Christmas # 3

On December 19, we had our annual Wilson Family Christmas. My grandmother insists on hosting it in her modest home in Guthrie Center, and has only recently allowed others to bring food to help. She makes breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 20 of us and also has a ton of the traditional Christmas yummies. My personal favorite is the frosted sugar cookies and her Egg Casserole. I should mention that my grandmother is a farm girl, born and raised on a farm, married a farmer, and only left the 1,000+ acre farm when my grandpa died a few years ago. She always has something ready to eat whenever you show up, even if it's on 15 minutes notice, she'll have something for you to munch on. She is one of my favorite people in the world. Anyways, back to Christmas. Here's Tessa smiling at her GiGi (that's slang for great-grandma).

She now allows others to help prepare food and bring goodies, so Joel and I brought cheese dip and chips and some ginger cookies and some chocolate crinkle cookies. We always have a huge breakfast consisting of cinnamon rolls, caramel pecan rolls, orange rolls, fruit, juice, and the famous egg casserole. After breakfast, which is usually served promptly at 9am, we take family pictures, which is the most dysfunctional hour of the year in our family. The hundreds of outtake photos trump the 3 good ones we get every year, but it's hilarious to just sit back and watch the madness unfold.

 Our new family of 3! This one actually turned out ok, which was surprising because Tessa decided she didn't want her picture taken for most of these and made it very clear!

Here is GiGi with her great-grandchildren and her grandchildren that have produced children (myself, my brother, and my cousin Matt) We took about ten of these photos, and this one was the best one, which cracks me up because my baby is crying, Noah is blocking his face, and Isla is intrigued by the wall. Actually, I think Isla was intrigued by the babies because later that day we found her trying to play with Tessa's eyes. Isla is 11 months old, and such a riot. And Jaxon is being his usually silly self, posing and hamming it up for the camera.

And, here's the whole fam damily. We are a wild bunch, and there is never a dull moment!

Then, we all piled into her living room and exchanged presents. Santa was good to me this year, I got 3 copies of the same Rascal Flatts CD! Luckily, I also asked for Zac Brown Band, Carrie Underwood, and Lady Antebellum so I just exchanged them. I also got a sweet food processor so I can make baby food and process other food items. Joel thought it was unnecessary, but he just doesn't understand the joys of chopping and pureeing any food item. I could make cake soup in my new food processor. If you are unfamiliar, you take cake, add water or milk, and puree it. Voila, cake soup. Ok, I won't be making any cake soup, but it will get used quite often!

 We always sit in the same seats every year, and this year was no different, except my mom and aunt had extras on their laps. They are proud grandmas and entertained the babies during the gift opening. After we were done opening presents, we ate lunch, which is cheese soup, chili, oyster soup, and this year, vegetable beef was added on the menu. Grandma makes dinner rolls (from scratch of course) and we have all kinds of munchies to go along with it. We spent the afternoon and evening eating, drinking,and playing games, which always leads to a stomach ache because we laugh so hard. If you take 13 young adults, aged 21-29, and give them the opportunity to say inappropriate things while getting away with it, you'll turn a perfectly nice Christmas into dirty bad fun. And we did. Look up the game "Things" and then use your imagination about what could come from that.

We also took a couple shots of the new babies, Tessa and her cousin Noah, who is 12 days older. Grandma of course had to have them in coordinating outfits.

We headed home at about 7pm so we could get the peanut to bed, and started the next morning with another Christmas! It was such a long day, but is always so fun and we look forward to it every year. We are already excited for next year when all the babies are very mobile.

Christmas #2

We celebrated Christmas #2 on Saturday, December 18 with Joel's immediate family. We usually make a day out of it, playing games, opening presents, and having a nice dinner. This year was no different! We had cinnamon rolls for breakfast, then us girls went to the Winter Farmer's Market. It was packed, so luckily Tessa stayed home with the boys. We bought some wine, some Indian food,  I got an ornament, and we wandered around for a while. Then, we came home and hung around for the afternoon while a couple of them finished up their shopping.

