Happy Hallo-weenie!

Harper-Dog

I’d planned to update a lot earlier than today but Harper literally had the busiest week of her life last week. The girl has become a social butterfly and had a number of engagements to attend.

We started the week with the Oakwood Spookfest. Our neighborhood puts on a mini-Halloween carnival with games, a chili cook-off and a costume contest so Harper made her official introduction to the neighborhood. We didn’t participate in the chili cook-off since Jared, being from Pennsylvania, is a firm believer that chili should only be consumed when its 45 degrees or colder outside. Darlin’, welcome to Texas! Its rarely colder than 70 degrees outside! We’re working on the Texas adjustment and I have high hopes that we’ll be a chili contestant in the 2011 Spookfest Chili Cook-off.

Tuesday was action packed. We started off with a lunch hosted by Honey for the Class of 2029 along with their mommies and grandmommies. As you can see, we tried for a group picture but its not easy to get 5 babies below 6months of age to all cooperate as needed. In eighteen short years, these five will be leaving these mommies in tears as they head off for their perspective universities. And we all know Harper is Harvard bound so I just wonder where everyone else will go!



Youngest to Oldest - Anabelle, Mateo, Harper, Sutton and Field

We wrapped Tuesday afternoon up with a Halloween party at the park with all the girls in my dinner club and their kids. Again, we tried for a group photo. Have you ever seen a group of moms try to get a group of about 20 kids under the age of five to pose for a picture? Next time I need to film the moms. We were dancing, singing, calling names, making faces. Don’t know you know the kids are all looking at us thinking, what in the heck are THEY doing??? Harper finally got to debut her Halloween costume. Since it was hot outside, we came in her Halloween dress and decided to put on the costume once settled. Well, I slipped Harper in her hotdog, she turned her head and promptly spewed spit up all down the inside of her first Halloween costume. After pulling her out, drying her off, wiping the inside out and making sure she was done with the spit up, I slipped her back in for about five minutes worth of pictures. Hmm, somehow I had pictured that going differently in my head.
Group Shot

Just before the spit up

Anabelle's costume
Sutton was worn out!

On Wednesday, Harper woke up and decided she was going to be a diva for the day. Miss Priss was just fussy but I can totally understand. After wearing her out as much as I did on Tuesday, the poor thing was exhausted. We had physical therapy that morning so headed out to see Elaine. We love Elaine and she’s so good at working with babies. Harps was great for the first ten minutes and then had a complete meltdown. That ended our PT session so the two of us headed home and this was how Jared found us later that afternoon.


We finally made it to the pumpkin patch on Friday for the obligatory annual photo. I learned a valuable new mom lesson: Don’t wait until October 29 to visit the pumpkin patch. Needless to say, the patch was a little, um, depleted. I also realized that an infant will most likely do to the pumpkins what they do with everything else – try to eat them. What are the chances they sanitized that pumpkin before my child decided to gnaw on it?






As for yesterday’s Halloween festivities, we took part. Since we might have child services called on us if we fed Harper Halloween candy, I decided to bake treats for our neighbors so we could reverse Trick or Treat and drop treats to them while still modeling the Hotdog. Now, those who know me well know that I have a pretty hard time finding my way around the kitchen…but I’m trying! I’ve started venturing into the cooking thing and have had some success. For those that don’t know me, here’s a little history. When I was in my first trimester with our little nugget, I was craving ANYTHING that involved ground beef as the main ingredient – hamburger patties, spaghetti sauce with beef, meatloaf… I decided I needed to have meatloaf for dinner and since most restaurants don’t serve meatloaf (go figure), I was going to make it myself. Well, not only did Jared and I end up with a mildly charred serving of meatloaf but we also ended up with the fire department, full fire truck and all, at our house to remove our oven. After living in the house for 3 years, Jared wasn’t too happy that I decided to use the oven for the 5th time and almost set our house on fire while the house was on the market. So, yesterday’s baking adventure should have taken about an hour but ended up taking about 4 hours. At least I’m trying! After my marathon kitchen session, we took our little wiener to visit the neighbors and then the three of us parked it in the front yard to pass out candy to the trick or treaters.
Cookies

Ready for Trick or Treaters

I mentioned PT earlier and Harper is doing great with her sessions. Since she can’t lie directly on her stomach, we’re working on a modified version of tummy time and she’s really doing well with her head control. Its funny because her eyebrows automatically go up each time she's turned on her belly. We’re also working on sitting up, rolling and neck stretches. We’ll continue with PT until they feel Harper is caught up to where she should be but at this point, it will be about 6 months worth.


I’m also excited to say that I’m reclaiming my membership in the running community. Its been so nice to get my feet back underneath me and I can’t wait until Harper hits the 6 month mark and can start joining me on runs. We’ve been doing some power walking but the girl’s gonna love it when she feels the exhilaration of a run! I’m definitely not back up to my marathon training distances but little by little, I’m adding on. Who knows, maybe I’ll shoot for a half early in the spring! Anyone want to join?

I’m a little late with a welcome but we want to give a big “Welcome to the world!” to Eli Arnold who was born a week and a half ago. Sorry for the delay Eli but we’re thrilled to have you join us!

We are so happy for the month of November. We have SO MUCH to be thankful for. Thankful item #1: Harper was home for Halloween! Three months ago we didn’t think it would be possible but we were so happy to have our little girl home to celebrate the fun. More thanksgivings to come…