1 Year!

Harper's first year has been amazing! She's the happiest, sweetest little girl and we are so thrilled with her. She makes us laugh every day and she loves the spotlight. She loves to give hugs and really loves to dance. She shakes her booty whenever she hears music all with big smiles and laughs! We look forward to her entertaining us each day and for many years to come. It's really hard to believe that an entire year has gone by so quickly! Our little 8 pound, 1 ounce baby is now 22 pounds! She's in the 95th percentile for her height at almost 31 inches. It's crazy how fast she's learning things and changing. She's still crawling, but she stands on her own and uses the couch, wall, walker toy, or closest person to get to where she needs to go. Rarely does she want to sit and relax anymore during the day. At night we read books before bed and she'll sit in our laps and turn the pages. She continues to sleep through the night in her crib. She had no problem moving into the new house or letting any of those changes effect her. She's a "go with the flow" kind of girl, that's for sure!

To round out her first year, we took a short beach trip with Derek's family. She loved the sand and played with her bucket of sand and water. The water was a little chilly, but she liked getting her toes wet and laughed when the water splashed her. She likes to splash, especially in the bathtub or pool! We moved into a new house and it's a great neighborhood where we takes lots of walks and we've got a big yard to play in too! We're still doing some unpacking and getting settled but it's our home and we are filling it with laughter and love pretty quickly.

We stay busy with trips around town, visiting family or friends and taking walks in her stroller or wagon. She loves to be outside and really likes to explore the flowers and bugs. She likes to dig in sand and dirt. Nothing bothers her and we love it! She really likes to stand in the drivers seat of the car and "drive". She's hilarious because she grips onto the wheel and it's hard to get her to let go. She likes to turn up the radio too and if music is playing, she does what comes naturally....shakes her booty! She plays well with other babies/kids and we know when she starts walking she'll be even more interactive! She can get an attitude if something gets her frustrated though. It's too funny, but we try to remind her to figure it out, or let her know she's not getting everything she wants and she moves on. This parenting stuff is hard ;)

H still loves food and will eat anything and everything. We try to give her new things all the time and she rarely will allow us to feed her. She eats oatmeal, applesauce and yogurt all by herself with her little bowl and spoon. She has started to even use a fork to eat, but it's hard for her to get things stuck onto it sometimes. We enjoy watching her learn how to feed herself and she makes herself so happy when she can do it. Some new things she's tried over the past month are cow's milk, pizza (she's a bigger fan of the crust), corn ON the cob, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cheese sticks. Harper still can't get enough blueberries, watermelon, mac and cheese, eggs or english muffins.

Her first birthday party was perfect and she even had a first birthday photo shoot. (pictures should be available soon.) She had cake and ice cream for the first time. She didn't go too crazy though and smash her cake like others. She actually dove in more when I gave her a fork....Miss Priss! She was showered with generous gifts from friends and family who made her party a truly memorable event. Harper is loved by so many people and we can't thank everyone enough for all the love and support over the past year. With that said, we're ready for another year of the Adventures of Harper Lynne Newton!

11 Months

Woah! In one more month, Harper is a YEAR old? Crazy! She's dancing her way out of infancy and into toddler town, that's for sure. She continues to make us two of the happiest people on earth and we are infatuated with her. Watching her learn and grow is so much fun. This past month, she got another tooth. She now has 7 and there's another on it's way. She's still not walking, but we're not rushing her. She does love to stand at a steering wheel and pretend to drive. If she sees the golf cart at GooGoo's house or gets a glimpse of our front seat when we get in and out of the car, she's like a crazy person trying to get to it as fast as she can. When she stands at the wheel, her smile and excitement are tremendous! She's a tad dramatic...

As mentioned earlier, she can dance. Harper loves to shake it! When music comes on, she either bobs up and down or shakes her booty side to side. She gets a big smile on her face when we say "dance" or if we say, "shake your booty" and then she really gets down. She's so full of life and happy all the time! She's funny too. H laughs at so much now and gets really excited when we play peek a boo or show her something new. She especially gets excited when food is presented to her. When we ask if she's hungry or if she wants to eat, she open and closes her mouth and makes a sound like a little chipmunk eating.

This month was a productive one and that she learned a bunch of new things, like the understanding of what we are saying and asking her. It's truly amazing to know that she can still communicate and understand when she can't even talk yet! She will offer up her food and loves to feed you, if you ask for a bite. We started brushing her teeth with a regular toothbush and she always has to brush our teeth with her toothbrush before she's done. When we go for walks, we get to the front door and say "Home" and she's now started saying it too when she gets there. Ok, it's not the word "home" in perfect English, but she uses the same tone as us and is definitely trying to say it!

