The Reynolds Fam: ONE YEAR!!

Happy birthday Harper!!!

It is so hard to believe she's been here for an entire year yet difficult to imagine what life was like without our sweet girl!! We've had a jam packed June that culminated in celebrating such a special day!!

The month started off with my final week at home full time with Harper :( We tried to make everyday fun and spend a lot of time just hanging out and enjoying the days! We've finally got the play room upstairs all together and Harper loves it! She will crawl through her tunnels, hang out in her tent, read books at the table, climb the chairs nonstop, play with puzzles or a variety of other toys allll day long! We also took a lot of walks, swung outside and played in the baby pool. Family bike rides were also a necessity and Harper is still loving her awesome bike seat! On Friday of that week I had sooo much packing to do but somehow harper was able to fall asleep cuddling with me in bed... and that never happens anymore - so of course I had to get one last daytime nap in with my girl!

The next week, we drove down to St. George Island for a little family vacation!! It was fantastic and I would totally recommend the island to someone with small kids. It definitely didn't have putt putt, movie theatre, etc. that us older kids would typically like to do in the evenings pre-baby... but with Harper there it was perfect! We spent the days on the beach or at the pool, rode bikes a ton, played some tennis and volleyball and a lot of rook :) Harper absolutely loved the beach this time around!! It took us a couple days to figure out the best way to manage a baby on the beach but we finally got it figured out once we blew up the baby pool on the sand and filled it with water. We also brought down our big tailgating tent so she was able to stay out of the sun for the most part. As soon as Harper would get sat down, she would make a beeline straight for the water. Crawling on the sand didn't seem to bother her a bit. She loved to splash around and especially loved it when she got to go out into the waves with her dad! She is a water baby for sure! She did not master keeping sand out of her mouth... to avoid that mistake we made on day 1, we tried to keep a paci in her mouth the whole time we were on the beach lol. One of the things I will always remember about this beach trip is the fondness Harper feels in her heart for seagulls ;) They flock like crazy to you if you start feeding them so we'd have 50ish birds right by our tent/porch at a time. Harper absolutely loved it and wanted to get as close as possible. If you tell her you see a bird she immediately looks to the sky and puts her hands out wanting to grab one! Unfortunately, Christie has a serious fear of birds but fortunately did not stop us from calling them to us with food :) We celebrated Andy's first father's day the weekend we returned and were lucky enough to see both our dads and granddad king! Harper is a lucky girl to have such a fantastic dad who loves her so much!

I started orientation for work the 3rd week which was a sad day for me. It was a whole week of sitting still learning about things I already knew from being at uk in med school. Fortunately, we have the same awesome babysitter that Harper loves so it made going back a little bit easier! The weekend following, we had Harper's birthday party! It was a little bit early but I just didn't know what my schedule would be like once residency started so I wanted to make sure I had the time off. It was a great day! Harper had been sick the week before and definitely a little difficult but she was healthy and happy by the time bday party day rolled around. She had fun being the center of attention and enjoyed playing with all her new presents! She was too funny eating her cake - definitely had more fun making a mess than actually eating it. We were thankful for all the friends and family who came to celebrate with our girl!!

My last week of orientation was shorter which fortunately let us have a little extra unexpected family time!! We also got in a visit with Miss Peyton and her momma which we loved :) The same week we had dinner with some of our sweet neighbors who have an adorable 6 week old little boy. Harper didn't seem to mind when I held him... until he cried... which caused her to have a complete meltdown... I don't know if she was scared or just feeling a little extra empathetic but it was pretty dramatic to say the least. We need baby claire to get here before harper becomes permanently rotten!

We had some family photos taken the last weekend which I'm so excited to see :) Harper of course would not smile a bit and just wanted to crawl around and pick up dirt/bugs/grass, etc. but I think they will probably still be adorable :) And to ring in Harper's actual birthday, we celebrated with pizza, cupcakes and aladdin. The only movie harper likes to watch is lion king so we did our best to give her a few more movies we thought she may like. I thought for sure aladdin would be a winner but I think my sibs enjoyed it more than harper did. We ate pizza bc Harper goes nuts when we eat pizza bc she always wants a bite but doesn't usually get any... and of course Andy and I love pizza. She seriously ate 2 pieces faster than I did. No crust on hers but she inhaled it. She was also extremely fussy afterwards so it was either that she still wanted more or her belly probably hurt so bad from all that food!

Harper is still not quite walking but is so close. She'll stand on her own for a bit and has taken 1 step at time but we're not counting it to be her first steps until she can at least put 3 together ;) She can zoom right along with all of walkers though but still typically prefers to crawl wherever she wants. She loves to climb stairs, couches, chairs, tables, etc. - half monkey maybe. She still loves giving everyone open mouth kisses but we're working hard on teaching her to blow some kisses lol. We realized she knows how to say ball and loooves playing with any spherical object that remotely resembles a ball. Andy says he has heard her say mooo and neigh for the cow and horse but we have been unable to replicate that in public ;) Her favorite food without a doubt is blueberries. The kid goes nuts for them and will inhale them. And then when they are gone she will cry. It's rotten. We have to feed her meat/veggies first, then cheese, then fruits, and then blueberries. Otherwise the blueberries/fruit disappear and then the tears start. We started offering cows milk at the beginning of this month so I could wean her down on her nursings before starting residency. She would refuse the milk initially and it had me worried but after googling a bit, I tried to add a little bit a chocolate milk into her bottle and of course she loved it. She is definitely my child. We've slowly decreased the amt of chocolate milk but she still gets a 1/2oz of the good stuff in each bottle lol.

We are thankful to have a happy, healthy baby and she has brought so much joy to our life in such a short time - cannot wait to see what our future holds!