Wonderful Things About Tess

She's fourteen months old now, and what a wonderful, sweet child. I couldn't have asked for a better second child. She's so sweet, she wakes up with a smile, and goes to bed with a smile. She has this habit of tilting her head to the side when she smiles at you, as if she's pretending to be shy. She's so funny, too. I always wondered when people said their 1-year-old was funny, how could they be? How could they develop that fast? But they do, and I suppose with Owen, things did come slower, and maybe some things just weren't there when they should have been.

My parents were recently in town, and I said to my mom, "well, I hope I don't have to worry because she's not walking yet, since she's already fourteen months old," and my mom said, "it happens when it's the right time for the child, and besides, she's going to be an early talker, listen to that girl!" And she was right. She already says Mama, Daddy, Sissy, ball, bath,
nana (for banana) and tries to copy a lot of other words. She is constantly trying to talk, and she means business. As for walking, she is walking around the furniture and starting to hold her balance for a few seconds without hanging on to anything. Erik thinks she'll walk in a week, I think it will be more like three weeks. Of course, we placed bets on it (and no, I'm not going to tell you what the stakes are, but it involves how she got here...)

My beautiful little Tess is my girl. She follows me around and wants only me, and for the most part, it thrills me deep inside. I know there will come a day when she will probably hate me, but for now, I just love when I walk in the door and she reaches for me, almost hungrily, as if she can't get enough of me. And she is such a good sleeper. I literally feed this girl at 5:30 p.m., dress her for bed and she is reaching for her crib as I bring her into her room at 6:30 p.m. She lays down happily, and sleeps through the night until 6:00 a.m. I find that I have to get in bed these days exactly by 10 p.m., or I cannot possibly get up and start my day with her. I wonder when it got so impossible for me to not have my 8 hours of sleep??

As for Owen, my parents were also amazed at how much his language is coming along, and when I started paying attention to it, I was amazed too. It seems as if when he got over being sick, he blossomed. He began talking to me, asking me for things, and now is using not only 3 word sentences but sometimes 5 or 6-word sentences. I am astounded. I feel as if he is trying to catch up to what a normal 3-year old would be saying. He is my amazing boy. We cut his hair the other day and I almost cried he looked so grown up. We finally have gotten the art of cutting his hair down, but we wait months because it is such agony for him to feel the scissors cutting his hair. Of course he screams and cries, but we finally decided we would rather he scream and cry at home with us than at a salon that charges us $25 for it.

We are all feeling better, and of course, March is upon us. There has been some great press the last few days on a new drug for treating our kids which is all of part of the Stanford study that we did a fundraiser for back in November, www.dsrtf.org. If you don't know the organization, please visit their website. Dr. William Mobley is the forefront researcher, and he believes that this treatment for our kids can raise the cognitive level of our kids by 10-20 percent, which would be huge. They are still some years off, because they have to do trials, but it is so promising. I don't have a link to the articles, but they ran in the Wall Street Journal, LA Times, etc.

Thank God summer is coming, and we can all start getting outdoors more. The days will be longer, the weather warmer, and the sickness gone...