"everything looks pink"

What's 2 (and a half!), loves the water, and has bulging pink eyes? Why, it's a lucy fish!

Special thanks to Bon Bon for providing us with lots of laughs via a pink pair of goggles.

Harper's First Bath

Harper's first bath was quite different from Lucy's first bath. For one, Harper screamed when she was put into the water, she turned bright red and was pretty angry about the whole thing. This lasted for a minute, then she relaxed and enjoyed it. The bath was different also because we had Lucy to "help" this time around. She kept bringing Harper bath toys, rubber ducks and the like. She also kept squealing and saying things like, "it's ok, Harper!"

I'm sure Little Sister will be a water lover just like Lucy, she just needs to grow her sea legs!

Gramzie and Pop Pop's visit

Dick and Zanne arrived last Wed evening and stayed for almost a week. In that time, our refrigerator and freezer were filled with goodies, Lucy was entertained endlessly, Harper was oohed and aahed at, we picked strawberries with Gramzie, Pop Pop and Taylor and Eli, went for our first summer swim, visited with Hazel, and all in all had a nice visit. Here are pics from the weekend...

Show Off!

Harper went for her 2 week appointment today and the nurse kept commenting on what a show off she is! She kept rolling onto her side and when she was on her belly she kept doing a crawling motion that scooted her up and away from the nurse. We, of course, know she is strong. She holds her head up and really won't stay on her back, she loves to sleep on her side.

Other great things that Harper is accomplishing so far: she slept 8 hours last night without a feedin- yeah! I would love to take credit, but this is mostly her doing. After 2 weeks, we swear that she is calm, quiet, and content. She makes having a newborn look easy! She weighs 7 lbs now, is 21 inches and is all but perfect!

Lucy is doing great, too. Next week is her last week at school and she has been practicing her end of the year program at school. I think she will really miss Miss Chris and Miss Sophie and all her Panda room friends. Of course, the pool opened this weekend and swimming might quickly erase all the sadness of not going to school (it always did for me!)

The Lu cam

Lucy has been insisting that I allow her to take pictures with our camera. Here are some of her fabulous snapshots.

Sleepy Smiles

movie night

We are working on cutting out some of the play time Lucy partakes in at bedtime every night so we have enacted a sticker chart. She gets a sticker every time she can go to sleep without incident, in the end, she gets a movie night. Lucy earned her first movie night a couple days after I got home from the hospital. She chose to watch Dumbo, one of her favorite stories. She was so enthralled with the movie, getting to eat in front of the tv, and eating popcorn. She also loved that we allowed her to share some of the popcorn with Reggie. She is already anxious for the next movie night and says that it will be all about Cinderella.

Butterflies!

Well, our little experiment worked. Lucy got a butterfuly treehouse from Bon Bon and Grandpa for Easter and we sent away for our caterpillars. They arrived in the mail as tiny little wormlike beings (which Lucy promptly shook vigorously in the package) and I thought, this will never work. The box had no directions and we pretty much just winged it with the upbringing of these "pets". Lucy loved watching the caterpillars get fatter and bigger each and every day and monitoring how much food they were eating. Then they entered their chrysallis stage and just hearing her say the word "chrysallis" was worth it, but I don't think Ian nor myself thought we were actually going to end up with 5 butterlies. But boy were we wrong! The butterflies made their appearance the day we brought Harper home from the hospital and day after day, they each emerged. When the final butterfly was fluttering around, we called Ronin to meet us outside for the great release. They both were so excited to see the butterflies and Lucy was so proud that her pets were able to fly around and "collect pollen" she said. What a success. We'll have to do it again sometime.

It's all about the hair

We love Harper's hair. Especially when it works itself into a mohawk, so much so that we end up working it into a mohawk ourselves.

Baby Buddha. She's putting on an ounce a day- so much for staying little. She's working on a second chin, and we see progress in her efforts daily.
I don't think this is what they mean by "tummy time"
Here's Harper shortly after eating. This is her "milk" drunk posture.
Playing on Daddy's lap. She loves to look at our red and white pillows, the 3 framed pictures on the wall over the couch and herself in the mirror. Of course, that's only when she is not looking for food.

The unwakeable Harper Mary. These are a couple clips of us trying to wake her so that she won't be up all night. An impossible feat. When she was in the hospital she slept for 13 hours straight. The nurses and I tried to wake her so many times by getting her naked, running cool wach cloths over her body, tickling her feet and her back. Nothing. The same at home. This kid seems to be able to sleep through anything, although Reggie barking and the vacuum seem to scare the living daylights out of her no matter her state of wakefulness.

zoo

Still cute after 4 days

You've never seen such a little thing sneeze so much. Sneezing, sleeping, making little bird noises and eating- yep, that about sums it up for Harper's first 4 days in this world. She has started to wake a bit more and today even had some play time. She seems to really like her swing and we have to remind ourselves that she probably shouldn't hang out there all of her waking time. Today we gave her a little sponge bath, with Lucy's help which ended up with a perfectly clean, dressed baby that in turn pooped, had to be changed and then mid-change, pooped all over the towel she was lying on. So much for that sweet baby smell. Lucy was thoroughly amused.

We then headed to Belle View's Town Center where we saw a ton of friends and introduced Harper to the neighborhood at the big yard sale. Lucy got a bit tired of everyone asking her if she liked being a big sister, but other than that, it was a great time. Lucy then headed to a birthday party at the soft playroom and Harper and I hung around the house. When they got home we put Harper on the floor for some tummy time and she seemed to really like looking at herself in the mirror. Lucy liked shoving toys in her face and then treated La La to some of Harper's toys. Then Harper curled up in my lap and was the calmest you've ever seen anybody, which then led to drifting off to nap- pretty peaceful.

So far, not much sleep going on at night, but we're working on flipping that around. Reggie is being a good sport, Lucy is for the most part her usual self and Ian is helping with anything and everything. Friends are bringing food all next week and everyone seems to agree that we do indeed make beautiful little girls.

Speaking of beauties- we think that Harper seems to look a bit more like Ian right now. She is certainly not a spitting image of Lucy at this age. Harper has blonde in her hair, dimples on both cheeks, she has a pinker complexion and her eyes seem to be shaped more like Ian's. Of course, she has the same cupid's bow on her top lip, the same little frown mark on her chin, the same little nose and the same full cheeks as Lucy. Ian is going to to be a mess with boys calling in 15 years (of course, he still maintains that Lucy and Harper will be volunteering or at the library on the weekends, no boys!)