Whoooo's 10 Months Old

Howdy Y'all!

I can't believe it - I am a mother of a 10 month old!  Where has the time gone?

My sweet Harper is still (and will always be) the greatest joy in our lives.  She just continues to grow like a weed everyday and is now wearing 12 month clothes and size 3 Pampers Cruisers diapers.

I feel like this month brought us all kinds of development!  Harper started crawling, going from a laying position to a seated position, pulling up and walking with the aid of a walker.  She went from being so easy to keep up with to being ALL over the place!  She keeps us on our toes.

Here is her first attempt at crawling...pretty good if I say so myself!

And, here is her first attempt at walking with the walker.   I love that when she learns something...she just gets it and acts like an old pro.

My little peanut still has a toothless grin and it is mighty cute!  She has also started saying Uh-Oh or I should say that she has started copying me when I say Uh-Oh.   I love it.

Harper loved her first Easter and was pretty good at hunting those eggs!

I can't believe that Harper will be one year old in a couple of months.  Birthday party planning is in full gear and for some crazy reason, I have decided to go with an invitation that has to be cut out by hand and it has 16 pieces to it!  I am glad I am starting early because they may not be done in time.  :) Yikes!  And, then Pinterest has given me so many ideas for the party that I hope to pull off as well.  Wish me luck.

I am ready to see what developments we will see before Harper turns eleven months old.  I guess time will tell.

Toodles!

Rescue Me

Howdy Y'all!

Last weekend my parents came for a visit to celebrate Harper's first Easter and while they were here, we had the strangest thing happen.  My mom and I were walking to my car and we heard some scratching from inside one of our columns on the front porch.  We had no idea how something could get down there and we had no idea what it was...so my dad came to the rescue.

He got out a ladder and with a flashlight, he determined it was a large black bird.  Now, it was time to put in a plan of action...

First idea was a wash cloth with fishing line tied to each corner.  He pushed the cloth down the narrow hole and came so close to getting the bird.  After this failed attempt, he gave up but you could tell it was still bothering him.

He sat down for awhile and then bolted off to the garage and came back with an extension cord and duct tape.  For the second attempt, he would wrap the tape around the extension cord sticky side up and then push the cord down into the hole.  And, after a few minutes, the bird stuck to the extension cord and came right on up.  One bird's life saved that day!  Yahoo!

After all my dad's hard work, he plugged up the small hole with some newspaper and he was glad he did because that silly bird was back and trying to get in the column later that day.  Maybe it was a do-do bird.  ha!

And, I will leave you with a few pics from Harper's first Easter - she really seemed to enjoy herself!

We had a little hunt inside the house.

She's taking a little break...crawling wears a girl out, ya know!

So proud of herself that she found another egg.

Look!  Another one!

Papaw helped her find one too.

Out of a few pics of us...this was the best one...still not good.

Harper loves her cousin, Hay-Hay.

Nana and Papaw are pretty amazing too!

Some of Harper's loot for Easter.

Mommy, the Easter Bunny left me something too!

My happy little girl!  We love her.

Toodles!

Whoo, Whoo is 9 Months Old?

Howdy Y'all!

Guess whoooo is 9 months old!  I can't believe we are 3/4 of the way through her first year.  It is just going by so fast.  Look at my growing girl...I can't believe she is getting so big.

Harper learned a trick this month...but, it wasn't crawling, pulling up or getting to a seated position on her own.  We are so close to all three of those...she started getting on all fours and rocking back and forth so I am sure the crawling is right around the corner.   Her new trick of the month is waving - I just think it is so cute when she waves at me and waves to her caregivers at daycare when she leaves.  She always seems so proud of herself when she does it.

She really enjoys playing with her toys and one of her favorites is her Stride to Ride dinosaur.  She loves for us to push her on the dinosaur back and forth between me and Tony and she squeals with delight.

Harper went to to zoo for the first time this month and the whole family had a great time.  She went for a ride on the carousel and just had the best time.  I know she is going to love Walt Disney World in two months.

Harper is wearing mostly 12 month clothes and size 3 diapers.  We are so thankful it has warmed up around here (except for today and tomorrow) because we have lots of cute short sleeve clothes we need to wear before we outgrow them.  And, it seems like she either has short arms or her clothes just have freakishly long arms because I always have to roll her sleeves under when she wear long-sleeve clothes.

So far, she has only rejected one food - avocado.  The poor little girl was just gagging away...but, she chows down on everything else.  She has eaten apples, pears, bananas, peaches, mangoes, strawberries, yellow squash, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, green beans, sweat peas, broccoli and carrots.  I guess we need to start introducing meat in her diet as well.  I hope it goes just as well as everything else.

During this last month, Harper got completely off the bottle and I have daycare to thank for that one.  I sent some juice to school in a sippy cup and by the next day, they sent all of her bottles home and from that day on, we have never gone back.  She is a bit picky with the cups though...she will only drink out of the Nuk cups.  Silly girl!

Harper loves her books - and we have discovered some amazing ones this month.  Her grandmother bought her a new book that is a Magic Ribbon Book about Rainbows...it is a cool concept that she loves!  At the Oklahoma City Zoo, we found a book called Tails that is so neat...it has different textured tails to touch and Harper loves it.  She barely wanted to go to bed tonight because she wanted to keep feeling the tails.  I love that girl!

We are ready to see what the next month brings - we love you baby girl!

Toodles!

Case Closed

Howdy Y'all!

