Giving Thanks

My favorite time of year is upon us!!

I absolutely love getting together with family to eat a special meal, talk, and just enjoy each others company. 

We started Thanksgiving Day by sitting in front f the fireplace watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Then we headed over to Dave's parents house in the early afternoon for dinner with my parents and Uncle Mike. 

Learning some new music skills

Love my cheese and sausage Turkey tray I found off Pinterest, I thought it sure made cheese and crackers seem a bit more festive! :)

The day after Thanksgiving I had work off so the kids and I went over to Jordan and Steph's early to watch the Iowa football game. Once Dave got off work and came over we continued our Thanksgiving celebration with more food and lots of cousin play time. 

These kids were wiped out from all the fun!

Harper Rae 12 Month Update

(Wayyy late posting, trying to catch up!)

Ohhhh hey you BIG one year old!! 

Age: 12 Months Old

Weight: 19 pounds 6.5 ounces, she's in the 20th%ile

Length:  29 inches long, she's in the 42nd%ile

Size: Harper is still wearing size 3 diaper and most likely will be for quite a few more months since she's apparently just a little petite peanut. I mean 20% for weight and only 42% for height?!? By no means does she feel heavy but she fits perfectly in all her 12 month clothes so we are all a bit shocked at how petite she is.

Hair: Light brown/blonde and long enough to wear hair clips. It’s pretty straight although the back ends tend to wave/curl a bit when wet, so we’ll have to wait to see if she inherits any of my curls. 

Eyes: She has the most beautiful big blue eyes with long eyelashes. Everyone always compliments her on those gorgeous eyes of hers.

 

Health: She had her first illness this month. Madden caught croup and was nice enough to share it with his little sister, who tried passing on the yuckies to mom but didn’t hit me as hard. Madden ended up having a 104 temp in the middle of the night when he got sick so I made sure to have Dave pick up some baby Tylenol while he was out in case Harper got it too, which of course about a week later she did.  I ended up taking Harper to the doctor, she was miserable and would cry almost every time she coughed. The nurse practitioner ended up putting her on a steroid because her chest/lungs sounded so tight. Thankfully after 24 hours she sounded so much better but still took a few more days till she was back to her good ole self. 

Teeth: Harper is working on her molars! I can feel she is just starting to cut one on the bottom and one on the top. The doctor said her other bottom molar will be coming through soon too as her gum is very inflamed and bulging.

Sleeping: Madden and Harper continue to tag team and play a fun game (for them) of “Who will wake mom up tonight?” She has been waking up more nights than not. Madden generally just wakes me because he needs to go potty or to cuddle for a few minutes then he's fine with me leaving to go back to bed. Harper doesn't let me off that easily.  She still goes down for bed between 7-7:30pm and sleeps till 6:15/6:30am. She takes two naps, her first nap is around 9am which lasts about 1.5 hours and her afternoon nap is usually around 2:00pm but varies on weekends for me.

  

Eating: Harper is an eating machine! She eats about the same as her brother does, sometimes more. She loves her yogurt and yogurt bites, cottage cheese, mac 'n cheese, pasta, bananas, pears, peaches, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries (basically ALL fruit), pizza, and sweets. You better be prepared to share any ice cream, cookies, or pudding with her or drama queen meltdown will ensue.

She is still breastfeeding! She only nurses twice a day, first thing in the morning and at night. She takes two bottles and we are working on using the sippy cup. She loves my water bottle but when she's given a straw sippy she still tips it back like a bottle and regular sippys she prefers to chew on. I still have a few weeks left of frozen milk but I have already started the transition to cows milk, so her transition will be long till all the Liquid Gold is gone.

Movement: Still a crawling machine. She has now started bear crawling, or I call it her man cub walk (we watch a lot of Jungle Book). She cruises furniture like a pro now, walks back and forth to the coffee table and couch.

Milestones: Standing on her own in the middle of the room. Takes 1-2 steps. Love to face dive into mommy when standing or taking steps. Blows kisses, although she will only do it for Rachel, her daycare provider. Waving bye-bye.

