Happy Birthday Harper, part 2

Harper had a fabulous birthday weekend, full of lots of family and friend time. It started with the arrival of my parents Thursday, then Jason's parents Friday. We all went to the raptor show which Harper LOVED. She even won a coloring book because she was having a birthday! (Which reminds me, I need to add to the other post- she claps now and says "yay"). Saturday (her birth DAY) she woke up to all the grandparents here. Jason's parents got her a playset for outside which she loves. She has already mastered sliding and is getting better at climbing! Then Sunday we had her party. She did SO well with all the people around and she was miss social hostess with everyone. So glad she enjoyed it- because that is why we had a party! Here are some pictures of our fun weekend!

Happy Birthday Harper, part 1

So, I want to remember Harper's birthday and I want HER to know how much we love her and what she is doing right now. Maybe she'll read this someday. That's half why I write it down, anyway. So, this is the mushy, to Harper, part. Skip it and just look at the pics from her birthday weekend if you want.
Dear Harper,
Somehow when you become a parent, you get the magical skill of making time speed up. Unfortunately, I would prefer just to have it go slow, or at least regular speed, because I truly enjoy spending time with you! I was not sure what to expect before you were born. Your Daddy and I took a class and read books and articles about being a mom and dad, but nothing can really prepare you but experience. You have made being a mother SO much easier than I ever imagined and have been the sweetest girl since day one! Each stage of your life has come with challenges and joys. I enjoy each one more and more (I always think, man, I'll miss this stage, this is my favorite, and then the next one comes and I love it, too!). Your Daddy and I were talking the other night and we were remembering how nervous we were when we first brought you home. Our goal that first night was just to make sure we kept you alive! And we did it! :-) Harper, you are truly a gift from God. I pray that you will come to know and understand true and lasting JOY, that can only be found in knowing your heavenly father. He has given me so much and entrusted me with you! I pray that this quote can be recognized in your life: "She knew that she was formed by God's hands, dreamed up in His heart, and placed in this world for a purpose". Your Daddy and I joke about what that purpose will be, but I want YOU to discover that on your own and not let the schemings of others decide your purpose. Thank you for being such a wonderful daughter!
I love you,
Mommy
PS- Here's the stuff you probably care about:
Height: 28.5 inches...although I think they measured you wrong, because they usually do and then they have to remeasure. You are slightly taller than average for your age. Big shocker there considering your family.
Weight: 19.23 pounds. You eat like a horse and I wouldn't be surprised if you were 30 pounds the way you eat! Thanks for being such a good eater!
Speaking of food- you drink out of a straw and regular type sippy cup now, you drink whole milk (organic of course!), you eat table food, and you (thanks to your birthday) have a big sweet tooth like your mommy. Your favorite foods are still blueberries, but really any kind of fruit. You also love carrots and sweet potatoes. You are also a big meat fan and have eaten everything from fish to pork to beef to chicken to lamb.
You wave hello and bye appropriately now (that just started a week ago). You used to waved towards yourself but now you wave palm out with fingers outstretched.
You also sign 'more' spontaneously and consistently now. You look so proud of yourself when you do it!
You are walking, running, climbing, dancing, and 'throwing' now (throwing is more like dropping).
You are talking up a storm. Thank goodness! You say: Daddy (a lot), Mama (hardly ever unless you want to eat), duck, dog, up, uh oh, hi/hey, bye bye (which you whisper when you say...we haven't figured out why!), brush, baby, that (your new favorite word...you point to things you want us to show you and say /daet/), bird, and /bob/ for Toby. I don't think I left any off. You imitate a lot of things we say but don't say them spontaneously yet, like cat.
You follow directions very well (give me the ___, put the ___ in the bag, hands down, give ___ to Toby). I hope you KEEP following directions your mom and dad give you well.
You are VERY social and you wave to everyone we see. You love being the center of attention but you are still pretty chill when you aren't. You let strangers hold you and pick you up and you even reached your hands up to the waiters at the Mexican restaurant when you saw them. Mommy does NOT like you wanting strangers to hold you. At least you are friendly, though.
You love to play, whether it is peek a boo, which you will initiate, chase, hug your stuffed animals, pretend with play food (you feed Mommy and Daddy), you love toys that you can dump out and then put back in (although they usually end up out when you are done!), but most of all you LOVE to read. You pick up a book then back up against a person until you are in their lap! You want the same books read to you over and over. Currently they are: Little Kitten, Aubie Loves Sports, Goodnight, Baby, Hurry Hurry, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. You also love lots of other books that are on the 'forbidden' bookshelf so you don't rip the pages.
Speaking of ripping pages, you get in trouble sometimes, too, now. That is new! You love to play in Toby's water and you know you aren't supposed to be there, so you sneak in to play. You pull books off the grownup books shelves but usually respond if we say "Harper...." or "no ma'am" or "hands down". You also like to play with cords and you try to wrap them around your neck. Which is giving me gray hair. You get in BIG trouble for that because it is not safe. Oh, and for running down the driveway towards the street. Which is hilarious to you but frightening to Mommy.
Okay, that is all! Love you sweet girl!

