...Chunky...

Celebrating Tessa's first Halloween. Here we are arriving at a Chili Cookoff/Trunk-or-treat at the church.



It was raining in Philly, so instead of having the kids go around begging for treats at everyone's cars, we all stayed indoors. Tess and I took a walk down the hallway to check out what candies were available.



We decided not to actually walk around with her collecting candy. Instead we gave her one wrapped up ring pop, and the crinkling plastic kept her attention until the trick-or-treating was done.



So we just hung out with Aunt Miriam and passed out candy.



By the end of the activity, this is how our little angel was feeling. And we didn't even make her walk around a neighborhood. Afterwards we went home, passed out candy to the neighborhood kids and watched the Phillies lose.

A few more new videos...

Kisses and Hugs:



Future Band Leader of America:



Have Your People Call My People:

Ready for Halloween...

...our little monkey is! I'm going to have to clip that little pink bow (or something even more conspicuously girly) to her ear to fend off the inevitable comments about what a cute son I have.

Notice how she's holding her favorite matching monkey friend. We love this girl!

She's using her words now...

...and she has at least three of them!



I think she thinks "nana" means all food. Here's why: when I feed her banana, I always say "nana" but I haven't really been telling her the names of anything else I give her. And then whenever I'm cooking or I have food that she wants to eat, she crawls up and says "nana" over and over again. In between saying "nana" she opens her mouth to make it clear she wants a bite.

She's not confused at all about who her mama is, though. And she's getting a pretty solid grip on the dada concept too.

Because we like to entertain ourselves more than her sometimes...

We decided to get a headstart on Christmas pageant practice this year. Tess volunteered to be Mary. Ever innovative, she chose to do a modern take on the traditional Mary costume, inspired by the popular (in some circles) mullet hairdo. Therefore, her look is business in the front:

Party in the back! WHOOOO!!!!!

"WHY are you all looking at me like that."

Vid-E-Os....

Swinging:


Piano practice:


"Old Man Walk" (from a few months ago):


Tessa-toss:

Four years...

On August 19, Josh and I celebrated four years of wedded bliss. Look at how happy he is to still be married to me! :) Stupid delayed camera flash....

To celebrate, I stayed home with Tess all day while Josh worked until midnight at his custodial job. Yes, we are naturally festive that way. As an anniversary surprise, while he was working I baked a pan of brownies with the words "happy 4th" spelled out in chocolate chips on top. Domesticity FTW! The funny thing was that he also brought home brownie cookies (and flowers) for me - WE ARE THAT IN SYNC.

Here is the best thing we have to show for ourselves after four years, as she schemes of ways to give us a run for our money during the next four.

Art History...

All of my old classmates do a nice job posting about art history on their blogs, and I barely ever mention it. So, I thought I'd share one of my favorite works of art by the artist Frans Hals. It's a portrait of a mother and child done around 1619.

The double portrait is an excellent early example of Hals's subtle invention. The mother, it seems, is about to present an apple to the young child when she is interrupted by a spectator, to whom she appears to turn spontaneously. Meanwhile the child, pushes her mother back with the right hand and produces an expression as if to say, "Why on earth, would I want to play with that nasty rotten apple?". Both of the figures serve as one of the many ingenious devices used by Hals to give the impression of a moment of life in his pictures.

Hals, who always dressed his models in costumes from his own studio, chose to decorate the extremely blind mother with a pair of bright red glasses. This feature, which some scholars claim to be 20th century in style, has stirred up a fair amount of debate over the authenticity of this work. While most consider this to be one of Hals' greatest masterpieces, another smaller faction staunchly claims the work to be a fake.

Pillow talk (Don't tell Jaime I'm posting this)...

In case you missed the conversation we had a while ago in bed, here are some of the more interesting parts. I wrote them down after Jaime had fallen asleep because the conversation was so life-changing for me:

Me: How much do you think a toilet costs?
Jaime: I don't have any idea.
Me: Yeah, me either.
Jaime: 350?
Me: Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Except a prime number.
Jaime: 357?
Me: Perfect...except that's not a prime number.

....long pause....

Me: Did you hear me when I said that's not a prime?

...a few minutes pass:

Me: I hate people.
Jaime: Don't you know we came from people? So you can't hate people.
Me: My family's not people. They're my family.
Jaime: So what are they? Plants?
Me: Plants? Why would you go with plants? You could have said any animal or insect. You could've said monkeys.
Jaime: I just decided to go with another kingdom. I skipped genus, phylum, all that and went to the other kingdom.
Me: Why not something like cyborgs? or zombies?

...Long discussion about what a cyborg is.

Me: Did you know that zombies are the top of the food chain?
Jaime: No they aren't.
Me: Yes, they are. It goes plants, animals, people, zombies.
Jaime: No. It goes plants, animals, people, lions.
Me: Lions? What? Lions? Are you kidding?
Jaime: No, wait. It goes plants, animals, people, lions, then hyenas eat the dead lions and fungus eats the dead hyenas.
Me: And then people eat the fungus and the zombies eat the people.

...more silence

Jaime: I love you.
Me: I love you too.

...short silence.

Me: Did you believe me when I said it?
Jaime: Why? Should I not believe you?
Me: No. I just was wondering if you believed me.
Jaime: Oh. I didn't even hear you...or I forgot on account of the tiredness.

...silence.

Me: Did you hear me when I said it wasn't a prime number?

Don't Smile Tessa...

We took Tess on a trip to Skaneateles, NY this weekend to visit with some of Jaime's family and to also visit Palmyra. Happy Birthday Laura!

