Jumpers Are Worth Every Penny

Harper LOVES her jumper. It is worth every penny we spent on it. She could sit in that thing all day if we would let her. And it is so funny to watch her just go to town jumping. Sometimes I swear she is going to bounce herself right out of the thing. Its great to make her leg muscles stronger, but its also a great way to tire her out when she needs to go to bed :) I would highly recommend every parent gets one of these. Its a life saver.

The curls are ridiculous. Just like her daddy's hair was!

Selfie!

H spends at least a half hour in this thing every day. Plus she has one at daycare, too!

Daycare has been going really well, too, for those of you that have asked. Every day I go to get Harper and she has the biggest smile on her beautiful face. She loves kids, too, and I am pretty sure that is because of daycare. No matter where we are, if she sees kids, her eyes just light up and the legs start kicking. She's going to be such a social butterfly! Wonder where that came from....?

And It's Time to Lower the Crib Mattress......

The time has come. We need to lower the mattress in the crib. It's so exciting but also crazy at the same time. Harper is already almost 7 months old. It's like I have been living in a fog since she came into this world. I barely even remember her being a newborn, but at the same time it feels like it was just yesterday.

Our good friends Nick and Sara came over last Saturday to BBQ on what I bet will be the last beautiful Saturday of the year. They just had beautiful baby girl named Maddie (Harper's best friend forever) three weeks ago. While I was holding Maddie I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that H was even smaller than Maddie... only 6 months ago. It totally brought a tear to my eye because I just kept trying to understand how time goes by so fast, but at the same time it goes by so slowly. I sound crazy, but if you are a parent you TOTALLY get it.

Anyways, so back to the crib needing to be lowered. Why you ask? Well:

Yep, that's H on all fours. Big girl!! She will be crawling before we know it. Baby gate, anyone?

Here are a few more for you to enjoy. Until next time!!

Six Months Already?!

You have got to be kidding me. The Peanut is six months old already. How in the world does time go by that fast? It feels like just yesterday that munchkin entered the world and gave me a run for my money.

And she has grown a ton! Just look at these two pictures!

Don't get me wrong, she's still a peanut.... At her 6 month check up she only weighed 15 lbs! I think she gets her petiteness from Jay's mom, because she definitely didn't get it from me ha! She has gained a grand total of 9 pounds and grown 7 inches. Growin like a weed :)

Daddy time!

Daddy's girl already. This became apparent to me when she was about 4 months old and I was putting her to bed. Our nightly routine is for her to eat her last bottle in her jammies while we rock in the rocking chair. But that night Jay was working later than usual so Harper didn't get to see him before she went to sleep. Well, as I was rocking her, I noticed that she kept staring at her bedroom door and didn't want to fall asleep..... she was looking for her dad! Figures :)

Last Saturday I was at a gym class with one of my friends in the morning and when I came home, H and Jay were cuddling upstairs. I went to give her a hug and a kiss and she rolled into Jay's arms instead. Sometimes I think she gets sick of me and only wants him :) That's OK, though. I have already come to terms with the fact that eventually, when the Peanut wants something or gets herself into trouble, I am going to be the bad cop. Someone has to lay down the law! Good cop and mom I believe is how my good friend Phil Dunphy referred to it as LOL

Harper already has Daddy wrapped around her teeny, tiny little finger. And he knows it, which makes it even more funny. He already says he is going to buy her a BMW when she is 16. This girl doesn't even realize how good she has it already!

So here is to the two (three if you count Koby) loves of my life.

Love these two so so much!

What a difference a week makes!

Last week I attempted to give H some rice cereal. Let's just say she was less than thrilled....Our child that barely even cries screamed at me like eating cereal was some form of torture! But today was a whole new ball game! SHE LOVED IT!

She was actually grunting between bites because I wasn't getting it in her mouth fast enough! It was just adorable. What a little chunker, as you can see by her thighs :)

I can't believe this peanut is going to be 5 months old tomorrow! Where in the world has time gone?! We are trying so hard to just enjoy every single moment because if that last 5 months have gone this fast, we will be planning her 1st birthday party before we know it.

The strangest part about it is that it feels like she has always been here. Sometimes it is kind of hard to imagine our lives without her. But then morning rolls around and blissfully remember the days when I could sleep as long as I wanted.... Ahhh life before parenthood. But you know what? I wouldn't trade these times for anything in the world! Not even a 5 hour nap... because rushing out of work to pick her up from daycare and see that smile is all I need to get me through this sleep deprived time of my life!

Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'.....

Harper hit a huge milestone over the last few days- She started rolling over to her tummy! It's so exciting! I almost teared up when I saw her do it for the first time. OK, I cried. I admit it. But it's such an incredible feeling to see her hit such big milestones! Time is just flying by. It's exciting, but I wish I could slow it down.

