Sore loser...

When we bought a Wii, we got it so the whole family could enjoy it, and Tess LOVES playing Wii. More often than not, when I am in the living room, she will run to the tv stand, pull out the drawer where the controllers are kept and bring one to me while she keeps the other so we can play.

So, yesterday I sat down on the couch to watch some Olympics, and Tess swaggers over, pointing right at me, looking me right in the eyes and talking a whole boat load of trash about how she's gonna mop the floor with me in tennis. She says to me, she says, "When I get done with you Dada, you're gonna be pickin green felt out ya teeth!" No lies. I felt it was only right to humble her a bit. Jaime taped the end of the game, when I made that baby eat her words. It turns out she has her Grammy's competitive nature combined with John McEnroe's fiery temper. Sore loser.





I dominated that mullet-headed little girl.

Doppleganger week...

As a lot of you have noticed on Facebook, it is doppleganger week. Apparently you are supposed to change your profile picture to an image of some celebrity that you supposedly look like. Jaime and I decided to choose for each other. Results below--roll your mouse over the images to see our dopplegangers.

Baby say what?..

Tess gets upset when Jaime walks out of a room and closes a door behind her, thus separating them FOREVER. A while ago, I started noticing that she says the exact same thing every time it happens. And I need help figuring out what it means. Luckily I was able to finally catch it on video while we were in Richmond:

The first time I heard her say this, I could have sworn she had just told me, "Mama is dead!"

Now when I hear it, though, it sounds more like she's been hanging out with a bunch of hispanic people and has picked up some espanglish: "Mama estay!"

Someone translate for me.

Christmas Day...

Merry Christmas! Even if it is a little late. We celebrated Christmas with my family in Philadelphia. My Christmas present to Tess this year was this amazing set of pajamas. Who would have thought that the price of Halloween gear would be so reduced around this time of year? It's an elf skeleton, so it goes right along with the holiday spirit.


Tess had a great time opening presents and pulling the goodies out of her stocking:




In the first picture, she's doing her sign for "more", which makes perfect sense because when she got done pulling things out of her stocking, she went straight for everyone else's. Including her cousins'


And Uncle Shane's.


Later in the day, since there had been a blizzard earlier in the week, most of us went sledding. It was good we went when we did because the next day we got rain and it got rid of ALL the snow.

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.