A few of the Delaney's are notorious procrastinators, so it was no surprise that people were buying the gifts mere minutes before they were set to be opened. I won't do any callouts, but you know who you are! So, some of the presents were fresh.

We opened presents and of course, we all got spoiled. We got a new snowblower, and Tessa got some sweet toys and money to put in her savings account for college. We are truly blessed! We finished the night off with an incredible beef tenderloin with all the fixings.  Both of Grandma Laura's girls were hamming it up, so we got a few great pictures of Tessa and her cousin Brynn.

Playing Dress up... sort of

Right after Tessa was born my mom gave me a couple of old outfits that she kept from when I was a baby. A couple of them look like doll outfits, and they are all way out of style, but they were still cute and it was fun to dress her up and take a few pictures. She was being very happy that day so she cooperated very well. These were taken a month ago.

my little hamburger

Over the last 8 weeks, Tessa has grown leaps and bounds. From being in an oxygen hood with an APGAR of 2, to a wild child with a smile that makes your day! There have been many speculations about who she resembles more, who she behaves like, and what the future will hold. She's also earned herself a dozen or so nicknames!
We call her:
Tessa Kelly (I sing her rap sings with her name when she's fussy)
Tessa Lou
Tessa Susanna
Peanut
Munchkin
Hamburger
Hamburger with French Fries
Cheeseburger
Ham Ball
Butter Ball
Pumpkin Pie
hmmm.. a lot of her names resemble food... coincidence!?

My little peanut is developing quite the little personality the last couple of weeks. Some of her traits are hilarious, some of them worry me already! She's definitely got my temper, she goes from zero to P.O.'ed in 5 seconds or less. No lie. From a giggle to a scream if you blink.

How dare I pick her up off the floor for another pose. She made quite the statement. 

She is normally very mild mannered (daddy's demeanor) and just loves to lay on the floor and flail her arms and legs. She talks and laughs and smiles at the TV or one of her toys or sometimes the wall.  If she's awake, how dare you touch her, until the second she decides she is tired, then she lets out a blood-curdling yell and lets you know she is ready to be held. That's my temper!  But, she still is a good snuggler when she's tired, which according to my mother, I would have never done.

But, she makes the funniest faces all the time. She's quite a showoff. Here is Tessa channeling her inner Derek Zoolander with her cousins.

Here is her surprised face!

And then sometimes, she gives me this angelic face, and it just melts me. I love that she knows my voice, I love that she loves snuggling with her daddy, and I love that when she sees us she'll flash us a smile.

2010 Ornaments

We finally went and picked out our 2010 Christmas ornaments. For some reason, this is a very difficult decision. The pressure is on. You have to pick out one that you'll be proud to hang on the tree for the next 50 years! It's a big deal. Tessa got to participate this year, although she didn't really care what she got. I can't wait until future Christmases though, when she has an opinion!

 Tessa's

 Joel's

Andrea's

Tummy Time

Tessa hates tummy time on the floor.
Absolutely loathes it.
Screaming bloody murder within 15 seconds.


But for some reason, if you put her on her stomach on someone else, or on our chests, or in her pack and play which is at an incline, she's perfectly fine. And she's perfectly fine on her back when she's awake. The other night after her 4am feeding, she showed me just how good she can be at tummy time. Granted, I was ready to go back to sleep and I thought for sure she was too, but the second I put her back down in the pack and play, it was playtime for her, and she was showing off all she had learned by practicing tummy time.

This went on for almost 20 minutes. At 4am. Usually after she eats, she goes into a milk coma and crashes, like turkey does to you after Thanksgiving dinner. But not this time. She was happy as a clam, mommy wasn't too excited about playing at 4am, but I have to admit, I was laughing at her pretty hard!

Then, yesterday, she decided she wanted to have tummy time on daddy's knees so she could watch tv. She's such a little weirdo!

