I have been writing Harper a letter monthly since we brought her home. I’ll fully admit I stole the idea from Dooce.com, but it is a good idea and I am glad I have been doing it!

Dear Harper –
Today you are 9 months old!  I cannot even believe how big you are. Time is rushing by way too fast. You have gone from a chubby little baby into a mobile little person. Your pudge poles finally are starting to resemble legs, not ham hocks.  Your attitude is still pretty much all smiles, but you have definitely learned that screaming/crying can help get you what you want. Oh well, it was bound to happen eventually.  This picture pretty much sums up how you are most of the time though:

A little smiley monkey.  Actually not a monkey, you are convinced you are a dog and spend your days following them around the house and trying to play with them. When the dogs rough house you rush to get right in the middle of their wrestling match and then just laugh as they bark and growl at each other.

We were so busy over the past 2 months that I didn’t write you an 8 month letter. A LOT has happened since you turned 7 months old.  You starting crawling on your dad’s birthday 12/13.  You had been army crawling for about 2 weeks, but that was the day you starting moving your hands and feet together.  It took about 1 week before you were flying through the house. Now you are into anything bad, the light outlets, the dog water, the dog crate.  You learning to crawl has drastically changed what I can get done in a day!  You then started pulling yourself up onto the furniture and can now get up to standing very quickly. You spend a lot of your day pulling up on the tv stand (thank goodness its so heavy), the windowsill and the coffee table.  You like to look out the window with Mushi.


You are eating like a champ and I pretty much just feed you whatever I am eating even though you have no teeth yet.  You love yogurt and scrambled eggs.
 

You still sleep from about 7:30pm to 7:00am, but are on no set nap schedule.  Actually lately I have been letting you nap on me which I know isn’t the best idea, but I am trying to soak up every moment I can before you are a toddler and pushing away from me, not wanting to be cuddled.  

You are very capable of playing by yourself and don’t have to be constantly entertained. I am thankful for that. I am starting to look for jobs and it just makes me sick to my stomach thinking about it. I knew I couldn’t stay home with your forever, but leaving you at daycare is going to break me.  Part of me is excited to get back into a work environment, not worry so much about money, have some new friends, but mostly I am just sad b/c I will miss having my little mini me tied to my hip. I am looking forward to what this next month brings in your development, I can see you are aching to stand unassisted and walking can’t be too far away. 

I love you,
Mom

You can see past letters on my old blog:
Month 7
Month 6
Month 5
Month 3
Month 2

* Don’t forget to go enter my yummy Boomi bar giveaway below!

Yesterday at Whole Foods I picked up a bunch of greeny samples for smoothies. I want to make sure I get as many veggies in these morning smoothies as possible. Today I tried:

This has alfalfa, barley, oat grass, wheat grass, parsley powder, collard powder, kale powder, broccoli powder, spinach powder and then I added in spinach, berries, banana, chocolate soy milk and a 1/2 scoop of protein powder and then some PB at the end, so it ended up chunky

Everything tastes better in a beer glass


Today’s concoction was much more vitaminy and veggie tasting than yesterdays since it just had spinach in it. But i liked it and I want that veggish taste.  So I will give this packet of mix in an A, but hey I haven’t tried any of the others yet, so stay tuned.

We’ve discovered that Harper likes Popsicles.  I mean really likes popsicles.

Harper’s First Xmas. Fun with Peanuts.

This is pretty much what goes on in my house all day long. I can’t keep Fonzie or Harper away from the ball.