Bits of walking

Harper and I took a break from packing this morning to show off her skills.  A little walking.  A little growling.  I'm happy to raise a baby dinosaur.  But not a T-Rex - her arms are certainly long enough for giving hugs!

Lights are coming on! (and off.)

I know...two videos in one day?! 

Harps has also realized that she has power!  She can't reach the wall light switches, but she's just the right size for the floor button lamp. 

Hello?

Harper likes to play with my phone.  I've taught her to how to put it to her ear.  She has transferred that movement to almost every square object: magnets, blocks, pieces of paper.  Everything is a phone!  Even her hand. 

We've also been skyping a bit lately.  Every Tuesday we chat with Auntie Ciara, and the past weekends we've been on with Grandma Nay (my mom, Renee).  She likes to wave goodbye.  I'm happy to share both talents in this short video. 

Visit for Grampa Gus's Birthday

 We took a visit up to Chicago to celebrate Grandpa Gus's birthday.  It was a great fall weekend, with the leaves showing off and only needing a light jacket. 

 We spend a lot of time in the kitchen when we visit, as I think, a lot of families do.  Harper loves to "help" load the dish washer and play with the magnets on the refrigerator 

 

Linda usually takes Harper out for a morning walk, and we decided to pull out some of the winter wear, as it was a bit brisk for the wee one.  

 Plus, the kitchen has a huge runway for crawling (and some walking)!

Happy birthday Gus!

One year ago

 It goes so fast!  

 

An effort to raise an independent child

 As a mom of an 11 month old, I'm finding every day is a delicate dance between insanity and glee.  There is only Right Now in Harper's mind.  She is learning consequence, but won't learn patience or expectation for some time yet.  She is also starting to stretch the bonds that connect to me, and is finding they go a bit farther than before. 

 She loves to explore and play.  She has found that taking everything out of her diaper bag is a great game, and would have me keep filling it up and up until she tires of the contents. 

I want her to explore and I want her to be safe.  Those two things won't always live side by side, but for today we experimented and found a welcome middle. 

 I left Harper to empty and fill the bottom drawers of her changing table today.  The top drawers were taped shut, and I shoved towels in the path of the drawer so her fingers wouldn't be caught if she slammed them shut.

 She was happily exploring her socks, diapers, bibs, toys and what ever else she could find.  Every few minutes I would walk back and ask how she was, then left to stand at the end of the kitchen. 

 My view wasn't perfect, but I think it's good for Harper to learn to play where SHE can't see ME. 

 And to be honest, it's good for me to let her play alone.  Some of the joy of being a child is the finding out of things.  So this will progress.  And for today, we both did okay. 

And Harper got more practice in picking up and putting away all of the things she pulled out and explored.  

Developmental leaps

Still no pictures of Harper walking, but I've only got two hands!  Soon though - this weekend we will be visiting a set of Grandparents and that will help!

A couple side effects of Harper's new skills:

 1)  She is ready to take a nap when it comes time.  Her little brain is working overtime putting together all of the info needed to stay balanced, put one foot in front of the other, and stay on her feet.  She has been napping like a pro!
 
2)  We're seeing a cranky side to her that is a bit unusual.  She has been such an even-tempered baby, that it's obvious she doesn't know how to compute all of the new things she thinks/wants to do. We can almost see the dialogue in her head as it plays out:

I want up!  I want down!  Don't touch me!  Why aren't you touching me?!  Why are you over there?  Come here!  Leave me alone!  I'm tired!  I don't want to lay down!!  Don't leave the room!  Why are you gone!!!  zzzzzz......

Poor little thing.  It has to be frustrating.  

3) She is eating more.  

The life of an 11 month old! 

She walks!

Harp is getting it!  There have been a few steps at Stephanie's house, and then on Friday and Saturday, she has been coaxed into more.  Perhaps I can snag a photo sometime tomorrow! 

A little bit of me is sad for this next phase to begin, but it's little.  The rest of me is absolutely thrilled!

Handmade Baby Sling

 A friend of mine had a baby last week and she asked me to make her sling.  She choose the fabric, and yesterday I finally had time to put it together.  It took about an hour and a half, what with some mis-stitches I made on the first go.  It felt good to use my sewing machine - it's been a while since I had it running! 

I looked at several sites for direction, but in the end, I make my own decision for pleat width.   I hope she and baby like it!  

Weekend

The first of many

Today marked another first for little Harper: she threw up.  It broke my heart to see her little eyes wide with shock over what was happening.  Poor little bug.  I don't know if this is the flu.  We will see. 

Sleep Sheep

Harper has been making great strides in her night sleep.  We've got patterns that are predictable:  Bed between 7-7:30, first big wake at 12:30, wake at 3-3:30, up for good between 5:45-7.  Now we need to work on getting Harp to get through those two wake-ups. 

Sound machines are not a new technique for helping sleep, but we have not invested in any machine until today.  We've been using a fan to provide some background noise, but with it getting colder, I'm not happy with that option any longer. 

Prompted by a 20% coupon that came from Babies R Us, I picked a mini Sleep Sheep.  It has four sounds (non of which are sheep, or even farm, related.)  It's a very cute creature.  There was also a giraffe, but when I held them each up to Harp, she reached for the sheep.  So the sheep came home. 

We did our night time routine tonight, with the addition of turning the sheep on while we were reading our farm stories.

One thing I like about this is that it will, hopefully, help with transitioning sleeping patterns to other places (such as visits to grandparents, siblings, friends, etc.) 

We'll see how it goes!

A few more from the weekend

Photo Credit: Linda Swift