Harper's quotes of the week

Imitating Mommy (I guess it's proof that she hears me):
"That is not safe."
"That is not age-appropriate"
"Cinnamon rolls not a junky food Mommy?"
"Don't say cooperating!"

Also- "If I'm going to be a fisherman, I need a fisherman hat and a private boat like Max" (from Where the Wild Things Are )

"Daddy goes to the office and Daddy goes to yoga.  I play with Daddy's pens and chalkboard at his office.  I'm going to put my yoga shirt on and meet Daddy after yoga and go out to breakfast.  That's a good idea!"    (Daddy isn't a teacher circa 1985 by the way, she calls his dry-erase board and markers, his "pens and chalkboard" and likes to erase his calculations and cover them with drawings of Hs and airplanes when we go to visit him at his office.)

"I've been thinking about marshmallows."

While drinking water out of a bowl on the floor, which she asked me to give her.: "Mommy, I'm just like a dog!"

Making Christmas ornaments out of dough

We baked handprints and snowflakes that she pressed using her cookie cutters and then she painted them.  It was nice to be able to do a fun, holiday art project with her this year.

Old video- from June, when Harper was 20 months. Long but funny!

Harper's new cousin!

My sister had her third son, Elias Anderson Cordone, on Saturday, December 11.  She arrived at the hospital at 6am and he was born 29 minutes later!  Eli weighed in at 8 pounds, 4 ounces and was 21 inches long.  We flew to Connecticut on the night of the 11th and felt very lucky to be able to spend time with him. 

conversation with Harper

when I got back from the dentist:
h: "Mommy, you went to the doctor?"
me: "yes"
h: "did he look at your tooth?"
me: "yes"
h, waits a second looking thoughtful: "did you bite him?

Reading to her fish

This morning, while I was scrambling around trying to get us out the door for school, I heard Harper talking to herself in her room.  I went in to see what she was up to and she had a bunch of different books on her bed and was reading them aloud.  When I caught her, she was reading "Where the Wild Things Are." She immediately told me, "Mommy, I'm reading about Max and wild things to Fishy. He wants to hear it again!"  She was very excited and kept herself entertained reading to Fishy until we left for school. By the way, she has moved into a new bedroom, with a "big girl" bed.  Grandma and Papa Pillari also got her a pet fish as an early Christmas gift and she is enjoying having the company in her room. We went with a nature theme and I am absolutely in love with how it is turning out!  We are waiting for some furniture that was on back-order and an area rug, which should arrive today and then I will take some pictures and post them.

Someone else's baby sister

Harper's buddy Fin has a baby sister: her name is Elle (Eloise) and she was born on November 24 and she is simply perfect!  We went over to visit and drop off some food.  Harper was very interested in Elle for a few seconds but Fin and his toys, particular his toy camera which she couldn't put down for this picture, were a bit too much of a distraction. 

Perched in a tree

Harper & friends in the wagon

Abby, Harper and Zoe played in this wagon after celebrating Zoe's 2nd birthday with her at the zoo!  Harper had a blast, the zoo is definitely her favorite place!

A messy girl plays with modeling dough

Harper has been very into a few new crafts lately: stamps and modeling dough.  Stamps and their companion product, ink pads, rival paint in terms of the mess factor.  I try to remind myself that having a happy, creative daughter who has the opportunity to create art is more important that having a house without ink on the walls or floor.

After school snack

In general, I am anti-Jamba Juice because of their use of styrofoam cups, but when I picked Harper up from school on Wednesday, she asked me if she could have a "smoovie" and when her teacher told me that all she had eaten all day was broccoli and strawberries (pretty standard day for her at school), I decided a calorie-packed smoothie was a good idea.  So off to Jamba Juice we went, then we hit the park across the street from our house. 

We have been working with Harper on being friendlier to people- basic things like responding when someone asks her name, saying hello and asking questions.  She sometimes surprises me and does it unprompted.  There was a boy at the playground around 9 years old and she said to him, "My name is Harper," then pointed to me and said, "and that's Jennifer."  It cracked me up! She has called me Jennifer a few times over the past months but she has never introduced me as that.  She kept the laughter coming- from me and the boy, who was confused over what he called a "talking baby" when she pointed across the street to the mausoleum in the distance and said, "I built that castle."  The only reason I can think of that she said that was because she has been very into the "Olivia" series of books lately and in one of them, Olivia is on the beach and builds a sandcastle that looks a lot like this mausoleum. 

The giraffe goes trick-or-treating!

