T time

It's been a while since I've really done a Tessa update, and here I am with a few golden moments of no homework, no baby, and no laundry to fold.
She'll be 10 months in a week and this is such a fun time. She is getting really big, I weighed her last week and she's 22.5 lbs; really close to walking- holds one or both of my hands when she walks around the room. It's just the balance that she doesn't have yet, but she definitely has the strength and clearly is loving it.
Cut her third tooth yesterday. We had a nice break of a few months of no teething, but BAM all of a sudden I have a cranky teething baby on my hands. Right in time for the huge motrin/tylenol recall, both of which I had given her before I read about the recall.... great.
She is too excited and playful at daycare to nap. Her teachers say she loves playing with the other babies and stands in her crib and talks and waves to everybody. Probably only gets an hour max of sleep while she's there, so she's miserable by the time I get her usually which sucks a lot, but on the weekends she's sleeping fine. AND has been sleeping til close to 7 some days... I don't want to jinx myself but maybe it's my dream come true!
For as little time as I get to spend with her during the week, weekends are my magical time. When everything else in this world seems completely out of control, I hold that little girl and smell her sweet face and see her looking up at me with those big blue eyes and the love, the trust, well, all the pain and suffering and testing and struggling that come from bringing a baby into this world and becoming and being a mother are so, so worth it. I gave Tessa her bottle tonight and I rocked and sang to her as I usually do, and when I paused for a moment, she stopped sucking and her eyes popped open and she looked at me and with complete recognition that I had stopped singing, cooed at me as if asking me to sing again, and when I did, the little corners of her eyes crinkled up and she went back to drowsing with her bottle. It is little moments like this that I realize she is starting to blossom into a real little person, one with her own mind and her own motives; less and less a baby every day, but no less a part of me than she was the day I saw the line on the pregnancy test or felt her move within me.
She grows and gets bigger and smarter and stronger; she learns and recognizes and comprehends more than I can know; she changes faster than I can see; she is the same bean she was at birth but yet so different. One thing doesn't change-- that tessa bean is the light of my life.