Tessa is growing up. She's getting a personality. Well, we've always seen her cheerful, easygoing, ponder-ful self; but now it's like she's turning into a person. She's starting to have an opinion and to voice it. If I take something away from her that she wants (like a piece of paper from the mail, say, or my glasses), she'll "waa waa" about it until it's replaced with something else interesting. Or if I walk out of her line of sight, she'll talk/cry until I'm back in view and then smile. She's beginning to get jokes, like putting socks on our ears or throwing something (soft) at her. Or when a group of adults laughs, she'll smile too.
We have retired the pacifiers as sucking soothers. She is not interested in them in the least, and will probably cry harder if we try to give one to her. She has instead begun to rely on her index and middle fingers for soothing. Or big toes if they happen to be handy. She does sometimes like to chew on the rubbery, smooshy pacifiers, though, so we're keeping them around. But I much prefer her fingers since they can't be dropped on the floor, lost in a restaurant, or kept out of her control.
Tess is doing well with cereal now. She's getting a bit every other day or so, and this week we'll move to every day (hopefully). Then we can graduate to fun stuff like bananas and apple sauce and pumpkin. And we're trying to figure out how she can join us on the bike. Step one was getting her helmet to mostly fit, and now we'll see if she likes the seat up front with me. She wasn't a fan of the bike trailer (too upright of a seat I think), much to her sister's dismay, but we're not giving up!
And here's just a video of Tessa talking and squirming and sucking parts and smiling.
