Christmas morning

Did you all have a nice Christmas?  We did, but it was B U S Y!!  I have a very long to-do list now that we are back home, but I thought I'd post a couple pictures of Harper that we took on Christmas morning.  She is such a happy little girl :)  

Now back to that to-do list while Harper is still napping...

Harper and Santa

Merry Christmas everyone!

Saturday

I put Harper in her high chair on Saturday morning so that she could sit at the table while Jason and I had our donuts and Starbucks.  She loved it!  Look how happy she is!

Then I put her in her infant chair with a few toys while we got ready.  This is what I saw when I looked down a couple minutes later {except she had Sophie's feet in her mouth}:

We drove over to Chad and Jill's house that afternoon because Harper and I were invited to a mother-daughter tea.  We took a few pictures of Harper with Pa, Nani, Kayla and Allen.  But as usual, there are no pictures of ME and Harper.  I have got to start remembering to do that...

Jason and I went to our December Dinner Club at Erin & David's house that night.  I was really looking forward to dinner club this month.  I mean, I look forward to dinner club every month, but Erin and David always wow me with their food.  Saturday night was no exception.  I would tell you about all of the delicious food, but it wouldn't do it any justice.  I'm not a food blogger.  I will say that there was shrimp, leeks, broccoli, blue cheese, endive, candied nuts, Oreo Truffles and peppermint martinis involved.  I asked them to come up with the menu for June Dinner Club (at my house), but I don't think they took me seriously...

We were so fortunate that Nani could watch Harper that night so that we could actually spend more than one hour with our friends!  Harper took the whole bottle that I left, went to bed with no trouble, and slept 11.5 hours that night!  Nani, you are welcome ANY time!

Three months

Isn't she just precious?

What an amazing three months it has been.  Jason and I feel so blessed to have such a sweet baby girl.  She is definitely worth all of the shots, medications, blood draws, ultrasounds, heartache, and everything else that I went through over the two years before she was conceived.  I couldn't imagine life without her.


Harper at 3 months old...

• She weighs 12 pounds, 8.5 ounces.
• She can still wear some of her 3 month size clothes, but some 3 month sizes are too small (not long enough).  So she is wearing 3 month, 3-6 month, and 6 month sizes.
• She sleeps about 9.5-10 hours straight at night, eats, and then sleeps another 3 hours.  
• She loves to be swaddled to sleep. 
• She can now put herself to sleep for naps with minimal fussing.  If she does cry, I walk and shush her for a couple of minutes and she calms down and puts herself to sleep.  I am so thankful that I did not have to go through the "cry-it-out" method!  
• She loves to look at her crib mobile.  We use it at nap time.  She looks for it immediately when she's put in her crib.
• She is eating 5 times a day on most days.  I think she may be starting to push it from every 2.5-3 hours to every 3-4 hours during the day.
• She is still exclusively breastfed.  I do give her vitamin D in the morning and she takes it so well now.
• She has started to refuse to drink from a bottle.  Not good.  We've really got to figure this one out...  I had to wake her up when I got home from bunco on Monday to feed her because she wouldn't take a bottle from Jason.  
• She still doesn't care for a pacifier but she loves to suck on her fingers.
• She can roll over from her tummy to her back.  
• She can grasp and hold toys put in her hand or that her hand comes in contact with.  She always reaches for toys with her left hand.  Hmmm.....  
• She really only cries when she's tired or over-stimulated, mainly in the evenings.  I think we need to move up her bedtime to 7:30.
• Her nicknames include Harp, Harpster, and little pooh.

Her smiles make my heart melt.  Seriously.  She is such a happy baby.  She smiles so big at me while having her diaper changed and when she sees me walk up while Jason is holding her...  she will also pause while eating to give me a smile.  I love it :)  

FINALLY

Jason is officially DONE WITH SCHOOL!  I've been waiting so long to be able to write that!  He finished his last assignment this past Saturday.  So no more 6:45 am to 9:30 pm Tuesdays and Wednesdays and no more studying in the evenings and on the weekends!  I think I'm equally as happy about this as he is :)

Last weekend (a little bit early), I threw Jason a surprise graduation party.  I'm not the sneakiest person around so I don't know how big of a surprise it really was...  But still, it was a fun evening with friends.  A BIG thank you to Haley for having the party at her place!!

Also, I forgot to put this picture in my last post...  Harper usually goes down very easily at night, but there was one night a couple of weeks ago that she wanted to stay up and hang out and "watch TV" with Jason and me.  I couldn't resist taking a picture.

Lastly, I have a question for Nikon users... is there any way to edit pictures in the Nikon ViewNX???  I can not figure it out if there is.  I have other pictures that I'd like to post, but they really need some cropping first.  If there is not a way to edit in the ViewNX, what do you all use to edit your pictures?

Guilt

Harper rolled over from her stomach to her back on Saturday! Of course I froze and didn't get it on camera. I had major guilt afterwards, but at least Jason and I both got to witness her rolling over. She did it again today and this time I had the video camera ready! Hopefully this has taught me to be prepared for future milestones.

I was also feeling guilty about not getting a Christmas photo card out this year. I'm not sure why I was feeling guilty about this... especially when I've never sent out Christmas cards... but I was. So to get rid of the guilt, I had us take a family picture in front of the Christmas tree yesterday with the self-timer on my camera.  And then I ordered the cheapest photo cards from Shutterfly that I could.  It's definitely not the card and picture that I had envisioned  in my head, but it will have to do for this year.

The guilt doesn't really end there either.  I feel guilty about not getting things done that I want to get done.  Such as printing and organizing pictures, creating a photo book, setting up Harper's college savings plan...  The list seems to go on and on.  I thrive on being productive and lately I just don't seem too productive.  Jason says I need to change my expectations, but I just don't know how...

I'll stop with the negativity and end with some pictures of Harper :)