Redecorating

The other day I was laying on our bed looking at our bedroom walls. I love the 2 shades of green we picked out to match our bedding set. It was a fun and spicy Ty Pennington set with green, orange and white. A big change from the rest of our house which is very brown. Everything was going great until I decided to wash the bedspread (which, per the tag, was machine washable) and it practically fell apart in our washer. UGH, I was so bummed. We had searched high and low for a set we could both agree on and it was such an un-like us thing to do to pick something so different. Thankfully Sears took it back but had nothing to exchange it with. We got our money back and began our search for The Next Perfect Set. We searched for weeks and could find nothing until we finally needed something so we settled and got one we could simply live with, but, being brown and orange, it didn't go with our green walls any longer. I tried buying decorative pillows to help make it coincide and I think we've been looking for almost 2 years now for a picture to hang over our bed to help tie things together... but the comforter is still brown and the walls are still green.

So I'm looking at the walls, enjoying the colors, wishing we had a matching comforter... when it hit me -- that these colors would look fantastic in Harper's room.

Harper's room has always been a love/hate situation with me. We did the wrong thing by painting first before we had any bedding, furniture, or even knew what the sex of the baby was. We figured it would all fall into place and we knew we loved the milk chocolate brown color. I had envisioned white furniture brightening up the room and coinciding nicely with the color of the closet and trim, an adorable but not frilly bedding set and all the fixin's to make it a cute place for her to call her own. Ahhh, the best laid plans...

I think I made the most of the situation I had, though I've never loved to hang out in her room. I didn't love the color of the furniture we found off craigslist but it was too nice to sand and repaint. And even moreso, I didn't love the furniture color with the walls. I tried to brighten it up by painting pink dots on one wall and I think that helped me for a while. But overall the room was just too dark and no fun.

Cue lovely green paint.

And I love it!!! We're not done yet. As usual, Jon has grand plans to make it extra special. But we've run out of time for now and the accent stripes will have to wait. We also rearranged some of the furniture and moved the glider into the guest room for now. It's bright, it's beautiful, it's refreshing -- and most of all, I love hanging out in there. Oh, and Harper does too.

Girly Girl

This doesn't look like Harper to me, but that's probably because it's not me. The outfit was a hand-me-down and we had to put her in it at least once before she grew out of it. I know Mimi will love this one!

Safety First

Harper's showing us she's ready to be done with her carseat.

Not so fast, little girl!! You've got quite a ways to go, but you're welcome to practice buckling your own seat belt.

My Funny Valentine

We spent Valentine's morning with Don and Jane. Jane's birthday is 2/16 (Happy Birthday Grandma!!!) so we brought them breakfast to celebrate with them a few days early. The rest of the day was pretty low key as we ran errands and shopped for a new carseat for Harper. Still undecided and haven't purchased one yet. We also got Harper a fun new toy that I will be posting pictures of shortly. What was most important to us was spending the day together and giving all kinds of love to our favorite Valentine Harper.

Here's a few pics from the day.

Flowers and Dots

Here's my beautiful Valentine's bouquet that Jon had delivered to work on Thursday. Jon chose this one because he knows I love dots. This morning I realized how well Harper coordinated with the vase. So cute!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Bath Hat

I'm severely behind on posts and for that I apologize.

As much fun as the inflatable ducky was, Harper has been enjoying the big bath all to herself for the past week or so. Daddy has labeled this her Bath Hat and she was more than happy to humor him the first couple times. It's actually her bug net that's supposed to be used to catch the critters that float all around and stick to the sides. Now she doesn't let it remain on her head, so we're glad we got pictures when we did. :)

9 month checkup

I was so kindly reminded today by Harper's Grandma that I haven't yet updated the stats to the right of the page nor given the details from Harper's 9 month appointment. Thanks Jane. :)

Here's the stats:

18lbs, 13oz (50th percentile)

28 inches (60th percentile)

As expected, Harper is doing very well. She's right on track developmentally with all her verbal and physical advancements. Her doctor commented on how happy she seemed and what a sweet personality she seems to have. I of course agreed. :)

We got the green light to move her to 3 solid meals a day, which means her bottles are slowly becoming a thing of the past. Her rough schedule goes something like this:

Wakeup: nurse

9am: breakfast

noon: lunch

3pm: breastmilk bottle/nurse

6pm: dinner

7pm: nurse

She's doing great with the change and is a very impatient girl when waiting for her meal to be served! She's a pro now at picking food up and feeding herself, so I let her whenever the opportunity allows. She loves to eat pasta, peas and green beans by herself. Her other favorites are squash (of course), pumpkin, avocado and any of the Whole Earth organics jarred food we feed her. We also give her a sippy cup of breastmilk with her meals and she takes a few swigs when she feels like it. Breakfast is almost always a banana with any combination of appleasauce, peaches, pears, or blueberries. Soon we'll probably move to actual oatmeal for breakfast. Growing up so quickly!

We've made it 10 months now, so we'll definitely continue nursing until at least a year. I haven't decided when I'm going to start weaning, nor can I figure out which one of us will be ready to be done first. I'll probably begin the process with stopping the middle of the day pumping session at work right around her first birthday and see how long it lasts from there. I imagine once I do that, I'll probably have about a week before I notice my supply start to decrease significantly.

Since she's already 28 inches, we're getting very close to the point of having to get her a new carseat. We figured we had a while since her carseat goes to 30 pounds and 30 inches. Yikes! Only 2 more inches and she's technically "outgrown" it! We'll purchase a couple of convertible carseats for each of our cars and continue to keep her rear-facing for a long while as it's the absolute safest position for an infant.

Some of her milestones recently include officially saying "Mama" with intent and we think she also says "Dada" too. She definitely knows her name, knows who Mama and Dada are and even knows the dogs names. She waves bye bye and I believe she has just begun verbalizing it as well. She smiles at just about everyone who looks at her and loves when strangers stop to talk to her - which happens quite frequently. She's pulling herself up onto everything and is now beginning to cruise along the furniture. She's finding much more interest in the things around her other than her toys so the Pack n Play has begun to come in very handy when I'm vacuuming or have to leave the room for a moment. It's a good thing she loves being in there and rarely complains when I have to contain her. I'm trying to let her have more freedom around the house and really the hardest aspect of that is keeping the floors clean. Sarge is beginning to shed his winter coat so this is a bigger challenge than usual, but we're both trying to keep on top of it.

Pending any unplanned visits before then, our next appointment is the Monday following her first birthday. It'll be here before we know it!