Anyhow, after spending 70% of the trip in a car seat, she wasn't pleased with us. So this is how she looked a good portion of the trip:



So, we started to play the "don't smile" game with our lil grumpster. It's that great game parents play with pouting children where they repeatedly tell the child: "Don't smile...no, no...don't do it. Don't smile!" And then of course, the child ends up laughing and getting even angrier. Tess plays really well. This is as close as the stubborn cuss would get. She's squeezing her lips together tight and holding it back as best she can. She absolutely refused to show any teeth...she has 47 of them now if you weren't aware. It's our new favorite picture of her.



You'll notice a stuffed monkey in the picture. Apparently the monkey is Tess' BFF 4eva. We found on this trip that she would calm down a little if we gave her the monkey while she was in the seat. She would scream and scream and then when Jaime would give her the monkey, she would stop screaming and begin to whisper to the monkey and tell it all the horrible things we put her through.

Sometimes my daughter just amazes me...

She keeps on rockin til the break of dawn.

Overhead at the continental breakfast...

Mother to her kids: He was 50, and they are pretty sure his death had something to do with all the prescription pills he was on.

Confused child (6 years old or so): Oh. I thought the zombies got him.

This girl has got SKILLS...

Dreaming-of-mama skills:


Giggling skills:


Crawling-towards-junk skills:


Jumping-with-tongue-out skills:

Sometimes my daughter just amazes me...

Tessa-san.

We've finally figured out how to communicate with her...

Already on a steady diet of government cheese...

For our next move, we're considering living in a van down by the river.


When we were in Richmond a couple weekends ago we took Tess down to the James to see what she thought about that idea.

Her verdict? "I'll go wherever YOU go, Mom!"

Where's Waldo, Part II....

Another study in baby camouflage:


















Notice how seamlessly she blends in with the underlying blanket.


















Lying motionless, she is almost completely undetectable to would-be babysnatchers.























HEY, I SAID ALMOST.

Since she's already mastered reading...

When Tess woke up from her nap today, she was rather upset to see my face hovering over the crib and not her mother's. To calm her down, I decided to let her play on my computer. She's pretty much obsessed with anything that has a screen...or has colors...or is plastic...or is her mom...or isn't not her mom.


Here she is doing a little programming. And again, I don't mean to brag or anything, but she's basically a genius. I know some of you might not be all that impressed by computer programming since companies like Intuit basically hire monkeys off the street to do their programming...but you're wrong. It's pretty amazing stuff, especially from a 6 month old. I asked her what she was working on, but when she gets in the zone, she only answers in binary. So I have no idea what she was saying.



Binary sounds like screaming.

Where's Waldo?..

Since Tess is so cute, women constantly tell us that they want to just eat her up! Well, we will have none of that. No one, and I mean no one, will be eating our baby up! Not without our permission at least. So, we developed a plan to foil would be baby munchers...baby camouflage. We sleep a lot better at night knowing Tess blends in perfectly with her baby blanket, making her virtually invisible to any crazed baby hungry psychos.


We're still working on getting some matching pants.

Actually, Jaime took this picture to document one of Tessa's coping mechanisms. Before Ferberization, Tess really only liked to fall asleep with her face firmly snuzzled into Jaime's arm. Now, to help herself fall asleep, we assume she flails around until she can grab the corner of her blanket to pull it in close to her face so that she has something there to soothe her.

Pull-ups...

No. Not the underwears. The exercise. Tess has started to develop a stomach a little too reminiscent of her father's, so we've started to get her to do some exercizing. Her favorite is doing pull-ups on the bouncey chair:


Oh yeah. Feelin the burn.

DCCC...

I was checking out the local community college's course schedules the other day and came upon these two courses. I think if you are in the Philadelphia area, you should really consider taking one of these classes at Delaware County Community College. The instructor is amazing...and pure eye candy.

For summer term:

Or Fall semester:


This is how Tess reacted when she found out her dad was gonna be a teacher:

At first it would appear she is happy for her dad, but in reality she's saying, "Wait! Really? No way! They're actually gonna let that chambon teach a class? Ah ha ha ha! Suckers." I think she's actually just happy she figured out she can get her foot in her mouth.


I announced it on Facebook, and so I imagine anyone that reads this blog would have also heard it on there. But I'm just wanted to re-announce it cause I'm pretty excited about it.

Maymont Park...

To help quell the spells of yelling (ah rhyming), we decided to take Tessa on an outdoor adventure at Maymont Park in Richmond. That's right. We drove 4 hours so Tess could experience a park in Richmond. Actually we've been in Richmond for a week with Jaime's family. It's a pretty strange park, mainly because there are animal habitats all around. It's a little like a mini-zoo.

We started at the Childrens farm. Since our baby is broken (her setting is stuck on 'scream'), we went to check out some of the fresh new crop to perhaps make a trade. Here I am presenting Tessa to potential barterers. No one made any bids.


Well, it turns out childrens farm is not at all what it sounds like. There was no farming of childrens at all. In fact, all they had were animals: goats, sheep and birds. Jaime squealed and squealed when she saw the baby goats frolicking. I hate the word frolic for not having a K on the end. Goats make surprisingly cute babies.


We fed some big goats...not cute at all.


We saw bears...and Tessa used a statue to show them what she would do to them. Head stomped! I thought the nicest part of the park was the Japanese garden. It was really peaceful until a pack of wild teenage girls showed up screeching and barking about the giant goldfish in the pond.


After the teenagers showed up, all the animals fled to this rock in the middle of the pond. I envied them.


And finally some pictures of Tess with her best girlfriend. Tess really loves exploring new places and she was pretty content the whole time we were out and about.