Tessa is adventurous now, getting into trouble all over the place. She loves to stand up at the bookshelf where the kleenex box resides and has now learned to flip it from upside-down to right-side-up so she can tear tissues apart and eat them before mom catches her. She's had some stairs practice, so she figured out she could climb from the dog's bed to the hearth just like stairs. And then when the dog bed went away (the next moment), she went straight from floor to hearth. I remember when she could barely pull herself up to stand there because it was so tall. She climbed into the dishwasher the other day when I was putting away dishes. I heard a small crash last night and discovered she'd pushed the bathroom door open and was attempting to get into her baby bathtub (which was sitting on the floor). She routinely finds pebbles on the floor that have come in with our shoes and is constantly putting them into her mouth. That and crumbs from dinner, feathers from the down comforters, bits of paper that Maggie has cut into pieces, pine needles from the Christmas tree, clumps of dog hair on the rug.
Tess has started to mimic behaviors, which is super cute. She'll put a brush up to her hair, the play phone to her hear, a hat on her head. Actually she kinds of aims for her head and tosses the hat and it goes flying behind her, which is probably cuter than getting it right. She's just started to get the "more" sign at meals and kind of touches her fingers together while saying "mo." She doesn't understand "finished" yet, but that may be because she hardly ever wants to stop eating. She'll clap if you clap, point if you point, pat the dog if you pat, and, still my favorite, laugh if you laugh.
