Sometimes with Tess I feel like I drop the ball in areas of treating her like the big kid that she is. She’s just MY BABY haha so I tend to forget that she’s plenty old enough to enjoy experiences that the others enjoy. She’s the kid who was the baby for the longest…she and Spear have the biggest age gap between any of my kids and it’s easy for me to forget that. I’ll think of things in terms of what we did with Kye when Britt was born and what we did with Britt when Tess was born but really Tess is almost an entire year older than Kye and Britt were when they became an older sibling!
One area I feel like I’ve slacked on with Tess is solo dates with her. Zach and I don’t do them enough! She’s old enough to be going and doing with us by herself and to enjoy the benefits of those special times together! I’m so glad I was able to go on a little Tessie date this month 🙂
First we hit up Walmart for dealz 😉
Then she wanted to get “coffee” so we went to Starbucks!
Tess is a SUPER slow eater/drinker so I let her take the “coffee” in the car when we left. Epic mistake. She spilt it everywhere. Daddy was not pleased about having to clean out her car seat when we got home!
A pet peeve of mine when on a solo date with my kids is other people talking to me as if I were alone. Don’t get me wrong I LOVE chatting it up with random strangers. I’m extroverted and enjoy those types of interactions but it bugs me that people see me with my child and assume I’d rather have “adult conversation” or act like my child isn’t even there. If I’m there alone with my kid it’s because I want to be and I want to spend that time talking to them and pouring into them!
Don’t get me wrong, I love running into friends and such when out and about but on this occasion a total and complete stranger started chatting me up the entire time we were sitting there and it was just too much and really took away from my time with Tess. In the guys defense though, I am horrible at knowing how to stop that from happening once it starts haha I don’t know how to communicate that I don’t want to be talking to someone without being rude. Plusssss we got talking about adoption so I was probably over contributing too haha
We also had our game time together and Tess LOVES Surprise Slides! (Anything with Mickey and she’s ALL about it!)
Tessie loves her brother…but also will be territorial when it comes to Mommy’s lap 😉
Tess is still very much loving gymnastics and enjoys having something that is hers! I don’t have any regrets in signing her up (other than the cost haha). It’s been SO fun too because Stacy (my midwife) is up there most of the time when we are and her oldest is close to Kye’s age and our youngest ones are only a day apart! Tess and Will adore each other and it’s so stinking cute to watch them play!
Happy girl in her element!
Tess is VERY independent which is mostly a HUGE blessing. But can also have it’s downsides. She wants to do things on her own and will be quiet about it and not really communicate things to me so I often have surprises. Like she’ll go poop and not wipe herself well enough and have icky panties. Or in this case…go poop and use an entire roll of toilet paper to wipe herself!
This is her “I’m too cute to be annoyed at” face 😉
She said “I just helping Mommy!”
And that moment lead to me walking around with poop on my shirt all day. Epic.
Her independence and quiet nature combined with my distractions with a new baby can also lead to mischievous behavior…like getting into all of Mommy’s makeup!
One of my goals for 2018 is to catch up on getting all of my blog books printed. We got a new entertainment center and now have all of the blog books on display so the kids are looking through them more often. I felt SO BAD when Britt and Tess looked through them and Tess kept asking where she was…and I had to confess that I don’t have any books from since she’s been born! #momfail.
For Christmas Tess got a BB8 costume and is SO stinking cute in it!!! She hasn’t seen any of the movies but she knows many of the characters from our Disney trips!
Who doesn’t love cookie rings??
Bahaha she snuck a cookie AND got a plate for it AND left some sitting out.
When we got a new entertainment center I needed to find a place for all of our BOOKS. I love keeping all of our favorite family books in one spot in a location where we can all easily access them. Each of the kids have a book shelf in their closets with their personal books but the family ones I love being able to just get whenever anyone feels like reading! I was SO PUMPED when I found this awesome ottoman! It has the perfect amount of storage and looks SO great in our hallway!!! It’s from Target…here’s a direct link 🙂
Tess LOVES to read! She enjoys having me read to her but also just really loves to read by herself. I love when she pulls out my childhood books 🙂
When I see these stickers it makes me want to buy a bunch of them with my kids names on them and put them on all of their books so they will have that memory someday 🙂
Someone took this picture of Tess in Bible Class and it makes me laugh every time I look at it!
Tess is REALLY into cereal this month! She will KILL some cereal and it makes me think of my little brother who would always eat cereal all the time.
I love our lunch chats!
She loves when she’s awake and allowed to get up early from nap to welcome Kye and Britt off the bus!
Tess continues to excel at school this year and especially LOVES having Carter in her class! Kye and Payton were together in a preschool class one year but they weren’t NEARLY as inseparable as Carter and Tess are! They are truly best buddies and it’s adorable! They always want to play together on the playground and were even both selected to hold the flags together during chapel 🙂
Casey brought the boys to our church to see Kye speak and of course these two had to sit together 🙂
Tess has truly embraced the big sister role and ADORES Spear. So much more than I’d ever imagined she would. She is always so excited to see him and talks in this adorable baby voice with him and wants to be a helper and is so happy to just have him around her! It’s precious to see!
Videos:
- Being BB8
- Loving cereal!
- Pigtails are funnnn
- Waking up Spear 🙂
- Crazy Girl Tess
- “What’s the deal Mom? Get it together woman!” ha!
Love this girl and her spunky spirit!
Megan is very close to her cousin, too, who is 6 weeks younger than her. She's been saying I want to marry Sam. I have been telling her for a long time that you can't marry your cousin but just last week we read the Bambi Golden Book and she put two and two together and realized that Faline was his cousin! So more explaining that animals can marry their cousins but people can't. HAHA! All of this came to mind when I saw the pic of Tess and Carter! Sweet cousin love!!!!