2 down!

Thanks to Dutch, the beautiful horse in the pictures, I accomplished item number two on my thirty bucket list! He was a very sweet animal and made riding a horse VERY easy. He also kept trying to stop and eat, which I thought was hilarious! I was good and told him no and pulled the reigns up!

Eleven.

(no more paparazzi mom!)
So, Jason and I are now the proud parents of an 11 month old! So crazy how quickly time flies by. Having a child reminds you to not live for tomorrow but to cherish every second that we have! So here are some Harper updates:
-she is now running and walking. She loves to dance with her daddy (which basically consists of bouncing up and down). She climbs now and actually climbed out of the pool yesterday! (help!) She also opens and closes doors as long as they are not shut all the way. She also learned how to climb in and out of baby sized chairs last week (thanks to Cooper!) and keeps disappearing. When I find her she is sitting, grinning from ear to ear, in her bumbo chair in her closet!!!
-she is still babbling away. She also says up, uh oh, dog, /m^m^/ for more, mama (yay!), dada (but she usually whispers this when Jason walks through the door...haven't figured that one out yet!). She also makes a noise when she is doing something sneaky that sounds like /s-s-s-s/, almost like a little snicker. Usually that means she is trying to get into Toby's food or water. She will also imitate a lot of what we say (yikes!) and has imitated duck, quack (/wae/), go, ball, and several other things I can't think of right now. She said ball a couple times by herself but doesn't do that one consistently yet. She also imitates the sign for 'more' occasionally but mostly she just growls still.
- 6 teeth! (can you believe it?). 3 tops ones came in on one day. That was actually not that grumpy of a day, either! Two on bottom, four on top.
-She now eats mostly table food. It is a little sad not to be making baby food so often but now I will just give her what we are eating, prior to salting it (i.e. she ate black beans and rice the other night., she eats beef stew, boiled chicken with veggies, etc.). She is drinking much better from the sippy cup but I still can't find a good one with a straw. She still won't drink that well out of her cup at daycare, but she usually at least drinks half now.
- She is becoming quite bossy with other kids (I don't know WHERE that came from...) and I have seen her take a toy from a group of boys. They literally just sat there with their mouths open. She is also incredibly sweet and is nice to the other babies mostly. She also shares well, we had friends visiting last weekend and when their son was crying one time she offered him her prized tupperware lid she had gotten out of the cabinet. She and Toby are still great pals, although he is not the biggest fan of being climbed on.
Well, that is 11 month Harper in a nutshell. I dread posting next month!!! But I am also thrilled to be the mother of such a wonderful little girl. Oh, and PS (if there is such a thing in blogging) I gave her a language assessment (PLS-5) and she scored 5 months above age level! Did I have any doubt, though?

One down- 4 to go!

Thanks to our family trip to Gulf Shores, I was able to check one item off my 30 bucket list. Yay! (If you are confused, click here )

10 Months Old

So, it is hard for me to believe that in two (very short) months Harper will be a year old. Where has this year gone? Where has my tiny baby gone? I have been mourning her baby-ness for the past month (now I see why some people choose to have babies so close together- they stop being babies so quickly!) but I am so thankful for the times that she is still baby like- snuggling, sleeping so peacefully, her sweet baby voice. I am SO thankful for all the things she can do now as well (smile, laugh at us, give us kisses, etc.). Anyway, the past month has been especially hard for me since she has started walking- it seems to signal the end of babyhood. But it is also the beginning of an amazing little girl! Here is what she is doing at 10 months:
-walking (she started that a week after she turned 9 months old)
-dancing (thanks to Caedmon!)
-saying 'uh' and pointing up when we say "Harper, where is up?" and saying 'uh oh' after we say it when something falls (or, uh hum, is dropped)
-She loves opening and closing cabinets (especially forbidden ones), unscrewing drawer knobs, and climbing in and out of the rungs on the dining room chairs.
-She still loves giving us kisses and will do so virtually anytime we ask.
-She loves to 'swim' and will kick her legs and move her arms...but not at the same time. She also keeps sticking her face in the water which makes her mad, but she keeps doing it anyway. She also likes to drink the water.
-She FINALLY drinks from a sippy cup (we tried a new kind and it worked like magic) but she still takes her bottles, too.
-She is not as wary of strangers as she was a few months ago but still plays the staring game with people out in public...if they don't look at her she stares them down until she gets a smile!
-She is eating all sorts of finger foods now, any soft veggies or fruit (or soft cooked, like green beans or steamed carrots), she loves eggs (no salt or pepper, just scrambled and cooked in a little butter), her favorite food is still blueberries but she also loves her chicken with apple and sweet potato. She drinks water now in addition to formula and sometimes 'juicewater' at daycare just so she will drink something during the day (She went on a drink strike for a few weeks at daycare...not a food strike though!). She basically will eat anything we put in front of her and stuffs her mouth usually so we have to be careful not to give her too much. She doesn't growl as much as she used to but she still doesn't spontaneously use any of the baby signs ('more' and 'eat') that we are teaching her.

