Friends

Our next door neighbors stopped by the other night....

Today's Harper

It's been a while since I wrote much about Harper, I've gotten in the habit of talking about her through pictures, because it is generally quicker. But it's about time for a good old fashion update.

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. 

~

You can find me in St Louie

Kevin & I took a short anniversary trip a few weeks ago. We left Harper (FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER) with my folks for two nights and headed to St. Louis.

If you don't already know this, our family loves to go to the zoo. Any zoo, any city, we're all in!

The St. Louis  zoo may be the best one yet!

An example of the architecture

Look how close he is to that puffin!

My absolute favorite exhibit

They were soooo close, it was amazing.

Now onto Kevin's favorite part of the trip and the reason we went to St. Louis in the first place. 

The Cardinals game

And or course, we had to visit the arch. We walked over after the game, because as you can see, it's right there!

This cracks me up...Notice Kevin looking down the vents, 

and then he makes the "I'm impressed. That's pretty deep." face. We then had to look down the vents for 5 minutes, examining how far down they went. Men!

We had a great time, ate some seriously good food, and enjoyed celebrating 5 special years together.

~

Meal with a view

Harper likes to gaze out the window as she eats her meals. Especially at breakfast, when the birds are chirping and it's still cool enough to open the window. 

She also likes to bark at the dog next door and he enjoys barking back!

I'm sure they just LOVE us. 

~

Hot Diggity Dog

Harper brought me the remote saying "Dot Dog, Dot Dog". That  means 'hot dot', which is a song that they sing on the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. She now has new stuffed Mickey & Minnie dolls. So they often remind her of the show even when the tv isn't on. It's the only show she watches (except for animal planet sometimes)

And this is her reaction when I get the show on....

So, this little guy, makes my little girl very happy!

 See? Happy girl. 

DAD

We had to celebrate Father's Day at our house on Tuesday this week. Kevin and I were on a little getaway trip over the weekend, so Harper and I made Tuesday "Daddy's Day" at our house. He got his favorite foods, went golfing, and according to him, his best present was sharing an ice cream cone with Harper. 

We made an agreement that neither of us would ever buy the other a store bought card again, we would much rather just say what we want to say then look for something that says what we want to say. Get it? 

Any way, here is Harper's card to her dad:

A new coffee mug to go with his breakfast!

Harper sported a "Daddy makes me smile" shirt for the day. 

Well... she wore it until it was covered in milk, food, and sidewalk chalk. 

Speaking of 'sidewalk chalk', we thought it would be a good time to learn how to use it. But 'LEARN' really isn't the word I am looking for. Let's see, what am I trying to say?

Oh yes, EAT! 

'Eat' is the word I am looking for!

Harper likes to eat sidewalk chalk.

She thinks it's wonderful!

So happy belated Father's Day to the one person who makes our daughter giggle more than anyone, the person who's name she says first thing in the morning, and the man who makes this whole parenting adventure so much fun!

A mess in the barnyard

Harper really loves animals. She is so much more of an animal lover than I am. Get's it from her Dad I guess. So much so that she has an animal with her at all times: Dog-Dog goes to the grocery store with her, about 10 duckies in the bathtub, her horses come out of their barn every time we play in the play room, she moo's at the cows and barks at the dogs as soon as she see's a window open; no matter what or where she's playing, somehow there are animals involved. 

Including play dough. I couldn't get her to wrap her head around the concept of play dough for a while. And I had spent her nap time making safe play dough out of jello...I was bound and determined to make her like it ! It just seemed messy to her.  All I had to do was show her that her animals could step in the play dough and the fun began! 

Apparently sometimes the animals need a break from the mess, so she stacks them in their "corral".

She MOOing in this photo

If I'm honest, I think she only likes the animals, and maybe the play dough could be skipped. But I like to pretend that  she appreciates and cherishes my glorious homemade play dough and the hard work that I put into creating fun for her.

Yeah right mom, keep dreaming!

~

Silence is Dangerous

Harper is a very independent little girl. She likes to play by herself and do a lot of exploring. Like, the other evening, I watched her for about 10 minutes try to stack three cups in the correct order. She tried cramming the large one into the the medium one, with lots of grunting. She tried stacking them backwards. And when she finally got them, you should have seen the look of satisfaction on her face.
She's like that: just perfectly happy to play on her own.

Don't get me wrong, when independent time is over...we know it.

"Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma...."

or 

"Dad-EEE Dad-EEEE Dad-EEEE"

Or there is always that moment when you realize you can't hear her playing. She is silent and you know that something has gone down. 

Like this for instance:

Harper found her flashcards. She loves to empty things. Can you tell?

If you survey the damage. The flashcards were only the beginning. 

 She is quite proud of herself. 

~



Another thing Harper loves to do....find your belly button.

My room is a mess...CHECK

Find Mom's belly button...CHECK

Such a busy girl!




~

Stylin'

Harper has bangs. Her mama has bangs too, but that was a mistake and we will stop talking about it. 

Her hair is always in her eyes and I don't know about her, but it drives ME crazy! 

So we have been trying clips and little pony tails lately. 

They work... until she realizes they are there. 

And then, this happens......

Can ya tell she had spaghetti for dinner?

~

Reach for the sky!

Harper can climb up onto our furniture now. Yay! (sarcastically said) This means that she can reach just about anything we try and place out of her reach. 

But at least she has to work at it a bit...

Whew! That was a tough climb!

See. I climbed from way down there!

~

Popsicles

Harper had her first popsicle today. Really, it was just to keep her in her high chair while Kevin and I finished dinner. Turned out to be a major endeavor....eating it, playing in the leftover juice, cleaning the shirt, scrubbing the baby, and I mean SCRUBBING!

Wrong side

All done!

~