Tess - Parenting scare

Dear Tess,

The moment you were born I was astounded to see how nonchalantly the nurses treated you.  They slung you around like a tiny sack of potatoes.  They poked and prodded you like you were cattle.  Tiny-newborn-cattle, but cattle none the less. It was that moment I realized that babies are not nearly as fragile as I thought.  Sure, we have to watch out and take care of you, but you're going to scrape your knees and bump your head and that's normal.

Tonight was our first parenting scare and the first time I thought of you as fragile.

You took a fall.  A bad fall from an elevated plane and you landed on a surface as hard as concrete.  OK...it was concrete.  And believe me this will be THE LAST TIME I'll balance you on spinning plates on sticks.  Actually this was a total accident and accidents happen.  

You cried for an hour solid and no amount of comforting seemed to help.  We called a 24/7 infant nurse and she coached us through how to check you out.  You showed no signs of falling; no scrapes or bruises and you didn't flinch to being poked and prodded like infant cattle.  After a while we were convinced you were OK, so we put you to bed with instructions to wake you in 2 hours to check you out again.  Basically we were looking for signs of a concussion. 

When we woke you up, you looked at us like we were crazy.  You knew you should be sleeping.  We knew you should be sleeping, but we've never been happier to wake you up.  In fact it was my idea to wake you up five minutes early.  I couldn't wait any longer.  You seemed fine, just rather annoyed that we disturbed your beauty sleep.  A few minutes of play and half a bottle later, you're back to sleep like nothing happened.  No signs of a concussion. 

As hard as this was to go through, you're tough and you're going to get tougher.  But I learned that I'm not.  My heart was mush.  I hated these past two hours and worried so much about you.

I love you more than you'll ever know. 

Dad

Tess - 12 months

Dear Tess,

If you ever decide to give me any lip about skipping some of your monthly letters, please know that my response will be to ground you until Xenu comes back.

This is going to be kind of a bulleted list and less of a letter.  Life's hard, get a helmet.  

• You turned 1.  We had a party.  You ate cake and got high on sugar.  
• I have seen you open mouth kiss a boy.  And he kissed back.  His name was Cole.  
• It seems your grunting phase is over and your onto full babbling.  Mom said you said "Dadada" over and over again while I was mowing the lawn a few weeks ago, but I'm still not sure if you know my name. 
• When Mom was feeding you a few weeks ago, you successfully signed the symbol for "more".  That really kind of blew my mind a little bit. 
• I saw you haul off and smack a kid at day care about a week ago.  He was all up in yo grill n' stuff.  (sorry)  So you smacked him.  He had it coming.  The teacher told and showed you the sign for "gentle" and your demeanor changed instantly.  You know a LOT more that you're letting on.  You're going to make a great poker player.

Love,

Dad