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.