Favorite Toys/Activities: Playing in brothers room and with all of his toys. She love mommy/daddy's room, particularly throwing all the DVD's in our room on the floor or taking everything out of our bathroom cabinets. Loves playing peek-a-boo and chasing or being chased by Madden. Playing in the pantry. Dancing and music. Magnetic blocks, the stand-n-ride puppy, music table.

Dislikes: She's gotten much better with her car seat but still not that big of fan, will cry and squirk but doesn't get into roll mode nearly as much. Still doesn't like to sit still for diaper changes. Still a mamas girl and wants me as soon as she gets home from daycare, won't let me put her down unless its in her highchair with food. Food makes everything better. Although once she's done eating she wants out of her highchair asap.  HATES strangers. Gets pissed when someone closes the pantry door.

Words: No. Mama, Dada, Nigh-Nigh

Sounds: She has started mimicking noises and sounds that you make to her. She squeals, yells, babbles, and still blows raspberries. "Sings" into the toy microphone.
 

Favorite Moments

• Harper got her first anatomy lesson. It's been awhile since the kids have taken a bath together, Madden has been back to wanting to take showers. I ended up giving both kids a bath together in our master bath since it's a bigger tub and deeper so Harper can't try to climb out. Well Madden loves to lay down and put his head or ears under water which I'm sure lots of kids do. This time he laid on his back to splash around, Harper saw his little boy parts and went to grab them. Thankfully she stopped when I yelled no at her but she did make another attempt. Now we have Madden cover with a wash cloth and only laying on his stomach. 
• She loves the movie Zootopia. Madden gets into phases were after dinner or bath he wants to watch a movie in our room. Zootopia has been on repeat lately. Harper loves watching the movie too now. She insists on getting up on our bed to roll around then sits and just stares at the movie. Every time the theme song part comes on, Harper stops what she's doing or if she's in a different room and hears it she will beeline to the TV. She sits and dances the entire time to the music. 

Monthly Highlights

• Babysat by grandma and grandpa so mommy and daddy could have date night
• Had Uncle Jay, Aunt Kathy and cousin Jason and Erica visit to watch the Iowa game
• Went to MJ's last soccor game
• First trip to the pumpkin patch
• First hay rack ride
• Refused bottle from daddy while mommy had girls night....(it was a cold bottle, no wonder!)
• First time getting sick
• Trick-or-treat at Hy-Vee
• Carving aka playing with pumpkin guts
• Went to Trunk or Treat at Madden's school
• Started putting her face in the water during bath
• First Halloween
• Went trick-or-treating with her cousins
• Had her one year pictures taken
• Had her first birthday party
• Turned ONE

She's ONE

I blinked and she turned ONE! 

Happiest of birthday's to this sweet, sassy, gorgeous little angel of ours!

Halloween 2016

Our Boo Crew!

I love our new tradition of the past couple years going over to my brothers house for Halloween trick-or-treating. Our neighborhood is a bust unfortunately, it's not much of an actual neighborhood with a country-city living mix, barely any kids and on a very busy street. Thankfully my brother and his family have a huge family friendly neighborhood with kids galore running around. 

There are so many kids dressed up out on the street that I think it feels like a movie. Plus, the biggest bonus is the cousins get to run around together all costumed up! They have so much fun together. 

Two years ago Madden was the slowest kid that him and I were houses behind everyone and we even skipped some to keep up. Last year him and Stella were little buddies the entire time. And now this year, Stella and Emery stayed together while Carter and Madden led the pack. MJ really wanted to keep up with his big cousin and were literally running house to house with so much excitement. We had a hard time at the beginning slowing those two down repeatedly so we could stay somewhat close together. 

Fortunately they haven't learned how to pace themselves just yet, the first 20 minutes was practically non-stop running from house to house that they burned out quick which luckily meant it was easy to keep everyone together after that :) By time we had been out maybe 45 minutes Carter was asking Jordan to carry him and Madden was asking to go home, LOL! 