Andy took Harper out to trick or treat and as they were leaving the driveway, she shouted to me, "Bye Mom, I'm going trick or treating." She sounded like a 5 year old, not a 2 year old! She had a blast, Andy took some video and someday I'll upload it. : ) The best part is, since she has no idea what candy is, she didn't eat any and didn't really ask to eat any, she just liked collecting it in her pumpkin.  We just took all of her candy out and put it in our bowl to give out- what a concept, maybe next year we'll send her out a couple of times and not buy any of our own.

Leaf-jumping

Getting some air

Trying to stick the landing

Made it- hooray!

Staying here, for now.....

It seems like Andy and I are always toying with the idea of moving - in fact, we have been "planning" to leave Colorado ever since I finished graduate school and that was four years ago!  Recently, we have had a few opportunities that would allow this to happen come up again and I was seriously starting to think that it was really going to happen this time.  Well, it's not.  Or at least it doesn't appear that way. We have talked through the options and it seems best, particularly given the imminent arrival of baby girl #2, that we stay put for the short-term.   Andy also recently got another promotion at Quizno's, he is now the Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance, which essentially means he is the #2 finance person in the whole company, a significant achievement for someone at age 32.  We are very proud of his achievements and the recognition that he gets there on a regular basis.  He is a hard worker and I know the only reason he does it is to provide a nice, comfortable life for me and our girls.

Dressed up for Halloween

Eating one of her new favorite foods: roasted pumpkin seeds!

Harper's quotes of the week

I took out a CD of Christmas songs from the library to burn into our music collection, we listened to it and as soon as "Jingle Bells" came on, she said, "Jingle Bells! This is a wonderful song."

Oscar hurt his paw and had to wear a cone on his head, "Oscie has a bad boo-boo just like Jesus."

To the librarian, " My baby sister, she's in mommy's arm-hips."  Arm-hips are what she calls arm pits, we can't correct her, it's too cute.  Not sure why she thinks baby sister is there but I have gotten very big lately, I'm sure it's hard to tell what's what.

We have a 2 year old!!

Harper turned two yesterday.  Since her party was on Sunday and I had class/she had preschool yesterday, we didn't do too much to celebrate.  We had some cake last night, sang happy birthday and opened a few presents.  Harper has not really been into opening presents at all - she still favors the cards and balloons, which is nice, I know that won't be the case for long.  She had her 2 year old doctor's appointment this morning.  She is 23 pounds even (8%) and her head circumference is in the 70%.  We were unable to get an accurate check on her height because she threw a tantrum and refused to cooperate.  Ahhhh, the joys of a 2 year old.  It is really windy here today so we headed to L'il Monkey Bizness (basically an indoor playground) to meet our friends Fin & Theresa after the doctor's appointment and use up some of that feisty energy. 

Opening some birthday presents at home

with the bottoms of her giraffe costume on.

Visitors for Harper's birthday

Andy's brother TJ, his wife Quinn and their children, Lucy (3 1/2) and Leo (10 months) have been visiting with us for the weekend. Luckily, their visit corresponded with Harper's birthday so they were able to come to Harper's birthday party and celebrate with us! Harper and Lucy have been getting along and playing great!  They have been dancing, singing and playing all weekend. Harper has even been sharing with Lucy, which is a big step for her!   Harper is going to be very sad when Lucy leaves tomorrow. 

Cousins

drinking out of bowls on the floor

Leo on the swings

big girls going down the slide all by themselves

love is...trying the bouncy castle for the first time

We went to the pumpkin patch today and they had three bouncy castles set up, one specifically for the under three crowd.  Harper was afraid at first but once she decided to go in I could barely get her out.  She had a blast!  I had no idea she could jump the way she was jumping.  She would jump up and land on her bottom and tell me she did a "flip." I don't think I have ever seen her laugh so hard in her life.

Playing at the library

Finally Fall!

On our walk home from the library.

More photos

Family photo- 22 weeks along

Posing at the playground

A friend invited us to participate in a quick professional photo session at a park with a bunch of other families.  A local photographer gave each family 1/2 hour of time and for a fairly small fee, mailed us a disc of all the photos to do as we please with!  I have learned that age two is very difficult to get great smiles but we had a few that turned out well.  This one is one of my favorites.

Playing outside with Zoe on our first Fall-like day!