Well...I think that is about it for 10 month old Harper! We are still in awe of our amazing (notso) little blessing!

Adventures with Babies (also known as the weekend I 'witnessed' a miracle).

So, I am not sure how to even begin this post. I feel like I have got to write it down before the magic of this weekend goes away. And by magic I mean God's amazing provision in our lives. So, I think I might write this in bulleted points because otherwise I could get a little carried away (which you won't be surprised about if you've already read any of my previous posts). This past weekend I flew to Dallas to visit friends, help host a baby shower, and see my friend pregnant (because pregnant girls are TOO cute!). My dear friend Rachel flew with me and was my traveling companion/sanity saver/Harper's second mommy. THANK YOU Rachel for being such a help and being so sweet and patient with me and Harper...even when she woke you up every day of your vacation before 6:15am. Okay, gotta stick to bulleted points now...
1) flew in Thursday, got to introduce Harper to my Dallas friends and got to see how big their kiddos were (born and unborn)
2) Got to go to a crazy nice mall on Friday and eat French food from the mall food court and window shop. Oh, did I mention my friend's hubby watched our kids so we could have a girls day? He was a SAINT this weekend. Thanks Jeff!
3) On Saturday Harper inspired her friend we visited to walk. He had been kind of walking but I guess he thought "this little girl isn't going to come in my house and show me up!" or maybe "hey, that doesn't look so bad!". Maybe HG will be a physical therapist someday and inspire others....and in turn, the sweet boy taught her how to dance. I love it! All I do now is sing her a song and she bounces and shakes her hand. Poor thing. She'll probably dance like her daddy and I do.
4) Also on Saturday while in Texas we got word that my friend we were staying with was going to become an Aunt (her sister in law went into labor a week early!). It was a very exciting day, we were all pumped for the baby shower since we were all thinking in baby mode. The baby shower was lovely and such fun. Always nice to see old friends and meet new ones!
5) Sunday morning we were leaving for the airport. Harper woke up extra early and when I went out to the living room my friend for whom we threw the shower was awake (she hadn't really slept). She tells me she is having "cramps" and that her water has broken. WHAT!?!? Needless to say I was wide awake sans tea at this point. Sadly, I had no clue whether or not she was experiencing braxton hicks or real contractions, since I never really had any braxton hicks and since I was induced. So our Dallas friends headed to the hospital and Rachel and I headed to the airport. Thanks to Saint Husband Jeff who gave us a ride.
6) We are anxiously awaiting news while at the airport...it comes...our friend indeed is in labor and is progressing FAST. Oh. Did I mention her husband is 7 1/2 hours away in Middleofnowhere Texas? And that she is 3 weeks early? And that this isn't suppose to be happening right now? Yeah.
7) Stupid no phones on the airplane rule. It was excruciating waiting the 2 hour flight. We land and get word that her husband has made it PRE baby. What? How is that possible? They had to arrive at the hospital about 7amish. He probably didn't leave until after that. This was 1pm that we got word he had made it. To be able to drive all the way to the airport from Middleofnowhere, get on a plane, fly, drive from the airport to the hospital, all in that short time and all the while no baby has come. That is divine intervention. Also...her mom made it in town from many many miles away. Also pre baby.
8) 5pmish. A beautiful, healthy, baby boy arrives. :-) Praise God! HE knew what she needed and what her baby needed and provided a way for all of that to happen. Truly a miracle. If you aren't a believer in miracles, start looking for them. God is moving and working. As a brief aside, even if her husband hadn't made it, God would still be good. We would still praise Him. His perfect grace would still be enough. I know she would agree.
9) Our flight landed 30 minutes early. Miracle #2 for the day. Here are some pictures from our fun weekend.
S- sorry for telling your story...it is too amazing not to tell and since I was a tiny part of it, I felt I needed to share it!