The Reynolds Fam: Six Months!

Happy 1/2 Birthday to our sweet girl! Hard to believe Miss Harper has been here for 6 months - it has passed so quickly! This month continued the trend of being more exciting than the previous... plus throwing in Christmas and a 2 week break home with my girl made it extra fantastic!!

We did a lot of fun stuff this past month - traveled a bunch, celebrated a beautiful wedding, saw so much awesome family, tasted some real food, met Santa Claus, celebrated Christmas and New Years and more! Harper was a trooper through it all.

We started off the month not really interested in food and although the pediatrician said we could introduce cereal at 5 months, I figured I'd wait until she was good and ready. In about 5 short days, she went from not really caring what was going on at the dinner table to seriously grabbing at every single thing that went into our mouths. We decided that it was definitely time to try some food! I chose oatmeal cereal for her and she ate it like a champ! there were no awful, disgusted faces... unfortunately ;) She also loves drinking water out of our cups although she makes quite a mess. If she is getting fidgety at restaurants I will attempt to distract her by giving her water out of a straw which she seems to be a fan of. We've started giving her sippy cups full of water as well for her to practice drinking out of. We introduced avocado a few days after Christmas which she also did well with! I just chopped it up and let her feed herself... such a mess but pretty darn cute :)

We traveled to Beaver Dam to help celebrate our friends Bailey and Jordan get married. Many of you probably remember Bailey as the gorgeous redhead that was in our wedding. She looked even more beautiful on her big day! Harper was not the best during that... I think she got to spend some quality time with her Dad in the foyer of the church ;)

The next weekend we took Harper to meet Santa Claus!! We went on a Friday night but it was cold and rainy so there turned out to be no wait at all! It was awesome - we just hopped up there, plopped her down, took the pictures and were all finished in less than 5 minutes. She did fine... just kind of looked around like what's the big deal? haha... I'm sure her reaction next year will not be the same..

We did our own little family Christmas in Lexington about a week before Christmas - Harper loooved ripping the wrapping paper... and attempting to stuff it into her mouth ;)
We celebrated Christmas with the Hamilton family at my parents for 3 days and it was a great time! It was a full house with a lot of family that stayed the night - not to mention the 4 babies who were sharing the house! Besides Harper, we had Lily (my cousin Liz's 3 1/2 month old), Preston (my cousin Jenny's 20 month old) and Kennedy (also Jenny's 3 week old). It was so, so special to see all of piled on top of Grandad for picture of him with his great grandbabies. I think everyone really enjoyed having so many little kids around again! Thanksgiving next year will be great when all the kiddos are a little bigger and interacting more.

We had Christmas Eve at the King grandparents home and it was wonderful as always - so good to see everyone. It is so neat to see my grandparents using technology - both granddads now have ipads which they use to facetime/skype their grandkids - pretty cool!! We normally go to midnight mass but figured we'd try out the children's mass in brandenburg this year since it's never a good idea to wake a sleeping baby. We spent Christmas morning at my parents with all the sibs and headed up to Andys parents that afternoon. We are pretty darn lucky to have 5 Christmas celebrations!

Harper had another optho appt to check up on her iris cysts - it went great! They are still apparently very small and the dr. did not need to dilate this time. Our next appt is in 6 months at which point they will dilate again just to get a good look at them.

Harper has gotten so, so busy this month. She wants to grab at so many things and loves to roll all around to get to her different toys. She started doing a lot more babbling sometime when we were at my parents before Christmas. We are hearing a lot of ba, ma and da. She's too long for any of her 3-6 month footie jammies but is still able to wear those pants/onesies. I have bought her a lot more 6-9 month things recently just because she has gotten so long! And may have a few little rolls on her legs that are awfully cute ;) I'm guessing she weighs about 15 lbs now but we go to the dr. on monday for her 6 month checkup so we'll get an accurate assessment ;) She will sit up on her own for a while if entertained by what's in front of her but as soon as she spies another toy that she wants, she makes a dive for her. She has faceplanted a couple times this month doing that move :( She did this crawling move a few times one night for us but wasn't quite able to coordinate being up on the arms and legs at the same time. Hopefully she'll figure it out soon because baby girl gets impatient if she can't quite get whatever toy she is after. I'm embarrassed to say she got her patience from me... ;)

Here's some pictures from her month!