Harper loves to give hugs. She'll wrap her little arms around your neck and snuggle right in there. I highly suggest everyone get a Harper hug soon. She's working on kisses. Right now she kid of just leans in a pushes her face on yours. It's a work in progress. She also learned to go hide in the past month and gets very excited when she's found.



We took another trip to Florida because it'd been too long since Harper had seen Nonnie. We had an amazing week! H just loved the sand and water at the beach. The gulf is so warm and calm. She had fun yelling as the ripples of waves would rush up on her legs. She really loved floating around in Nonnie's pool everyday too.

We've started planning her birthday party. Stay tuned next month for a recap and a "year in review". :)

10 Months

 Double digits?!?! Geez, the time is flying by! And it was a busy month too! Harper started crawling a few days after she was 9 months old. Now at 10 months, she's an expert and crawls so fast and out of sight quickly. Now that she's crawling and exploring, she's pulling up on everything too. She's interested in getting into things she shouldn't be...not a day goes by that she's not opened a drawer to her dresser and taken out every bit of clothing that's in it, or into the cabinet where her diapers are stored and has them thrown about the room. She's a human hurricane. I'm trying to make her some sensory boxes out of fun things to dig into and investigate. We won't tell her that I'm making them to keep her still for a few minutes, at least!

H continues to love to eat. Her new favorite is peas. She can't get enough of them! She also got to try watermelon for the first time this month. Summer is finally here! Blueberries are still her favorite snack/breakfast/dessert :) We did let her try Chipotle a couple weeks ago. She had a cheese quesadilla, some black beans and some brown rice. Needless to say, she loved it all. If we teach her anything in life, shouldn't it be to love Chipotle? We keep feeding her new things and we want to make sure she wants to try everything and be a really good eater. Her chubby legs are proof that she's a good eater so far....

What else is new? She's good at making a lot of noise. She "talks" all the time. She also loves to dance. When music plays on TV or one of her toys, she bobs up and down and gets a huge smile on her face. She's too much! She's also learned how to make a pig face and she turns up her lips and breaths hard in and out of her nose. It's totally cute and we do it back to her. She's got personality, for sure!
Harper really, really loves books. We've got stashes of them all around the house and in the car and in the diaper bag. She reads out loud and points to things in them. She's so smart ;) We read every night before bed and she's already picking favorites. A book that Granddaddy and Vicki got her for Christmas called "I Love You, Good Night" is always the last one we read, sometimes twice! She likes to turn the pages and she points to the pictures the same way every time. We know when she wants it read again because when she closes the last page, she starts to whine. One day I read it to her 4 times before she finally was ready to sleep. She's a little stinker!

Getting what she wants is starting to show and she likes to test her limits. If we say "No", she looks at us and stops, but then may try it again to see if she can get away with it. Like I said...stinker! A few times we've had to move her away from something or take something from her and, boy, did she get mad! She's got a little red mark that appears on her forehead. It's hard not to smile or laugh when she gets mad too! Sometimes she's even laughed or given us a pig face when we've told her no... We're in trouble!

9 Months

9 Months old and another busy month. Harper now has 6 teeth! All 4 top teeth came in within the same week. She struggled a little more with these teeth than the bottom ones. Her gums were pretty red and there was a LOT of drool and chewing. Thank goodness for frozen washcloths and motrin!

Last month was H's first Easter. She got some Blu-Ray movies to start her movie collection, books, and Itty Bittys from Hallmark. Thanks to her Aunties, Erin and Alissa, for starting her collection. They are the cutest little stuffed animals, just the perfect size for her little hands. She "reads" her books and likes to have small board books to hold onto, not always right side up....Every car ride, she has 2 books that we hear her "reading" to us. She points to things and is very animated with her story telling :)

Still not crawling, but getting close. She gets up on her knees and attempts to start, maybe moving one hand and lifting her knee, but she either decides at that point to let her belly hit the ground and get mad, or just go back to a sitting position. She really gets aggravated at us when the item she wants is far from her and we are trying to get her to go get it. We try to help her and she sometimes goes with it, but sometimes, just gets red in the face like she wants to tell us off! The baby's got attitude and patience is NOT her strong suit!

She does like to climb and pull up on everything. She has a table that has lights and sounds, which she will stand at for 15-20 minutes and laugh, yell, smile and "dance". She may walk and not crawl, we'll just have to wait and see what she decides to do. Either way, we want her to have more independence and move around but then again....we can't imagine how crazy it's going to be when we have to chase her everywhere!

