Exciting Exciting Stuff!

I'm a little behind...not super behind, but a little.  We had a huge-huge moment the Friday before Christmas....huge!  I got home a little early from work for a therapy session with Lori, our deaf educator (ironically enough).  Me, Tessa and Parker were all waiting for Lori to get there and for Darin to get home.  I had Tessa sitting in her tumble form seat facing the kitchen and we were just playing and Parker was sitting on the couch playing on the iPad.  We heard the front door open and when I saw Darin in the kitchen I signed and said to Tessa "say Hi Daddy" and right after, Tessa SAYS "Ha Da-da"!  Unmistakable!  Unbelievable!  We both just started screaming "Ha Da-da" "Ha Da-da"....and Darin comes running around from the kitchen up to Tessa, tickles her and kisses her and says "You just said 'Ha Da-da'!"  And right after that, Parker - just chillin over on the couch, looks up and says "How in the world did she just do that!" :)

It was huge, it was awesome, and we marked it: on Friday December 21st 2012, at 2 years and 8 months old, Tessa said her first words/sentence!  And just a few minutes later, Lori arrives...she may have missed the big moment, but she definitely got to share in all the excitement!!

A few other really fun things:  Tuesday evening I thought I'd try and see if Tessa wanted to try my Cheetos, sure enough, Little Miss Once-Upon-a-Time-Clamped-Shut at the idea of someone trying to feed her something out of their hand...after a little convincing and a little taste of the yummy-goodness, opened up like a little hungry bird and ended up helping me finish off all the Cheetos on my plate!  It was perfect!  Then last night we had pizza and I decided to try and chop a piece up to see if she would like it...and wouldn't you know it, she did! and she ate every bite off of a real fork.  Monumental folks, monumental.

It seems like when things start changing...it ends up being a bunch of things at once.  Talking, eating chips and pizza off a real fork!  And there have been a handful of other times where it really seems like Tessa is saying "Da-da" too.  Darin absolutely loves it, of course, and reinforces it with hugs and kisses and giggles each chance he gets.

I feel like I have lots of other stuff to catch up on, but this will do for now (this huge amazing bunch of awesomeness ;).  We all got hit with the nasty nasty flu this last weekend and it did a number on us.  Parker had it first, at the end of the week last week, but bounced back pretty quick.  Then it hit Darin and me at about the same time over the weekend and there was no bouncing back!  It is a challenging thing to both be down at the same time...I would have given anything to have had family close.  But we made it through, didn't feel like we would while we were in the middle of it, but we did.  And a huge blessing in the middle of it all, is that Tessa hasn't come down with it!  God is good!  Darin and I could barely take care of ourselves, there is no way we could have handled a sick Little Miss too.  We can't quite tell if she's coming down with it now, but we are definitely better able to handle things if she does.  Tessa and I both got the flu shot this year...didn't help me much, but really praying that is what is helping her fight it off!!

~Whitney

oh...and silly me....this is exciting stuff too:

and this is a little video I took of Tessa eating pancakes!  they are a little challenging for her, but she likes them so much and works so hard to eat them like a big girl!