Santa!

Harper had a rough day yesterday...

First she had her 15 month well-child visit, and she is terrified of everything at the doctor's office.  We couldn't even get her to sit on the baby scale.  The nurse ended up weighing Jason and her and then just Jason and came up with 22 pounds.  Even getting her length was difficult {she came up with 31 1/4 inches}.  Then Harper screamed while the doctor was listening to her lungs, checking her ears, mouth, etc.  And after all of that, she had to get two shots.  Thank goodness Jason was able to come with us this time.

Then we took Harper to see Santa after her nap.  I knew she would be terrified after her reaction to Santa at the Lights in the Heights party we went to--she was practically running in the air to get into my lap.  I tried to prepare her, talking a lot about Santa and showing her the picture of her and Santa from last year...

But it didn't help...

I know, it seems mean.  Don't worry.  She stopped crying and went back to her happy self the second I picked her up so there was only about 10 seconds that she was unhappy.  And she had a lot of fun walking around Bass Pro Shop, looking and waving at all of the fake animals :)

{By the way, Bass Pro Shop gives you a 4x6 picture with Santa for free.}

Connecticut

I've grieved over a loss before, and I've had people close to me grieve over even bigger losses, but I just can't imagine losing a child so young and innocent and in such a tragic way.  How do you go on????  How can people do that in the world?????  My heart is so heavy.

a dreaded first

15 months

I have two words to sum up the week:

First Molar

Wow.

an eventful weekend

Eventful, bizarre, and tiring can all be used to describe last weekend.  

First of all, Harper slept until 9 am on Saturday AND Sunday.  13 hours!  And 2.5 hours longer than usual.  And she still napped over 2 hours each day.  Crazy!  I think the zoo + Gymboree open play + Gringos really wore her out.  

Speaking of the zoo, here are some pics I took with my phone last Friday.

 {I found this quite funny}

And here is Harper walking her puppy after her first marathon sleep session.

She even walks him backwards.

We put up all of the Christmas decorations on Saturday.  Keeping with tradition, Haley came over to help decorate the tree :) It was really great catching up!  

Jason and I spent hours putting the lights up on Sunday.  We got several "that's a lot of work for one month" comments from random people.  Makes sense now why so few people have lights up in our neighborhood.   

Jason had hoped to get the lights up on Saturday.  But then this happened...

Yes, a very tiring weekend indeed.

{And a big thank you to Haley for also helping us patch up our ceiling!!}

Thanksgiving Week, Part 2

The remainder of our Thanksgiving week was spent in Longview {which was still a very nice break since Jason's mom will change Harper's diaper, give her baths, and dote on her all day long}.

I woke up early the morning after we got back from San Diego because I was so excited to see Harper. Of course, she decided to sleep in.  Here she is with the panda we got her at the San Diego zoo.

We spent most of Thanksgiving Day with my family at Grandmama and Grandaddy's house in Mt. Pleasant.  We got to meet our newest cousin, baby Norah, and Harper got to play with her cousin Madilyn.  {Well, as much as a one and two year old can play together.}  Harper was so happy the whole time we were there that we didn't even attempt to put her down for a nap.  

Grandmama with all most of the wonderful food

That picture really doesn't do the food justice at all.  There is just nothing like Thanksgiving at Grandmama's house.  One of my favorite things that she makes is her famous homemade rolls.  Harper got to try one for the first time and she is a big fan, too :)

Family picture time...

{Yes, all of those kids live with Ashley and Kevin.  And no, I don't know how they do it.}

The rest of the weekend was relaxing.  Jason went to the boats with Bryan, I went to a movie with my friend Libby, we watched A&M win, and Harper had more fun playing with Nani and Pa.

And that was our Thanksgiving.  Now to get into Christmas mode.  Hopefully I'll have one more blog post this week with a recap of this past weekend.  It was an eventful one...

Thanksgiving Week, Part 1: San Diego!

Somehow today is November 30th.  I'm not quite sure how that happened.  It seems like we were just celebrating Harper's birthday and now we're passed Thanksgiving and getting ready for Christmas!  So here's the first post from Thanksgiving week before I get too far behind...

Our week started off with a trip to San Diego.  We drove to Longview the Friday before Thanksgiving, left Harper there with Jason's parents, drove to DFW on Saturday morning and then flew to San Diego.  Jason and I both needed a break.  Jason from work and me from my mom duties.  Don't get me wrong, I love Harper more than anything in the world, but feeding and cleaning up after that child plus the cooking, cleaning, laundry... I'm sure most of you reading this can understand.

I have to say, as nice as it was to getaway and have a break, I did miss Harper a lot {thank goodness for facetime!}.  I'm not sure that Harper missed us as much.  She had a really great time with her Nani and Pa, and I can't thank them enough for watching her :)

So San Diego.

On Sunday we met up with our friend Kellie in Coronado and had a wonderful day.  We ate lunch at Il Fornaio with views of the water and downtown San Diego, rode bikes all over Coronado, watched the sunset at the beach, drank too much wine and ate delicious California burritos for dinner.  It was a perfect day!  Thanks so much for being our tour guide Kellie!

On Monday we rented a car and drove up to La Jolla.  It was beautiful!  We hiked at Torrey Pines, checked out the golf course, took pictures of the seals, did a little shopping, and had a wonderful dinner at George's at the Cove overlooking the ocean.

We also went to Old Town {where we had really, really, really good margaritas and lunch at Casa Guadalajara}, Balboa Park, Seaport Village, Gaslamp District... but I don't have good pictures of those places.  

So that was most of our trip.  Now I'm going to try to rest some before Harper wakes up.  I took her to the zoo this morning, and I'm planning to take her to open gym at Gymboree when she wakes up from her nap.  Can you tell I'm bored with our park after going everyday this week???

really quick

I have a lot to do during Harper's nap today so I'm keeping this pretty short.  I just wanted to share some pictures that I took yesterday.  That's all anyone wants to see anyway, right?

I was vacuuming so Harper needed to, too!

Little girl loves her books!

Never too young for the Toys R Us ad :)

Happy Wednesday everyone!