Tomorrow is little Emma's first birthday.  She was known to me as Kinley - and she was our sweet girl for 3 days until her birth mom changed her mind.  We, of course, got a lot of closure when we adopted our wonderful daughter, Harper.

I have always wondered what happened to Sarah and Emma and I wanted to know if they were happy so today, I emailed Sarah to say Happy Birthday to Emma.  I also included a picture of Harper because I wanted to reassure her that Tony and I were very happy with life and things worked out exactly perfectly.  I really didn't expect a response from her, but to my surprise, I got an email from her about an hour later.

Here is a picture of Emma (not the best quality, but all I have...obviously) - she has those cute cheeks just like Harper!

She was glad to hear from us and she said that she had been thinking about emailing us as well.  Sarah sounds like she is happy with her life and I am so glad to here that.  Emma had a rough start to life - Sarah informed me that she ended up in NICU on her 9th day and that she almost died.  I am so thankful so many of you were praying for her around that time because God does work miracles.  Emma was only weighing in at 3 lbs, 5 oz at day 9 and she had to have a feeding tube until she was 5 months old.  Today, at 364 days old, she is completely healthy and so cute.

I feel like the case is closed here since I have heard back from Sarah - and the small weight that was still left on my heart has been lifted.

And, here are some pics that I took on Sunday of my little Harper...I really don't think she can be any cuter.

Toodles!

Whoo, Whoo is 8 Months Old?

Howdy Y'all!

Happy 8 Months Old to my sweet baby girl Harper!

I can't believe that Harper is 2/3 of a year old!  Time is just flying on by!

I took Harper to the doctor for the first time outside of a well child visit about 10 days ago and she weighed in at a whopping 20 lbs, 6 oz!  She was also 27.5 inches long.  She came away from the doctors office with an ear infection in each ear and a cold.  Poor baby!

Harper is wearing 6-9 month clothes and some 12 month clothes.  We have so many outfits in 12 months that I really want her to wear, but I feel like the neck is just a bit too big.  And, I can't figure out if Harper has short arms or if some of her clothes just have super long arms because we always have to roll up (I actually roll under) her sleeves.

She is wearing size 3 diapers and I am just hoping we can make it through this last jumbo box of diapers that we have from Sam's Club before we have to move up to a size 4.  I feel like our time in size 3 diapers is nearing the end.

Harper loves to clap and I just think it is adorable.  (Of course, I might think everything she does is adorable!)

Harper has really found her voice this month and of course (like most babies), her first word is Da-Da.  She says it all day long.

She experienced her first snow and she loved it.  She was kind of in a foul mood that morning and she really perked up when the snowflakes hit her face.

We finally found a food that Harper doesn't like...avocado.  I can't believe it...how could someone hate avocado?  They are so tasty!  But, we also found out she loves frozen yogurt.  She hasn't had much of it, but she certainly wanted more once she got a taste.

She got her first taste of juice (very watered down) and she drank it from a sippy cup!  She is such a big girl!

Harper still loves playing with her cousins and enjoyed her time with them this weekend in Texas.

And, bath time is still probably her favorite time of the day!  She loves it...it can turn a grumpy Harper into VERY happy Harper!

We only have 4 months left until Harper is 1...and am I crazy because I have already ordered her birthday cake???

Toodles!

Feed the Goats, Tuppence a Day

Howdy Y'all!

Harper is having a great time in Texas...just in the last 26 hours or so, she has seen too many people to mention.

We started the day at my sister's school reading to her 1st graders and it was a blast!  I read a book about Froggy and his T-Ball game and my sister told them I played softball.  At the end of the book, her class asked me questions (because they are learning about what makes a question) and one of her kids asked me "Were you any good?"  Those kids were a handful and just so much fun.

Harper spent the rest of the day playing with her cousin, her Nana and Grandmother and her Mommy.  Fun Day!

We ended the day across the street from my parents house...feeding the birds goats, tuppence a bag.  There are some sweet little baby goats...and some mean old billy goats, but it was still fun.  I even got a cute picture of Harper feeding them.

We are off to the great metropolis of Eagle Lake, Texas tomorrow for a 1st birthday party for a sweet, sweet girl...Kenley Madden Vasek, my college roommate's (and one of my very favorite people) daughter.   And, you know what makes the drive completely worth it...we go by a Bucee's!!!!!!!!  Beaver Nuggets, here we come.  ha!

Toodles!

Dolly Rocks!

Howdy Y'all!

Growing up my room was never short on books - I always had them!  I had a cabinet that held them all and it was stuffed full.  So, of course, Harper has a ton of books.  We started buying books before we even knew she was coming into our lives.  We have also gotten several as gifts from friends and family and my mom even found several of my old books that survived me, my sister and my niece Hailey.  But, now we have another source of books!

Back in November, Harper's daycare gave us paperwork to fill out to join Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.  Dolly Parton and the United Way have teamed up to provide children FREE books - one per month until they turn 5 - that means 50+ free books for Miss Harper over the next several years.  We got our first one in the mail today.  You should google this and see if it is available in your area...it is totally worth your time.

We look forward to reading our new books for years to come!  I have always thought Dolly Parton was just so cute and bubbly, but now I just think she is downright amazing.  Love her!

And, I couldn't resist a few pictures of Harper before I say goodbye.  I think the first one is so cute even if she isn't looking at the camera.  And, the second picture isn't great, but I just think it is so sweet!

Toodles!