It was time for them to pass out candy to the other kids and they have an absolute blast doing it! They won't leave the doors site as they wait for kids to come and if they can't see anyone out in front then they all run out to the sidewalk to look down the street to see how close or far away the next kids are. Then they run back to the door yelling "Theirs a kid coming!". They each grab a handful of candy to throw in every kids bag.....any kids that comes to this house sure makes out well!

Once we were done Trick-or-Treating and running our sugar highs off, we stopped over to see the other grandparents and show off their costumes. 

These kids were beyond tired and wore out from Halloween! They had so much fun and we are fully stocked for a couple months in the candy department. Now we just have to hide it so we don't eat ALL.THE.CANDY!

Flamingo Central

I just can't help but show off THE cutest little flamingo I ever did see!

And I am not the only one with the flamingo obsession. Our daycare provider also has been on board the flamingo train so both Harper and Aniston were flamingos together at their daycare Halloween Party.

I feel like their saying, "You look like me!!"

Aniston is flapping those wings, maybe trying to fly away :)

Ahhh I just can't get over how adorable she is!!

Fall Fun

We spent the weekend carving up some pumpkins!

I really didn't think Mr. Doesn't Like His Hands Dirty would help much in the cleaning out department. And at first he didn't want anything to do with those pumpkin guts, he wouldn't even touch them! But after a few minutes he happily helped scoopin' the insides out.

He thought it was quite entertaining to see how stringy the inside of the pumpkins were and kept yelling for daddy to see what he was pulling out with this scoop.

I even got him to use his hands to pull out the seeds, your best tools are your hands!

We met Miss Ariel aka Violet at the local Hy-Vee down the street for Trick-or-Treat at the grocery store. It was a nice, non-chaotic way to start off the candy collecting :)

The last couple years we've gone to Dave's parents church for Trunk or Treat, unfortunately this year it fell on the same night as Madden's school's Trunk or Treat. He really wanted to go to his schools and to see his friends dressed up. It was a tough decision but we want to keep associating these fun activities with school since he's finally excited about school and getting all adjusted at his new place.

Batman was super excited to show off his costume to this teachers and say Hi to his friends. Miss Pink Flamingo was not that impressed quite yet. 

Trunk or Treat was a success, there was a huge turnout and he has a lot of fun....except for giant spider part. A could of his teachers had a van and were passing out candy. In the back of their trunk was a huge mechanical spider, it has just jumped out at someone when we came up to the van so I thought he has seen it move. After he said hi to his teachers and got his candy I told ask him if he wanted to go up to see the giant spider, I think he was actually going to maybe touch it, and of course as soon as he got right up to it... that little devil jumped. Scaring the living daylights out of MJ which of course made him completely embarrassed which made him cry. Mother of the year right here.  

Surprisingly Harper did not get scared by all the masks and costumes like I thought she might. So here's hoping that continues through Halloween....and even Christmas now that I think of it. 

Pumpkin Patch 2016

We ended the weekend with our yearly trip to the Pumpkin Patch.

Madden has been asking for the past two weeks about going, thanks to preschool talking about Fall activities and some of his classmates having already gone. So I promised him we would go over the weekend. 

Best shot I could get, who are they smiling at?!? I mean at least I got MJ smiling even if it's not at me. 

The weather turned out amazing! You never know what you're going to get this time of year in the Midwest, I mean I had to cave just a few days ago to turn the heat on in the AM to warm the house up and in the same week turn the air on. It turned out to be warmer than expected at the patch, a sweaty near 80 degrees. Some of us we're a bit overly dressed, thanks mother nature. 

Harper wasn't too sure about the size of these pumpkins.

My little cowboy! 

Turns out Madden is quite the little calf wrangler. He caught on really fast, he caught the calf on his second try and even a few more times after that. He was really excited about it. 

