I'm late, of course, on Harper's monthly update and really have no excuses but pure laziness! We had a great past month complete with her second Christmas which was really my favorite Christmas ever :)
We had multiple Christmas celebrations starting out with Andy's family a couple weekends before Christmas. Harper loved all her gifts and playing with boxes/wrapping paper :) Andy's parents have an old train that he grew up with that is a walker or you can ride on it. Harper made many laps around their house on that! She also got to go sledding for the second time which she gave mixed reviews. She doesn't really like getting snow on her hands/face and probably hates the way I bundle her up but she still toddled around like a little marshmallow. At first she was riding down the hill with Andy which she did not look to fond of. Then we realized we could let her ride by herself (with andy holding onto her hood, haha) and she absolutely loved that!! She was soo happy for the 8 second ride and then would immediately fuss when she made it to the bottom and we had to walk back to the top to start again. It was quite the workout for us!
I worked on Christmas eve and didn't think we would be able to make it to the King's Cmas but fortunately I discharged almost all of my patients and one of the other sweet residents let me go a little early so we trekked down to visit that side of the family. We always have so much fun seeing my grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins that are able to visit for holidays! We went to Christmas eve mass in Brandenburg which was a mess to say the least. Andy thought Harper might behave better if we sat closer to the musicians. That was a negative. We wrestled her the entire thing and I'm sure those around us were beyond distracted by her and her shenanigans. Regardless, it was a beautiful mass and I love going to that one bc I really like the youth choir at their evening mass.
We went back to Lexington Christmas Eve so Santa would know where to find Harper the next morning ;) Andy and Olivia were teasing me as I set all of Harper's gifts up knowing that I was probably 10 times more excited about the following morning than Harper would be but nobody could rain on my Christmas spirit ;) The next morning, Harper woke up in her adorable Christmas pj's and headed down to find what was waiting for her! Her first stop was to say hi to the Santa that hangs on our coat closet and then she came to check out all her goods. She loved her chair, stroller and baby right off the bat :) We then had fun quickly opening the rest of our gifts. We made a big breakfast and had Carrie and Claire join us while they were waiting for David to get home for work. Luckily for them David was able to get off early and celebrate most of Christmas day with them. Later that afternoon the rest of the Hamilton's and Andy's parents came over to our house for lunch and to hang out. I was really sad to only be getting Christmas day off this year (but still super thankful for that because there are a lot of other residents who were working) but we had a great, great day!
We had our last Christmas celebration the following weekend in an activity packed 2 day event. We had Claire's baptism Saturday morning, opened presents that afternoon and the following day all the extended Hamilton fam came to my parents for cards and soup :)
Basically all of the past month was filled with preparing for Christmas/celebrating - kept us quite busy!!
We did have some sad news a couple weeks ago. Harper has had the same sitter ever since she was 3 months old who we absolutely loved and so did Harper! She began having some health problems and and has had to leave us :( I was so sad because it can be so hard to find someone you trust that you know will take good care of your babies!! Fortunately it was about as good of timing as we could ask for as Andy always takes a few extra days off around the holidays and we've been able to have friends/family pitch in while we're figuring out something more permanent again. We've got a few potentials and are just trying to figure out exactly what will be best for miss Harper.
Harper's vocabulary is really taking off. She yaps nonstop and new words appear all the time. She finally says please correctly and says it in the most pitiful little highpitch voice you've ever heard. I made muffins the other day and she was repeating 'cu-ca cu-ca cu-ca' over and over again until we realized she was trying to say cupcake. She had been at Carries a couple days before and apparently they had a 'tea party' with a cupcake that left a big impression on Harper.
She has become sooo attached to her stuffed bunny that she sleeps with. We swapped the bunny for her paci when we were making that transition but now bunny needs to go everywhere with Harper. I washed it the other day while she was out playing with Andy and when she came in she looked everywhere for her 'Buh'. When it came out of the dryer she was more excited to see it than she was on Christmas morning ;)
Her favorite activity right now is coloring and we're working on learning colors. I was offering her chalk yesterday but her choices were pink and green.. but she refused and then she said yellow! It's always amazing hearing words that you had no idea they knew.
She went to the doctor this past week for her 18 month appt. She's 20 lbs 10 oz and 31 inches tall. We're going back for them to recheck her height in a couple months as her height appears to not be increasing as it should. I feel like she is growing out of clothes all the time and it likely has to do with a falsely elevated measurement at her 12 month appt so I try not to worry. She's wearing 18-24 month clothes and size 5 shoes.
Harper knows where mama's baby is and loves kissing my tummy... but she also thinks she has a baby in her own tummy ;) We ask her what name she prefers, emma kate or caroline and she always says 'ka.' She has plenty of people she loves with names that start like that... cam, claire, carrie, christie, kate... haha so we figure she'll adapt just fine to either :) We're thinking about trying out some potty training relatively soon? That would be pretty amazing to have done before another baby arrives... but I have a feeling she may want to regress anyways.
I'll have to add more pics soon! I'm on a naptime deadline to get my blogging finished for the day :)
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