Dave Ramsey

Joel and I have been inspired. We're starting the Dave Ramsey program! For those of you unfamiliar with the Dave Ramsey system, go here. The basis of the program goes like this:

Put yourselves on a tight budget. Figure out exactly how little you can live on, and budget for absolutely everything, a set amount, each month. Then, anything left over goes towards your debt. We have a lot of debt. Although we have 0 credit card debt, we've racked up a pretty substantial amount of school debt. Luckily, almost every bit of Joel's was paid for, but I went to private college for 2 years and then went a fifth year at ISU so that added up quickly.

The key to this system is to pay everything in cash. No credit cards, no nothing. Since you've budgeted exactly how much you are allowing yourself per month, you take that amount out in cash. Put it in envelopes, and when the money for that category is gone, you don't spend anymore that month. Anything left over at the end of the month in the envelopes gets added to the pot you pay on your debt. There's a specific order things go in:

Baby Step 1: Save $1,000 that you only use in the case of an emergency.
Baby Step 2: Everything extra goes towards your debt. Pay off the smallest amounts first. Once you've paid off one thing, use that money towards the next. Of course, you've got to keep paying the minimum on your other debts, but you add all the extra to one of them until it's gone, and so on and so forth. This is called the debt snowball. Within a couple months or many months, depending on the amount of debt, you will be debt free.

We're on Baby Step 2 right now. Today in the mail came 2 bills that I was very excited to get. I know, I know, it's ridiculous that I would be excited for a bill to come. But, I was excited to pay off our car and one of our measly student loan payments. Actually, I was ecstatic. I can't wait to write 2 checks and be rid of 2 of our monthly debt payments. Then, next month, we will have an extra 300, plus whatever is left over from our envelopes to put towards the next debt. See how fun that is? Ok, fun is open to interpretation, but c'mon.... we see that in the next 2-3 years, we'll be rid of a ton of debt, instead of spending the next 15-20 years paying off college.


And, because posts with no pictures are boring, here's a shot of the munchkin flashing a smile. That's right, we've got a smiler. And she's such a happy baby that I get to see this all the time!

A few more carseat pictures

Here's a couple more pictures I just found of her chilling in her carseat. Yesterday we had to run some errands so we got her dressed since we'd be seeing people. Usually she hangs out in her jammies most of the day unless we have somewhere to go. I had just gotten some babylegs in the mail that were supposed to be for Christmas for her, but I couldn't resist so I opened a pair early. For those that don't know about babylegs, I suggest you familiarize yourself with these.

They are like leg warmers, but fit newborns up to toddlers, so she'll be rocking them for a while. They are awesome to slip on when a onesie isn't warm enough but also very cute! They look like tights or leggings but they don't actually go up over the diaper, they are just up to the top of the thigh on each leg. They are great for when babies start scooting around and crawling, but for now they are just cute on her and make it easy for diaper changes and hanging out! 

 Sometimes she makes crying faces in her sleep, and I happened to capture this one!

 She fell asleep clutching her rings and I didn't have the heart to rip the ring from her hand.

Graduation Day!

That's right, Tessa's graduating. To a real carseat.
A very expensive, dust collecting thus far, carseat.

We have been doing some homemade tests to see if she's ready. First, we put her in her carseat in the dining room and let her lay in there for about an hour. We wanted to make sure her apnea monitor didn't go off, and luckily it didn't. Then, we put her in the swing for a while to see how she did in that, since they have similar angles. She loves her swing, which is great because now I can maybe get something done. Tessa did great in the swing as well. So, we took her on a short trip to the post office and to the P.D. to see how she did actually riding in the car. No alarms!

The true test came when we went to Des Moines last week, since this would be an hour trip.   We decided I should sit in the back just to see how she'd do, since she had never been in that position for long and we weren't sure how she would react. She did great, although she doesn't sleep in it. She looked out the window and played with her rings.


So, since there were no alarms on the apnea monitor, we have officially graduated to the real carseat We will be returning the stupid carseat bed to the hospital next week. I'm not even going to clean it first. I'm rebellious like that. I want it out of my house and out of our lives! No more this:

 We are now in the big girl seat! If you look closely in this picture, you can see how she really feels about things.