Eating is still her best ability. This child loves food and cant get enough. Her food has been made a little more chunky and she's getting the hang of chewing. She really likes bananas, blueberries, avocado, mango, chicken, peas and corn. Harper seems to really like feeding herself too, sometimes not wanting us to feed her with the spoon. She tries taking the spoon from us and grabbing the food off the spoon. Again, she's got attitude! She L.O.V.E.s to snack on puffs! We call her the Puff Monster. They kind of turn to mush when they're in her mouth and they come in all sorts of flavors. We mix them all up, but she's not picky about any flavor! H will have just been given a meal and milk, but if she sees puffs....she's still hungry :)

Harper can wave bye bye and clap. She still likes to suck on her toes. She says Mama and Dada a lot. Talking and yelling are now an everyday thing. She babbles and we have conversations. Wish we knew what she was really telling us.... We watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and she gets so excited when Mickey comes on TV. She likes to dance when the Hot Dog song plays at the end (with our help). You'll know when H is excited about anything because she breaks out the Lion Face! It's hilarious and funny very time she does it, which is a million and one times a day. This child just continues to be loved by o many people and always seems to make everyday an exciting, new adventure!

8 Months

Every month, we're thinking, where has the time gone? 8 months is here and Harper keeps on growing, eating and moving. She's not crawling, but she'll pull up on things and stand supported. She'll get on her knees from a sitting position; just to rock a few times, then decide she doesn't want to go anywhere. She makes us laugh. She really likes when we hold her up and she moves her legs. Maybe she will walk before she crawls...only time will tell.

Harper weighs 19 pounds 6 ounces and is about 28 inches long. She still loves to eat. This month we started giving her finger foods. She loves these little puff things that "melt" in her mouth. She even knows what the container looks like now and when we get it out, she gets all sorts of excited :) She eats banana, mango, blueberries, peas and carrots cut up into bit size pieces. I've even made her buttered noodles with some Parmesan cheese sprinkled on them. She really thinks she's hot stuff when she feeds herself. A few times she hasn't eaten what we try to spoon feed her but if we give her something for her to pick up with her hands, she'll clear her tray!

She has gotten so big that she's been wearing size 12-18 month clothes! She continues to love walks outside and going out and about. We are all so happy that the weather is getting nice so we can be out more! We all got down to Florida again to visit Nonnie. Harper went to her first baseball game. We saw 2 spring training games for the Orioles and the Rays. It was pretty hot but she stayed cool in her little straw sun hat. She matched all the old people in Florida :)

Her first cold happened just a couple days ago. We hate that she feels bad and there's nothing we can do. Thank goodness for the NoseFreida. It sucks the snot right out of her nose without going in her nose. The baby on the box seems to love it, but Harper gets mad when we get anywhere close to wiping her nose. She's got attitude, that's obvious! She definitely lets us know what she wants or does and doesn't like. She's not saying any words yet, but she can make plenty of baby talk and some Baa Baas and Maa Maas.

7 Months

 Harper is sitting up very well and rolling over so much that she can get across the room. She so badly wants to be crawling or walking. She's a little wiggle worm, that's for sure. She's really going to keep us busy as she gets older! With still only two teeth, we're certain that the top teeth will be here sooner, rather than later. She's constantly chewing on things, and there are little teeth marks on her spoons and on all of her toys. Harper rarely gets fussy though, thankfully. If she does, there are some frozen washcloths in the freezer that make her super happy again!

We got our biggest snow of the year a couple weeks ago. Harper wasn't that impressed! We took her out all bundled up. She could barely move, hahaha! We propped her in the snow pile and didn't really know what to do. She had the most fun watching the neighborhood children playing and sledding. Hopefully it's only going to get warmer and all this cold weather is over! Harper absolutely loves being outside. Typical Virginia weather.... it snowed one week, then it's 65 and sunny for a couple days. We took her to the park the day we celebrated Mommom's (her great grandmother) birthday this month. She laughed on the swings and bobbled on the hobby horse. She'll have to wait for the slides or at least until we can go down with her!

Harper continues to eat anything and everything! We love that she's such a good eater. We'll keep fattening her up for now with lots of yummy fruit and veggies. Last month she tried brown rice, peaches, plums, broccoli, white potatoes and yogurt. She didn't like the broccoli. She gotten quite fond of the Nuby Mesh Feeders. We give her bananas, oranges and mangos in them. She chews and sucks until she got juices running down her arms!