Pumpkin Patch Princess and her Scarecrow

MJ was a very picky pumpkin picker this year. He didn't like any of the good looking pumpkins and kept going after the ones with holes in them. He was pouty that he couldn't find one he liked. Then he spotted "the one" all the way at the end of the patch all by itself was the one he wanted. It of course was discolored, lopsided with a hole but that was the one!

(Dave ended up trading it one we got back in from the patch and he has yet to even notice)

The picture perfect pumpkin for Harper!

Pumpkin painting

Harper 11 Months

Eleven Months!!

Excuse me while I take a moment to freak-out over planning this girls first birthday party.

Age: 11 Months Old

Weight: at 9 month doctors apt weighted in at 17lbs 15 ounces

Length:  at 9 month doctor apt measured 27 ¾ inches long

Size: Miss Harper is still wearing size 3 diapers, which I assume she will be for a while. She is in pretty much all 12 month clothes and pajamas but we’re still holding on to some 9 months since this Fall weather fluctuates so much.

Hair: Light brown/blonde, it’s getting just long enough to start trying some hair clips. It’s pretty straight although the back ends tend to wave/curl a bit when wet.  

Eyes: She has the most beautiful big blue eyes with long eyelashes. Everyone always complements her on those gorgeous eyes of hers 

She found a way to crawl on top of the coffee table 

Health:  Another great month! The only thing that came up this month was a rough diaper rash that I think was brought on by too many blueberries. Apparently she’s just like her brother in this department, they sure do love eating those little guys but blueberries are just too acidic for their little bums. It took a good week to get that thing close to gone and lots of nakey time to help heal.

Teeth:  Holding strong at 8 teeth. It was nice having an entire month break.

Sleeping: At the beginning of the month there were a few weeks Harper was having a hard time falling asleep on her own. She would just roll around in her crib from one end to the other and back, then after some time throw her pacifier out the crib and cry so someone would come in. She would sometimes take an hour or so to finally fall asleep but thankfully she didn’t cry too much during that time frame and eventually put herself to sleep. She also continued to wake up earlier for a while, she was usually up by 6:00am both during the week and on weekends! No Bueno for the weekends!! Now Madden and her have decided to start a tag team waking in the middle of the night the past week or so. I mean every single night for like 8 days or so. They either switch nights waking or one will wake shortly after the other is back asleep. I've seen lots of 3am's recently! 

She still goes down for bed between 7-7:30pm and sleeps till 6:15/6:30am. She is still taking two naps, however the past two weekends has decided to refuse just taking her afternoon nap for her mama. Her first nap is around 9am and lasts 1.5 hours. Her afternoon nap at daycare is usually around 1:30pm and varies on weekends for me if at all.

Matching Halloween Jammies

Eating: Now that watermelon is going out of season, Harper has found her love for fruit cocktail!! New fave! She loves her some peaches and pears. She will demolish an entire fruit cocktail cup. Between her and MJ, they will eat an entire can of pears. I might have fed her bananas a bit too much as she seems pretty over them right now and for the past week will only mush them up in her fists and throw them on the floor. And dogs don’t like bananas so that’s not cool. Cottage cheese is also her jam, she stuffs that in her face by the fist fulls. Loves Gerber little beanies, yogurt melts, Puffs, Cheerios, Ritz crackers, sweet potatoes, cheese, yogurt, nectarines, blueberries (limited quantities), ALL the pasta, French fries, pizza, and sweets.

Harper is still breastfeeding although she doesn’t nurse for as long during the day and has weaned off her evening feed when I get home from work and she’s home from daycare. She’s more interested in eating food and would rather just eat actual dinner. She now eats about 4 times a day. On weekdays I only nurse first thing in the morning and at bedtime, which is really kinda nice for me. She has two bottles at daycare and eats 3 meals plus a snack or two in there. Really looking forward to start to transition in some cow’s milk to her diet soon and be done with pumping.  

enjoying soccer practices 

Movement:  Harper is the fastest thing on four limbs, girlfriend can seriously make it to the opposite side of the house in 10 seconds. Okay maybe that is a little bit of an exaggeration but this girl seriously disappears in seconds and is nowhere to be found. I’m constantly sending Madden out to find her and make sure she’s not getting into anything she shouldn’t be. She tries to climb on everything! Like the coffee table and our toy kitchen.

