She's got her own sense of style.

I often don't bother trying to pick out Harper's clothes for her these days because she protests and ends up changing. Letting her dress herself certainly gains some interesting results. I liked the leg/arm warmer combo she came up with today. And yes, no coats in Chicago in January! Crazy weather.

Sisters down the slide

Quote from Harper

Harper is very close to reading, she gets closer everyday. She is motivated and excited to learn so I have been going with it. In addition to going through books, she has a ring of words that she looks through. Today she was asking me about "from" and trying to use it in a sentence.

Harper: Mom, where am I from?
Me: You're from Boulder, Colorado, that's where you were born.
Harper: No mom, I'm from Italy because I'm Italian, remember?
She is about a 1/4 Italian and she is very proud of that.
Harper: You're not from Italy but that's okay. We can pretend.

Dancing and singing with joy at Spanish class

Hamill Family Play Zoo with Aiden

 The girls love painting their faces. Harper helps Reid out.

Almost two year old Reid

Reid enjoys walking up to people and asking, "What are you doing, Mommy?" (or Daddy or Harper or whoever she happens to be talking to.) She has the sweetest little soft voice. This morning, she asked me her usual, "what are you doing, mommy?" and I told her that I was washing dishes (what else is new?) and I asked her, "what are you doing, Reid?" and she replied, "I'm biting a pancake with my mouth."

She is absorbing everything around her these days. She can recognize colors and know the Spanish names as well as English. She knows many of her letters, thanks to big sister, who likes to play school with her. She is feisty but sweet and has a big personality. She likes to pretend to be different animals, she likes to make animal noises and tell us she's "Reid the tiger!"  She loves looking through books and will entertain herself by sitting on her floor and tearing apart her bookshelf. She and Harper are best friends, most of the time. She is very girly and insists on wearing a dress daily, which is in contrast to her sister at this age- Harper would only wear the same octopus t-shirt everyday. Again, I think it's the influence of big sister, who also likes to wear dresses. Her other best friend is a little boy named Aiden who we met through our play group. Aiden is less than two weeks older than her. Reid is louder than her sister was, I'm sure it has everything to do with having to compete to be heard.

She is still nursing. I would like to be done but she screams, "I need it!" and wins me over. I feel like you hear so much about people with trouble getting their babies to nurse, I have the opposite problem: my girls never want to stop nursing. I hope bribery starts to work on her within the next few months and we can work out a deal. So far, I've offered her a doll, money, cookies, lollipops, a milkshake .... right now nothing is better than nursing.

A few from our trip to Florida

We spent Christmas on the gulf side of Florida, staying with relatives in their gorgeous home. Andy, Reid and I all ended up getting very sick! I have not been so sick in years, literally, it was very poor timing to have it happen on our vacation. Though I guess if I had to be sick, I'd take doing it with warm weather, sunshine and a pool for Harper to keep herself entertained in.