Tess

Time flies, and I’ve found that it flies faster with Baby #4 than it did with the others.  So I’m overdue on catching everyone up on Tessie and her accomplishments.

While we were in Baltimore, Tess learned to wave.  This was pretty funny, because her first wave was to complete strangers in a restaurant.  Michael and I were out to eat with my sister and brother-in-law, and we had only Tess along (the other kids were with a sitter at home).  Tess was sitting in a high chair, working the crowd.  I looked over at her and she was smiling and waving across the room – her very first wave!  I looked to see who was the wave recipient, and it was a whole table full of adults, all goofily smiling and waving at Tess.  She’s just that cute!  Now she will wave at strangers, but not at her family.  Not sure why.

Tess also learned to clap.  Once her older siblings learned to clap, they suddenly realized that they could do other planned motions with their hands, too, and began signing.  Tess is no different – she’s started signing now.  It’s very exciting.  She will often sign something once or twice and then not sign it for a week or two, then start up again.  And sometimes her signs look quite a bit like clapping, but you can tell she’s signing something else that you were just talking about.  So we’ve seen her sign “potty,” “dada,” “Jesus,” “book,” “bunny,” “car,” and “nurse.”  There are more, too, but I can’t remember all of them.  I’m having to remember signs for babies and remember to do them for her. 

She’s also gotten into her pincer grip, which is so useful for so many things, like playing with toys, eating food, eating little pieces of lint off the carpet, and pinching tiny little pieces of her mother’s skin. 

She LOVES her family.  When I bring her downstairs in the morning or after a nap, her sunniest smiles are for her siblings.  She has started reaching out to Michael and Hannah to pick her up – even sometimes when Mama is holding her, which is new – before she would tolerate others, even have fun with them, but she never reached for anyone but Mama.  Hannah was thrilled the first time it happened.

Sim loves to play with Tess.  (Okay, all the kids do, but I’m going to talk about Sim right now.)  He loves to do peek-a-boo games with her, and her baby laughs are just darling.

She’s a sweet little baby, for sure!