Milestones: Gives High Fives over and over and over again. She has starting to cruise furniture, particularly loves walking around the coffee table and will go from the coffee table to couch on occasion. Will let go standing for a second or two. Starting to mimic actions and noises.          

Favorite Toys/Activities: She loves non-baby toys, especially things that are big brothers. She constantly plays with his Melissa and Doug lock puzzle, SmartMax magnetic blocks, and crawls to his room to play with his toys especially the play kitchen. She like her music table and standing up at her jumperoo (not in it) but she does still like bouncing in her jumperoo. Bath time. Being naked. Crawling on top of people. Chasing after big brother and being chased by him. Playing peek-a-boo. Playing with door stops. Opening and closing doors. Playing in the dog dishes and the pantry

Dislikes: Still not a huge fan of being put in her car seat, although she doesn’t go into roll mode nearly as much now. She definitely is still a mamas girl and won’t let me out of her site when its nearing toward bedtime. Hates having the dogs water and food bowls taken away from her or if they are already moved when she goes to the laundry she is pissed. Hates green beans. Strangers! Girl has some major stranger anxiety, not a fan of new people coming up to her and will immediately make a crying face and turn to mama for help. Once she’s done eating she wants out of her highchair, there’s no hanging around with the family. She means business only.  

Words:  Says Mama and Dada

Sounds: She has started mimicking noises and sounds that you make to her. She squeals, yells, babbles, and still blows raspberries. 

Harper's new fake cry face

Favorite Moments

• Harper has learned a new game she loves to play, I call it Catch and Release with Daddy. I was yelling at Dave to watch her while making dinner one night because she loves to crawl over to the end table in the corner to play with whatever we have plugged into that outlet, which is usually where the iPad charges at night. Sure enough she starts right on over there so Dave yells out "Harper, no no no!" He picks her up, carries her away to set her down in the middle of the room, she giggles turns around and crawls right back on over there. They do this on repeat over and over. If he's not paying attention she crawls over there, stops right in front of the outlet and turns around to wave her arms trying to get him to look at her again. Once he sees her she starts giggling and goes for the outlet so he comes and gets her. 
• The above game has grown to a fun game of tag with her big brother. They love to chase each other all over the house at night. They both usually get a little wild in the evening after dinner right before bed. This is the time Harper crawls all over the house trying to get into everything and Madden will help go find her. She crawls after him running around the house then when he comes running back into the living room she tries crawling away from him and they go back and forth giggling.
• A few weekends ago we went over to the Malloy's house for baseball, beers and to let the kids run off some energy. They have a very fun neighborhood that is kid friendly so the kids ran wild. The past few months Harper has started getting very leery of strangers or even just people she hasn't seen for a little while. She usually cries immediately if they get too close, try talking to her or if I'm holding her she will turn away and play shy burying her head in my shoulder. So since there were lots of new faces at their house she would cry or start to cry and most people would back right away to leave her along, cause nobody wants to make a baby cry. I think she started to pick up on that because half way through the night she started making a pouty face every time some came up to her or tried talking to her but it was a different face than she makes when she actually cries. As soon as they saw that face they would back off. So now she makes this pouty face all the time, even at home when no one new is at our house. See above picture!

The Donut Thief

Monthly Highlights

• Madden’s #1 soccer fan at all his games and practices
• First weekend with daddy away for 2 nights
• Swings at Vander Veer Park
• Learned to high five and makes you give her multiple
• Celebrated Carter’s birthday, loved the ice cream cake!
• Went to grandma and grandpa Gorsh’s for a Wednesday since no daycare
• Enjoyed some nice Fall walks with the dogs
• Cruising furniture
• Started refusing afternoon naps for mommy on weekends
• Loves to be chased
• Starting to mimic actions and noises
• Still Breastfeeding