Unfortunately there is a downside to all of this excitement. Once she rolls over to her tummy, she's stuck. The Peanut can roll from her back to her tummy, but hasn't quite figured out how to go from her tummy to her back. So what does that mean? Well, it meant I had a very loooooong night. I lay her down on her back, thirty seconds later she rolls to her tummy. She cries because she realizes she doesn't like it and there's nothing she can do about it. I go downstairs and roll her back over. By the time I get back to my bedroom, I look at the monitor and she's already back to her tummy. I laugh and grit my teeth and go back down to roll her over. Last night this cycle repeated for about two hours.

Aside from her crying screaming over this (something she rarely does), I am freaking out because I just know she is going to roll over in the middle of the night while I am asleep and I'll be sawing logs, doing nothing about it. All you moms out there will understand why this scares the bejesus out of me.

But, thanks to the internet, I was able to relax a smidge last night once I did a little research. Don't worry- It was on legit sites. Not Yahoo! answers ;). Anyway, pretty much everything that popped up was "My 4 month old rolls to her tummy and can't flip back". "My 4 1/2 month old rolls to her tummy while sleeping. Should I be nervous?" You get the picture. Luckily, everything I read and all the people I talked to in real life reassured me that all babies do this and she will be just fine. I needed to relax. If she is strong enough to roll over, she is strong enough to hold her head up. Whew! I feel a lot better now. Glad I have such good friends that listen to my frantic stories and calm me down. Being a first time mom is crazy.......

Now if I could just get her to stop crying every time she rolls over and realizes she is stuck. Between you and me, it is kind of funny. I laughed at her last night. I'll just blame that on being delirious.

Shout out to the iBaby- Best baby cam EVER! Both of the photos in her crib are from the middle of the night while it was pitch black in her room. Kinda feel like a creeper, but I'm her mom. I'm entitled to creep.

And so it begins

So here we go.... Are you ready? I wasn't. I thought I was... but I was wrong. Having a baby throws a curve ball into everything you think you know. Jay and I were even trying to get pregnant. But in my defense it happened really fast. Two months?! I thought it would take at least three or four....

Anyways, I took the test on a sunny Sunday in July and 2 minutes later- BAM! Our lives were changed forever. Just like that. Were we even ready? Well that didn't matter anymore because there was a bun in my oven and it was coming out in 9 months!

After many tears of joy and a DQ Blizzard, it actually sank in. I will never forget that feeling. It was a combination of joy and feeling like I was going to throw up. And the sudden urge to pee. I was baffled that the feeling of constantly needing to pee literally begins the second you see "Positive" on that little stick. So weird.

So time goes on, the news starts to spread. People are excited. My pregnancy was glorious. Never got sick, didn't really have pain. Most importantly, my feet didn't grow, which was good because I am told I have a shoe problem.

Then on March 7th, 2014 (2 1/2 weeks early), Harper decided she was ready to rock and roll on into this beautiful world! It was the best day of my life. Here she was, this tiny little person that we were responsible for. And holy guacamole was that a frightening thought. The strangest part of it all was that everyone was right- somehow it felt like she had always been a part of our lives, even though she was only a few days old. We brought her home and things just  bumped along until we got into a routine. We had it pretty lucky, though, because H was a really good baby.

I had 8 weeks off of work for maternity leave, which felt like 8 minutes. People say that time seems to speed up after you have kids and it's absolutely true. Before I knew it, we were pulling into the Mall of America for our last day of mama-daughter walking/people watching. We went there just about every day while I was on leave. It was kind of therapeutic and a great way for me to exercise and attempt to get back into shape. And it was always good for a laugh. I mean people just come out of the woodwork at that place...

I totally cried when we left the mall that day. It felt like my beautiful on-my-own-timetable way of life was being ripped away from me. And now I had to go back to work like some kind of chump. I thought to myself "How can people do this? Leave their little baby to go back and work for the man?! I QUIT! I QUIT! I'm staying home no matter what anyone says!" Then Jay kindly reminded me that, since we like to eat food every day, I didn't really have a choice.

My first day back to work was ok. I went to work, Jay stayed home with Harper until the afternoon and we met up at her 2 month doctor appointment. I am here to tell you that nothing, I mean NOTHING, can prepare you for the first time your little peanut gets vaccines. HOLY SHIT. Are you kidding me? I was trying so hard to hold it together, but my eyes didn't get the memo- they were gushing tears. That little cry was like nothing I had heard before. But, 30 seconds later, it was over and she was just fine. We went home and, to her, it was like nothing happened. Everyone was right (once again) when they said it would hurt me a lot more than it hurt her.

Since that day, I have been working full time and we have gone to her 4 month appointment (with more shots, but this time I didn't cry) and she even got her ears pierced. Side note- I made Jay hold her for that one and I went out into the hallway. Sorry honey :) She has been sleeping in her own room since she was 10 weeks old and has been sleeping through the night since she was 12 weeks old! Again, we got super lucky....

So, in a nutshell, that's our life as it stands today. Maybe someday I will enlighten you more since there are a lot of good stories to be told from those 9 months.

Now I need to go tend to my adorable little peanut, who seems to think that I need to drop what I am doing and give her attention right this second.....!