Right now, Tesser has green eyes.

I say “right now” because I don’t know if they’ll stay that way for long. She was born with the classic baby-blue eyes, but from the very beginning they looked a little different to me. When I was pregnant I said Tessa would look more like Eric, with dark hair and dark eyes. She still hasn’t moved beyond her baby hair, but her eyes have already started to change.

Her green eyes are sometimes brownish and sometimes goldish and sometimes greyish. There’s hazel eyes on both sides of the family and brown eyes on Eric’s side so we’re not sure where she’ll end up.

We seemed to have turned a corner in the last week or so.

All of a sudden Tesser grew out of her 3 month clothes. Everyone says this happens overnight. Everyone is telling the truth. One day they were too small and I suddenly had to work with only our small collection of 6 month clothes.

When people saw her, they’d say she was bigger and I couldn’t disagree. She’s finally showing her pudge and is starting to look chunky even with clothes on.

Around the same time she started napping better. And she became interested in THINGS. Until now she’s only cared to look at faces, but now she likes looking at things. Anything really. She has fallen asleep in her napper staring at her hanging toys or at a zebra-striped blanket I drape over her. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens. And with our stubborn girl, it’s a blessing.

Oh, and do you see those GIANT baby feet? They really are that huge. On my 6 month clothes shopping expedition I took her up from 0-3 month socks to 6-12 month socks. They barely fit. So that means next up is the 12-24 month socks. Which Graham has just stopped wearing, and still occasionally get mixed into his sock pile.

As if that wasn’t enough change, I decided it was finally time to start setting her in the bassinet to sleep at night. I’ve now gone two nights in a row with her spending only a little while each night sleeping next to me. It’s a nice change. I think I’m getting better sleep since I’m not constantly aware of her little body. Although I did wake up once frantic saying, “WHERE’S THE BABY??!!” only to realize she was asleep in the bassinet on the floor.

She outgrew her swaddlers so we had to go up to the big-baby swaddlers. She still must be swaddled to sleep more than a little while. I remember when Graham was little, he was often swaddled but only in his receiving blankets. I thought the special baby strait-jackets were silly and a waste of money. Until Tesser, our little Houdini, showed up. She is a master escape artist. If I don’t swaddle her just right, even in the really good swaddlers, she will pop out her arms in a jiffy.

But this is all a good sign that we’re pretty much ready to set up the crib. Which will involve reorganizing everything. So it probably won’t get done for months. But we’re ready.

Most of the time Tee has her squished up chubby baby face. But more and more we’re starting to get glimpses of what I call her “little girl face.” The one where her eyes aren’t mushed under baby cheeks and you can see her facial features starting to come out. It tends to show up in the evenings and I can’t explain why or how it happens but it completely changes her whole face. I love seeing it.

Our Tesser is not much of a talker. It’s not that she’s quiet, she can shriek and snort with the best of them. She just doesn’t seem to “talk” much. But every now and then she gets in a little bit of a talking mood. And since I am one of those parents, I must take an entire minute of video where she does virtually nothing.

Because Tee is our second child it is hard for me not to compare her to Grammer. She naps more, he talked more, she is happier, he was smaller, etc. When I look at Tessa’s green eyes, I inevitably remember Graham’s blue ones, which were a solid steely blue all through his first year, though they’ve now mellowed a bit with shades of grey, green and gold just like mine.

But still, I’ve never seen any eyes like Tessa’s. And I don’t know how they will look in a month or in a year. It’s nice to remember that she’s changing and growing and that she’s always uniquely herself.

Related Posts:

• Making Together Better
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This post is being submitted to Brica as an entry in their contest to win a sponsorship to the Type A Parent Conference. Their motto is “Making Together Better” and it’s a lovely thought. They make products to help make parents’ lives easier. You can find them on Twitter or Facebook.

Of all the things I expected to happen with two kids, I certainly didn’t expect that it would make me a better parent.

I honestly thought I’d be worse. Maybe there’d be a learning curve where I’d eventually be a master at balancing and juggling and doing all kinds of things simultaneously. But I didn’t think being a good multitasker was the same thing as being a good parent.

I thought a good parent wouldn’t have to tell their child to wait while they burped the baby. And a good parent wouldn’t have to set a screaming baby down to fix a child’s lunch. It’s not bad parenting, but it didn’t seem like perfect parenting either.

Tessa has invaded many of my rituals with Graham and destroyed others. I have given up on bathing either of them on my own, and when Eric works late this can mean we lose bath time a lot. And, of course, there’s the sacred bedtime ritual where we read Graham’s favorite book and then I sing him a lullaby. Now that book is sometimes read while I bounce a shrieking Tesser on my knee. And that song is sometimes sung while I stand up holding Tessa instead of sitting on the bed stroking Graham’s hair.

But the funny thing is that I actually feel like I am a better parent. It’s just that being a good parent means something different than I thought it did.

I spend more time enjoying my children now that there are two of them. Tessa’s happy moods are spent on my lap where we smile and coo at each other. Graham’s requests to cuddle aren’t always granted, but I enjoy them a lot when they are.

Even though I can’t give either of them my undivided attention, when I pay attention to them I can give them the attention they deserve.

I’ve learned to stop seeing parenting as a big juggling act. My success isn’t judged on how often I get to take my son to the park or how many naps I can get my daughter to take. Quality over quantity is my new motto.

I’m learning a lot of patience, too. And so are my kids, whether they like it or not. One of the reasons I was so set on giving Graham a sibling is that I knew this was a child who needed to understand in a very big way that he wasn’t the only person around. To my surprise he’s adapted quickly and amazingly to his little sister. He lets me have time to feed her or burp her or bounce her when I need to, even if it means he waits for his lunch. It’s an awful lot of kindness towards a baby who can’t really interact much yet.

But we are starting to see the first signs of sibling togetherness.

Now that Tessa has taken an interest in the little hanging toys above her napper, Graham will happily play with her.

Making together better for us is about learning to give to each other, to wait for each other and to enjoy each other. And I’m feeling pretty good about it.

Related Posts:

• Correspondence
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