7 month belly pic.

Posted on | May 30, 2009 | 1 Comment

i wonder if i scared anyone with that post title…even though impossible.

girls.

Posted on | May 28, 2009 | 4 Comments

i often wonder how girly Harper will turn out to be. i don’t think i was too girly, but i sure liked certain girly stuff. i had hair down to my butt when i was a little girl, and a barrette holder full of pairs of frilly clips, bows a barrettes (the holder was a girls head with long yellow braided pigtails that you clipped the barrettes to). i loved cabbage patch dolls and rainbrow bright, but i also got into the dirt and played with micromachines with the neighbor boys. i rode my bike for hours a day, even flipping over the handlebars once and knocking my front teeth out. i always had scraped knees and callouses on my hands from the bars at the playground (another accident where i knocked teeth out). my favorite my little pony was white and purple, and you can find it in at least 2 of my professional photos of my mom and i when i was little. i had a dufflebag full of barbies, and so many barbies that i could give them haircuts, shave their heads and still have plenty of others to play with.

when i was pregnant and scot i were at target after learning we were cooking a girl, we came upon a disney princesses swimsuit. it was pink and had belle, arielle and cinderella across the belly. scot pointed to it and with his signature wide-eyed look said “NO”. i laughed and wholeheartedly agreed. what’s funny is that it isn’t our choice (we see that now). if harper likes disney princesses, she likes disney princesses. hell, i liked disney princesses. i mean, we can choose not to buy her the swimsuit (but why do i have a feeling he’d buy it in a heartbeat if it made her happy?).

my poor mom. she had to give in and let me have a perm at the age of 9. she had to give in and let me use sun-in on my hair at the age of 11 (hello orange hair). i liked makeup, i liked hairspray and i liked trying to cut my own bangs (something she hated). in 6th grade, lied and told my mom girls at school were making fun of me so i could start shaving my legs (no one had, but they sure as hell should have – italian = hair). in 10th grade, my best friend lauren and i let our friend jessica “foil” our hair. i will never forget rinsing my hair upside down in the sink and seeing my white striped hair in front of my eyes. HUGE chunks of practically see through white hair. lauren cried enough to get her mom to fix it THAT night. i however, showed up at school the next day horrified to see her hair back to it’s original brown, while i got called zebra (this is a story Lauren’s mom even told at Laurens wedding rehearsal dinner speech, that is how traumatizing it was for the both of us – and how funny it was to our moms at the time). i also LOVED tanning lotion. this was before the decent stuff they have now. i had orange hands, and orange skin for most of jr high. oh man. i hope Harper makes better beauty choices than i did. i also hope she hits puberty a little later than i did (hello, NINE) so she can’t use her hormones against me like i did to my mom (sorry again, mama).

phases.

Posted on | May 27, 2009 | 4 Comments

maybe it’s my birthday coming up. maybe it’s the fact that my baby girl is going to be 7 months old on the same day. i dunno, i’m just feeling very reflective this week on how far we’ve come since little h was born. it’s completely crazy how something can feel like so long ago, yet feel like yesterday at the same time. i’m sure it feels that way for my mom, moms of teens, and moms of toddlers as well. i’m going to assume that no matter how much time passes once you’ve had a child, it will always feel like it’s going too darn fast. before i had a baby, time was measured in ‘me’ time. once the big milesones were hit (13 – becoming a “teenager”, 16 – driving, 18 – tattoos? piercings? and 21 – duh), a birthday was just another year passed. each month was just a month, each year just a year. but now, life is measured in Harper time. a month isn’t just a month anymore. it’s a month of her life. my birthday won’t just mean i’m a year older, but she will be, too. it’s a whole different feeling now that time means learning new things, becoming more mobile, hitting milestones, etc.

i really love the stage Harper is in right now. i dearly miss the newborn days sometimes, but the very early days were rough so i kind of remember them as a blur of trying to figure her out. at almost 7 months, we’re all in a groove and getting the hang of this gig. of course, we’re learning everyday, because as any parent of a baby knows, each week your baby is a new person. right now is fun since she can sit up, point at things, roll around and giggle, but she is still little enough to cuddle, take naps with and keep generally happy. i know the next months will bring more independence for her and that makes me a bit sad, but i also love seeing her learn new things. i had never really felt pride until i had Harper. now i feel it every time she experiences something new and i can see her learn something. watching her eyes figure things out is one of my favorite things.

talking to parents of older babies makes me excited for all the walking, talking and general hilarity a toddler brings, but i’m not trying to rush this party along by any means. i just smile inside imagining how funny the nugget is going to be, just gaging by how funny she is now without the luxury of spoken words. i having a feeling we’ll all be laughing daily when the time comes, but for now i bask in the glory of her dadadada-ing and raspberry blowing.

my family has always had a running joke about me and ‘mushy’ cards. i always hated getting the sentimental cards for birthdays and whatnot (as a teen i’d play it off as i was too cool for them, when in reality i am an extremely sensitive person and mushy cards made me feel stuff!) and still get a hard time if i GIVE a mushy card (which i do a lot now). i suspect they will be thinking i got mushy on my blog after reading this post. YEP! i’m a total freaking mush. but hey, growing a person inside of you for the better part of a year, then pushing it out and meeting the perfect blend of you and your favorite person in the whole world for the first time, and then watching it grow and be precious and hilarious will do that to a lady.

memorial day in pictures.

Posted on | May 26, 2009 | 4 Comments

bubble swimsuit from her boyfriend in MN, Benny.

kiddie pool time!

LOVE this one.

yay, SUN!

kisses.

second suit…had to get a new one after the nap.