Littlest baker

Harper's quote of the day

Grandma made Harper a "mass bag," full of things for her to play with, read or look at during church to help keep her quiet. She is especially fond of the Jesus and Peter dolls and somehow they often find their way out of her mass bag and into the playroom.  She was playing with them today and she also ended up carrying around a container of dental floss, or as she calls it, "flost" or "flosting". So, she stated the obvious: "Mommy, I'm going to floss(t) Jesus's teeth."  I'm sure he appreciated it.

Harper plays the drums at the zoo.

Harper and Abby

Harper's quotes of the week

Harper's language has gone to a completely different level in the last month.  She constantly cracks us up with the goofy things she says and observations she makes, so I am going to try to record them.  Here are a couple from the last few days:

Harper has gotten very good about brushing her teeth ever since I told her that we brush our teeth to get the "sugar bugs" out.  She wants us to look in her mouth and count the sugar bugs before brushing.  At the dinner table she told us that she had sugar bugs and opened her mouth for us to take a peek.  I looked in and said, "Yuck, that's terrible, we need to get them out."  She pouted and turned to Daddy and said, "Daddy, tell Mommy that it's not terrible!" We have no idea where she learned the concept of asking Daddy if she doesn't like what Mommy has to say.

As we pulled into the Butterfly Pavilion parking lot: "Mommy, today I'm going to reach them." me, clueless about what she was talking about: "what are you going to reach?" Harper: "The butterflies."

About her baby sister: "she's going to come out and have a tea party with me!"

Butterfly Pavilion

Harper and her friend Tula decided to become bugs after our trip to the Butterfly Pavilion.  Of course, I couldn't actually get a clear picture with Harper looking at the camera.....

Daddy runs another race.

Daddy has been running a lot lately.  He runs to work (7 miles) about once a week, ran a 10 mile road race two weekends ago, a 5K today and signed up for the Denver Rock N Roll half-marathon in 4 weeks.  Harper and I like to go cheer him on.  Today he came in third place in his age bracket and Harper went up to collect his prize with him (a $5 gift certificate to a local cafe...gosh, a few thousand more prizes like those and we're going to have claim his race winnings on our tax return.) She was rather cranky at the moment of this picture because she wanted to see the balloons- a big balloon archway that was crafted for the finish line.

Progress!

No, nothing happened, but at least she sat on it.

Hiking girl

Harper is such a terrific hiker.  She is always excited to go and insists on doing everything herself when we are on the trail, which can be scary at times because there are usually some steep drop-offs and plenty of things to trip over.  On today's hike, I kept repeating the mantra, "Hiking is walking." Harper seems to think that hiking is running.

Charlie and Harper

Harper loves her morning play dates with her buddy Charlie.  Charlie's mom and I take turns going for a run and the girls get to play. It works out great for both us and the kids!

Our new addition!

We had our 20 week ultrasound yesterday and learned that our new baby is another girl!  We are very excited, overjoyed actually, to welcome another daughter into our life.  Everything at the ultrasound looked great.  She is a mover like her sister and the ultrasound tech had a difficult time getting all of the pictures she needed.  At first she gave me an 80% chance of her being a girl then took a second peek before the ultrasound was over.  Her final report was, "there is no sign of any boy parts down there." 

My midwife called me today and informed that the little peanut weighs 12 ounces and is over the 50% for weight! I know it's a little early to get excited about that but our true "little peanut" girl, Harper, was only 8 ounces at her 20 week appointment and it seemed to be foretelling of all of the weight concerns to come.  I would be thrilled if all of my, "is my baby too small?" anxiety was spared with this little girl.  They also confirmed that the due date January 31 is accurate- well, as accurate as due dates can be.  I already have my head wrapped around a February 8-10 arrival because I don't want to have any expectations of an on-time or early delivery because, as I learned with Harper, when you think you'll be on time and then you go overdue it sets you up for a lot of disappointment!

I will scan the ultrasound pictures and put them up, hopefully tomorrow.  She kept moving her hands around her head, in one picture she had her hand tucked under her chin and then in her mouth. 

Apple-picking with Daddy

Harper is the one who insisted that she and Daddy wear their matching football jerseys, by the way....

 Inspecting the goods.

Enjoying an after-dinner cupcake with her friend Marshall

Hanging out with Daddy downtown

Our little artist at work.

Guess who insisted on trying on her halloween costume early?

Grandma sent Harper a pumpkin costume and as soon as she saw it, she needed to try it out. In fact, she did not want to take it off and we almost ended up taking our nightly walk around the neighborhood with it on. I am not sure if this is the costume she's going to wear on Halloween this year as she already has a giraffe costume that is pretty darn cute.  But I'm sure our social butterfly will have more than one event to pull out a costume for....