17 Months

Just noticed that Harper is 17 months and the baby is 17 weeks!! We've been trying to talk to Harper more about the baby but she has no clue.  We'll point to my belly and tell her the baby is in there... and then when we ask her where mama's baby is she only cares to tickle my belly button! ha  I think Harper is going to do great with her though.  She loves Claire and is always so concerned with her if she's crying.  She also loves to put her animals in all of Claire's swings/bouncers/carseat and will cover them with a blanket and then rock them.  She also loves to put herself in all these baby toys but that's another story....

November was pretty great - It was a much lighter workload for me so we got lots more family time in! Harper is still entertaining us nonstop of course.  We took her and Olivia to the zoo one weekend which was a lot of fun... and work! Poor Olivia has recently had her ACL repaired so couldn't use crutches all over the park so we just rented her a wheelchair.  So the plan was Harper would ride in her stroller and OJ in the wheelchair... well... Harper wasn't having the stroller.  There was way too much to see and do that could not be accomplished being restrained in a wheelchair.  That meant one person was responsible for manning the stroller and chasing the Harper which kept us pretty busy!!  Harper loved the elephants this time.  The zoo was practically empty as it was a bit chilly so that was nice to not have so many crowds fighting to see everything.

Maybe all kids are the same but one thing we have found about Harper is that if you give her an inch she will continue to fight you for more and more.  Ie, if you let her get out of the stroller once at the zoo she's going to want to do it all day long.  If you let her stand at church she's going to be whining nonstop to cruise down the pew to touch all the books.  I'd say she's just a tiny bit strong willed....

Her vocabulary is still increasing all the time but her comprehension is what is so amazing right now.  She really understands just about everything we ask her to do.  Although sometimes she exhibits selective hearing once you get her attention she will usually do what you ask.  Reading books is how I love to see what objects she knows - she will point to everything you request.

We put up our christmas tree a couple days after Thanksgiving and Harper is in love with it.  She really loves her Christmas tree the most though.  She probably asks us ten times a day to go upstairs and will race down the hall and into her room and say 'wooooow woooow' lol.  Her tree is up on a dresser so we don't have to worry about her touching it but she's done great with our big tree as well.  Although at times we have caught her using other objects to touch it... ie, will take her bunny and touch it's hand to the tree. lol  can't blame her for being creative!  She also loves to help with the Christmas presents/wrapping.  She will sit on the box for me while I wrap, pull out 18 inches of tape at a time, and unroll all the ribbon and then wrap it around herself... such a big helper!! ;)  But then she does faithfully take the presents and set them under the tree for me everytime :)

She started cutting molars over Thanksgiving... phew... that is no fun.  We were at my parents one night and she was up crying probably every hour and we had no clue what was wrong.  We thought she was waking up and then got scared because she had no idea where she was.  Then the next morning we saw her huge swollen gums.  They looked horrible.  She was a fussy lady for our first round of Thanksgiving at the Kings as I forgot to give her any tylenol before we went but for the next round with the Hamilton's she was back to her happy little self.  She cut two on the top at first and is now working on the bottoms.

She had such a big time at the Hamilton's thanksgiving.  She is seriously such a show off and loves having people paying attention to her.  We will beg her to do her 'celebration dance' for us and she refuses but the second my brothers walk in our door she's down on the floor trying to entertain us.  She had a big time running around with all her second cousins and especially loved snacking with Miss Kennedy when the appetizer table happened to be just their size ;)

She's still running around in 12-18 month things, moving up to size 5 shoes.  She weighed herself on our scale the other day and it says 21.4 so who knows how accurate.  She is finally tall enough to climb herself onto our ottomans/couches... can't say we're excited about that ;)  And she's just tall enough to reach door knobs but not quite big enough to actually turn them.  I am especially not excited for that! haha

Here's a couple pictures