Derek's father lost his battle with Alzheimer's the last weekend of February. He was an amazing man and will truly be missed. What saddens us the most is that Harper will never know him. He didn't get to take her to see the beach or the fire trucks. He didn't get to drive her around in the golf cart and teach her the game of golf. She'll never hear him say the words, "totally", like we all did. Such a sweet, caring, laid back guy that we will tell her stories about and teach her to love the way he would have loved her.

Harper is such an angel and makes us smile every day. Even if she is mad that we aren't feeding her fast enough, or she's not sleeping through the night and we go to her room 4 times a night to rock her; we can't help but smile and kiss her fat, chubby cheeks. She weights just over 19 pounds and is 27 inches long. Her favorite things are her bouncer that hangs in the doorway, her exersaucer, her blocks and books. We read every night and sometimes during the day, if she'll sit in our laps long enough. We stack her blocks up and she likes knocking them down. She also loves baths and playing with the squirty animals. She laughs when the water comes out of their mouths :) It's been a fun month or new and exciting things; we look forward to what she'll learn next month!

6 Months

Half a year old! What an awesome 6 months it's been. We love this little girl more than anything in the whole world. We can't imagine her not being a part of our lives! She has two teeth now and the pediatrician said that her upper gums seem a little swollen; so those little top teeth could be coming in within the next month. Harper loves to smile and she's really starting to laugh at everything. We play Peek A Boo and she gets so excited and laughs when you scare her.

Harper sits up very well now. She doesn't really like to lay on her back or tummy. She immediately tries to roll over. She is so squirmy and wiggly. We can't imagine when she starts to crawl, she'll be all over the place! She really likes her exersaucer and her bouncy seat that hangs from the doorway. She jumps and kicks her legs like crazy!

Her height and weight are the same as last month; 27 inches long and 17.5 pounds. The doctor said she will start to even out with all the movement she's going to be doing. Harper is eating really well and is loving solids. She's had carrots, sweet potatoes (her favorite), pears, apples, avocado, bananas, peas and squash. The pediatrician said that she can start eating meats, beans and yogurt now. We got her a sippy cup so she can drink water with her food. I'm still breastfeeding, so she gets most of her nutrition through that. I am still having fun making her food and using the Baby Bullet. I look forward to finding a new fruit or vegetable each week to mix up and give her. I've even gotten some recipes for different combinations of foods to try.

Last month Nicole, Tiffany and Harmony all came to visit and play with Harper. We took her to NatsFest at the National Harbor one Saturday. She also got to go to her first hockey game. So much excitement in one month! It's been an exciting 6 months and we've got many more things planned for the next 6 months!

5 Months

Harper's got a tooth! 1 week ago, her first little tooth made it's appearance. The drooling has gone down but her fingers are in her mouth even more. She never got fussy or anything! She truly is such a happy baby. We can't get a good picture of it yet. It's still so small and when we try to open her mouth to look at it, she tries to eat our fingers!

This month we also got some solid foods going, and Harper loves it! The pediatrician said that we could start her on some veggies at 5 months, so last week I got out the Baby Bullet (Thank you Sam and Donnie) and started blending. We started with carrots. The Bullet is awesome and super easy. I made three days worth. I'd read that you have to begin with one veggie at a time, to make sure the baby doesn't have a reaction or anything. Well, she gobbled those carrots up. Her little mouth was open for more before we can get another spoon full! The last few days, she's eaten sweet potatoes. Of course, she loves them too! Next on the list to try are avocados, pears and bananas.

Her laugh is still infectious and her smiles are amazing. Now, whenever Derek comes home from work, or i pick her up from a nap, she gets the biggest grin on her face. We just love it! Harper weighs 17 pounds, 4 ounces and is 27 inches long. I bet these veggies, in addition to milk, should really start to fatten her up. Like she needs it! :)

Our little girl can get her toes in her mouth. She's so flexible... She can also roll all the way over; from her belly to her back and from her back onto her belly. She wants to move more than anything, so she stays busy in the exersauser and her jumping thing that attaches to the door frame. She thinks she's hot stuff when she gets to stand. Rarely does she want to simply lay in the floor and play any more. She got so much for Christmas! Spoiled already.  She got more clothes, more toys and fun things like wipes and diapers too. We are lucky to have such generous people around us! New Year's Eve was uneventful in the Newton house. It was a regular Tuesday for Harper... Derek and I made it up to midnight (surprisingly). Harper has been a wonderful sleeper, now that she's 5 months old. She still doesn't sleep much during the day, but she's sleeping through the night and that's more than we can ask for!