11 Months- March

This time last year I remember feeling like it was a countdown to baby time.  Spring was springing it seemed like everyone I knew on Facebook was having their babies, I was bigger than a boat and I couldn't wait to meet this little girl that had been growing inside of me for the past 8 months.  This year I feel like it's the countdown to 1!  I can't believe how fast the time has flown!  Harper is now one month away from her first birthday (yes, technically she is 19 days away from that, but for the purposes of an 11 month post, it is one month away.  I will also disclaimer that all developmental milestones reported were actually accomplished before March 24th, so while I admit to tardiness, my 11 month content will be factual and accurate).

This month Harper is a woman on the go.  She is a super fast crawler and loves walking around as long as she has something to hold onto.  

We have pulled back out Gavin's old shopping cart and Harper's a big fan.  She actually first was pulling up and walking with this little flimsy lawn mower toy that we have.  It's definitely doesn't have the same support that the shopping cart has, so she can move without leaning on a ton of stuff, but she still isn't quite ready to stand or walk on her own.  Give the girl some time.  

On occasion I have heard kids compared to puppies.  While I generally don't prefer the comparison, I can see where it's completely appropriate at our house this month.  Harper has developed a new love for playing in the toilet.  Couple this with the fact that we are trying to potty train Gavin, which means that we leave the toilet seat up a great deal of the time for convenience sake and you have a very messy little girl situation.  Gross.  I'll also insert a little Gavin story here (sorry, Harpie) we are, in fact, trying to potty train and he observed his super cool nephews  pottying in the grass when they came over to play one morning, so of course, he's a fan of that.  When we ask him if he has to potty now, chances are 50/50 that he'll actually ask to go "pee in da grass".  So when he asks for this, we let him go out the back door and...pee in da grass.  Another reason why I feel like I have a puppy instead of a child at times.

 

 And here is what Harper thinks about having a Gavin story inserted in the middle of HER 11-month-old blog post.

Back to Harper: Did I mention that Harper likes to move a lot?  All of these were snapped in about a 30 second time frame..and this was only a hand full of the ones we had to choose from.  

Holy rusted metal, batman.  She's a squirmy little independent missy.  This month she's eating more and more.  We've started giving her just about everything that we eat, just in teeny tiny bites.  She LOVES when Gavin feeds her. She is also a big fan of big kid sippy cups.  I'm not sure what it is about kids and sippy cups, but I think it's a universal rule that all kids what some other kids' sippy cup.  I definitely don't think we'll have a hard time transitioning her from a bottle. 

Harper and Matthew have started a sweet little father/daughter bedtime routine.  She usually gets a little wound up right before bedtime and you can tell that it's time for her to go to bed.  We've never been big on rocking our kids to sleep because we didn't want them to be dependent on that, but lately Matthew will feed her her bottle in her rocking chair and then rock her to sleep while he's cuddling with her.  It's so sweet and a  great little father/daughter bonding time with a daddy whose sadly had a little less time with Harper in her first year than he did with Gavin.  Our kids have a really good daddy.

 
Harper has been babbling a lot more.  She has added "mama" to her list of babbles, but I'll be realistic and know that she's not just directing it at me.  She calls just about anything "mama" and very sternly says it to books, cups, baby dolls, other friends and me.  It's okay- same with "dada", right?!

So our monthly snap shots are about to be a thing of the past.  It seems crazy since it felt like we went straight from doing these for Gavin (see Gavin's first year!) to doing them for Harpie.  She's definitely fearfully and wonderfully made and I've loved getting to know her in these first 11 months.  I can't wait for the lifetime ahead that we have with her to watch her grow more words and more movement and more personality and more laughter and more sassyness and and more smiles and more trouble and more sweetness.  She is sunshine to our lives and I'm so happy God surprised us with her.  

Until next month...