Harper currently likes animals, no LOVES animals: animal books, animal flashcards, animals sounds, animal videos, you name it! Oh, well unless you name actually touching animals...she's not too sure about that yet. As a rule of thumb, if the animal is smaller than her, she's okay with it. If the animal is bigger than her, forget about it!
She likes Michey Mouse, or "Mou-" as she says. She has a pair of Minnie and Mickey dolls that we bought her at the disney store. She likes for them to travel with her. She watches Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on tv and dances with the music.
She likes books; loves them. Looks at them by herself all day long. And is just in the past week or so, letting us read an entire book to her. Granted I have to act out the book as I read, talk in various voices, add sound effects, and generally make a fool of myself to get her to sit still. But nonetheless, she's sitting and that counts. Right?
She's really an independent kid when it comes to playtime. She checks in every so often by coming to give us a hug or say our names and sometimes she wants our attention. But for the most part, she likes to play alone. We play with her in her playroom and in the living room, but when she goes back to her room, she likes to shut the door and doesn't come out for a while. When I peak on her, she usually has her quilt off the bed and a few baby dolls and she is telling them "night night" and covering them with the blanket. For example, right now, we are in the playroom and she is going up and down her indoor slide, saying "Wee", every once in a while she looks at me and I tell her "Good job Harper!", but other than that, she has tuned me out for the moment.
She loves to be outside. Which the current heat wave is totally ruining. We can sometimes get out right after breakfast, but once it warms up, unless there is water involved, we are indoors. Bummer!
She has about 11 teeth, which she enjoys brushing at night. Or should I say, "she enjoys sucking the grapefruit flavored toothpaste off of the toothbrush at night"?
She will brush her hair if we ask her to. Which always looks worse once she is finished. Her bangs are always in her eyes and I am always trying to get them out of her eyes. So I have started putting hair ties and clips in her hair for my own peace of mind. She wore bows and headbands as a little baby, but as soon as she knew better, she ripped those suckers out! Now, I have to distract her and hope she doesn't notice that I've put anything in her H-A-I-R. And yes, we spell it, or that little hand of hers shoots up and yanks those clips right out!
She sleeps from 7:00 pm until 7:00 or 8:00 am. Yes, we know we are lucky. Yes, we know that our next child will not do this. No, we do not take this for granted. Trust me, we've heard it all.
She also naps for a few hours each day. Usually just one nap, ranging from an hour and a half to 3 hours. During some of this time, we hear her talking to herself, but she's usually content and falls back to sleep.
She talks all day long. A lot of this is adorable gibberish, some of it is very clear, and other things only we can understand.
Here are few words that everyone could recognize:
hi
bye bye
mom
mama
dad-eee
dog
baby
night night
book
goat
turkey
door
turtle
chick chick
ball
She has also said a few two-word phrases. She said "Bye Bye Dog" and she said "Mama go?" as in 'Where'd Mama go?"
And the cutest thing she says is "doe-no" and holds up her arms, she is saying "I don't know" and she does that when we ask her where something is. It's very cute.
She hates when the dryer door is open, when we make her come inside, this one particular page of the book "Guess How Much I Love You", when she crawls under the table and then stands up and hits her head, and when one of us goes outside and we don't take her. Some of the things she hates make total sense, others like the dryer and the book page, do not make sense at all.
She had her 15 month check up recently, she is in the 80th percentile for weight and 96th percentile for height.
She LOVES her shoes. And your shoes. And we should all be wearing them at all times. She makes sure of it!
Well, I feel that this has been a suitable update on Harper. But as I re-read to check for mistakes, I noticed that I may have lead you astray. It may seem like Harper sleeps all the time and then when she is awake, she doesn't need us and keeps to herself. Well here's the reality, when I told you earlier about her playing on her slide, that was the last paragraph I typed for 3 hours....It went like this:
she slid, she started rolling around the floor yelling, obviously needing my attention, we came into the kitchen and had a snack, then I changed the sheets on her mattress. And can you imagine how fun it was to jump on her mattress when it was out of the bed?!?! Then she had to run around inside the fitted sheet. If you haven't run around with your head in a fitted sheet, Harper recommends that you do. Then she wanted me to read her a book. In which she was bound and determined to turn the pages, whether I was finished reading or not. Then I found the assortment of collectables she had placed in my laundry basket: picture frames, my hair roller, a sippy cup, a ball, a dish towel. Next we had to unsnap her onesie because she couldn't touch her belly button. And that is just a miserable feeling!! Soon after that, it was naptime. Whew!
So yes, Harper is a good sleeper. And she is a well behaved and easy little girl. But she is also a 15 month old toddler. And yes, she keeps us on our toes.
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