Harper's First Easter!

It was a GORGEOUS day to celebrate Easter, that's for sure!  We had a great day, celebrating at the park.  Truthfully though, Harper was more interested in playing with the dirt, pine needles, and pine cones than with her Easter basket!  Haha!  She is too cute!  We really had fun with her today.

Easter Bunnies are for Sissies!  Gimme some DIRT! 

 

Pure LOVE and JOY!  I love this family.

We were also SUPER productive today, as I have been an absolute slave-driver about our very long spring cleaning to do list.  But it feels so good to get big projects crossed off.  Right now we are *still* working on our kitchen remodel and are also reorganizing our mess of a laundry room.  Kitchen is close to being finished and laundry room too.  HUGE improvements!  We're both very pleased!  All in all, it was a blessed, beautiful Sunday full of fun, family, love, and extreme productivity.  I love it!  Happy Easter, friends!

Ten Months!!!

We are a couple days late on this, but........

Happy Ten Months, HJH!

Has it really been 10 months already!??!  In retrospect, it has gone by so fast.  Too fast.  I can already see Harper transitioning from baby to toddler.  Look at the difference!!!

Wow.  What a wild ride we are all on!  So what is Miss Harper up to at 10 months??

-Height and Weight...not exactly sure since we haven't had a well-baby appointment recently.  But probably around 20 pounds and around 28 inches long.  She's just a lil squirt!

-Not walking yet!  She has taken steps and is SO close to taking off.  Only a matter of time until she works up the courage.  But not quite ready!

-She loves animals, especially dogs!  She loves to hear dogs barking and will start mimicking them whenever we are out and about and one is yapping.  She can tell you what a dog (woof), cow (moo), chicken (buck buck), and duck (quack) say.

-She can also say dog, ball, fan (yes, she loves the ceiling fan-haha!)...probably some other words, but I can't think of them right now!  Her language skills have definitely developed this last few weeks.  Her current obsession are balls, so she says that one a LOT!  She also likes to say 'roll' (when she rolls the ball), and "whoa" or "wow".  C-u-t-e.

-She is starting to enjoy books a lot more.  Her favorites are a Baby Touch and Feel Farm Animal book and a little cardboard, Peek-a-Who book.  She loves to turn the pages when we read to her!

-She enjoys being outside and I cannot wait for some consistent nice weather!  Whenever we come in from being outside she cries.  Holding out for some warmer temperatures, and crossing my fingers for very little wind this spring...a girl can hope!

-She eats just about everything and likes to feed herself.  We even gave her salmon last week and she loved it.  She loves cheese and yogurt and her favorite baby food pouches are actually the veggie ones (I think spinach, peas, and pear is her favorite).  We also continue to breastfeed.

-She still just has her cute two bottom front teeth!

-She looks SO much like her wonderful daddy!  But people often comment on her dimple in her chin (that's from me!).

-She is *currently* sleeping a lot better than she has in the past.  We had to night wean her to make this possible.

-She recently decided that she likes to dance to music.  Absolutely adorable!

-She is bright, busy, silly, opinionated, beautiful, and sweet.  We love, love, love you, Harper!  Happy 10 months!!!!!

March Madness!

I'm baaaack!  Hi blog world :-)  It's been a while...and boy do I have some stories for you...so many updates!

We'll start with the biggest doozie:

This last 10 days or so has been quite the adventure. Just filled with ups and downs.  Two weeks ago, Harper and I left on a visit to Galveston while Josh ventured off to Honduras for a once in a lifetime scuba dive trip.  I was so excited to get away for a little bit!!  Harper was a terrific traveler and we started our vacation off having a blast.

Harper absolutely loved Gramma and Granddad's house.  So many new toys.  So many new places and spaces to explore.

She loved walking on the seawall, and going to the neighborhood park everyday with Gramma!  Sliding down the baby slide and swinging in the baby swing is TOO MUCH FUN!

However, about four days into our trip, MY fun stopped!  I broke out with a horrific case of hives.  For those of you that remember the alleged 'alpaca' incident....this was like that...but significantly worse.  My mom and I ended up in the Galveston emergency room at 1:30am Monday morning with my entire body COVERED in welts, eyes nearly swollen shut, hands, feet, and face swollen too.  Ugh.  Not cool.  Even more not cool?  These hives did not stop after the steroid/antihistamine cocktail they fed me via IV on Monday.  Oh no.  I continued getting waves of welty hives and swelling body parts day after day.  By Thursday we were desperate for anything to make these outbreaks stop.  They were just progressively getting worse and worse--pretty scary.  We fanangled our way into an appointment at my mom's primary care doctor and she ordered me a handy dandy EPI pin, and advised that I get the hell outta Galveston to hopefully stop my body from going into full fledged anaphlactic shock.

So, several hundreds of dollars of medical bills and last minute plane tickets later...my mom (seriously, thank GOD for my mom) flew with Harper and my hyperallergic-self back to Albuquerque.  Needless to say, this vacation was nothing like either of us had envisioned for a lazy beachy Galveston getaway!  Unfortunately, my outbreaks did not totally stop when we arrived back in Albuquerque.  They have definitely tapered off, and seem to finally be allllll the way cleared up as of today.  I went to my doctor on Monday and he took tons of blood work.  Now just to wait for some answers.  After this ordeal, I really hope they can find some.  That way I can avoid whatever (((it))) is like the PLAGUE!  Enough about all that.  The end!