Chicken to Ride

Yesterday the plan was to go to Bible Study in the morning but we ended up not going for a few reasons, but the biggest one is that Harper will not, under any circumstances, stay in the nursery while I'm in the other room. As much as I enjoy going, it gets to be a bigger hassle as well as a disruption to try and keep her happy while trying to discuss things like predestination and other fine Calvinist topics. I'll try again on another Wednesday, but yesterday I was just too tired to give it a try.

So we went to Starbucks for breakfast instead.

Here's Hadley and her courtesy smile:
She'll eat anything with blueberries in it.
"I'm so happy as long as my posse is somewhere where I can see them (her)."

This is Harper's way of telling us that she has no more interest in eating. She rips her bib off and sticks out her tongue. Sometimes she'll even gag which is really appetizing.


The Beatles was the choice of music at Starbucks and Hadley seemed to enjoy this. While listening to them sing, "She's gotta ticket to ride" Hadley was bopping her head a little while eating a blueberry scone. During the song she asked me, "Who's gotta chicken, Mama?"
I replied,"I don't think I know what you're talking about, Hadley."
"A chicken. Who's gotta chicken to ride?" she clarified.
I started giggling and while my first instinct was to correct her, I thought that thinking about someone riding a chicken seems much more interesting then thinking about someone having a ticket to ride somewhere. Besides, the guys say in the song "she don't care" about having a ticket, and I think that in Hadley's song this girl would care about riding a chicken. I certainly would. So I told Hadley that I wasn't sure who has a chicken to ride, and then I took a sip of my coffee while she drank her milk and we listened to the rest of the song.

Lord of the Dance

Try giving a kid a bath when she's doing this:




It is also quite difficult to change her diaper because of this same "condition" but I spared you the recording. Let's just say it can get messy....and mommy sometimes swears. We don't need that on file.

Now that Harper is crawling, she likes to work the perimeter of the playroom. It's quite impressive what she is able to do all by herself.

And here's a picture of the girls in their matching pajamas. They say "Best Friends Forever."

Oh The Places You'll Go

From the last post, readers can imagine that the big news is that Harper is crawling. And that is quite exciting, however, she doesn't quite grasp the power she has with this ability. In other words, she doesn't know she can crawl. For example, if she is in the playroom and I leave, she won't crawl after me. She'll just scream and yell until I come back. So while she's technically mobile, she doesn't understand how to work this to her advantage. She will crawl for food, or to get anything that Hadley is currently playing with.

Her older sister is mastering a few skills here and there as well. She has really started to enjoy riding her bike.



Just in case that wasn't enough:





While Harper can't quite participate in all the fun a park has to offer, she enjoys watching the other kids play. I can tell by her kicking legs and squealing that she is saying, "Just you wait, kids. I'll run and jump with the best of you in no time."

What The Girl Wants

Will move for chocolate.

Bee Aggressive

On Monday, we went to Brookside Gardens to walk around and play in the many parks they have there. There is even a little train that takes a trip around the grounds that I purchased tickets for. We weren't able to go on it, however, and I'll tell you why shortly. Here's a view of a pond that we found on our walk. Jesse said to Hadley, "Hadley, look! It's a small, small pond! Just like in your book." Hadley looked at it and said, "I think that's a big, big pond, Daddy."

Here are the girls with their Daddy:

And here is a picture of Hadley minutes before she got stung by a bee for the first time:
As I post this, I'm trying to see if I can find the darn thing in the picture, but I can't. I took this picture, put the camera away, and then heard the terrible screaming a kid makes when she is hurt but doesn't understand what just happened. It's a completely different cry. When Hadley is running away from me and falls, or if she is doing something she isn't supposed to be doing and she hurts herself, she tries very hard not to cry. But this screaming and calling for me was complete fear, pain, and confusion. Hadley kept saying, "I didn't see it! I didn't see it!" As if she would've gotten out of its way had she seen the thing.

You might note from the picture that Hadley is up rather high on this playground equipment. Once I figured out what was going on, I darted for her, but could not figure out where to climb up. There was a slide, a fire poll that I do not have the strength to climb up, and a wobbly chain ladder. It wasn't until I circled this fort that I found some steps I could climb up. Keep in mind, Hadley is still screaming, and at this point a small crowd of toddlers and their mothers are closing in on the scene.

I manage to get to Hadley, who is frozen, holding her arm and screaming, "I got stung, Mama! I got stung!" This was no honey bee. This thing was huge and coming back for more (I know I am not a good judge of what is huge for a bee, but even Jesse said the bees at this park where large. So there you go.). I brushed it away a few times while trying to get Hadley to come down to the ground with me.

As we were climbing down, a little boy asked what happened. I said, "She got stung by a bee." Mothers and children looked at me in horror, and I, who apparently turned into Ranger Rick for a moment, calmly said, "It happens." I then scooped Hadley up and brought her to the car where Jesse had run to get the first aid kit.

After lots of screaming, we cleaned Hadley up and managed to settle her down by sharing our first time bee sting stories. I told her I was on something just like she was when a bee stung me. I told her I was playing with the zipper of my jacket and probably the bee had gotten stuck or something and that's why I got stung. I said I was at preschool so my teacher took care of the sting and I got to sit in her chair which I thought was pretty neat. Hadley asked Jesse about his first bee sting and he said, "Grandpa Feyen swatted a bee on my bare chest and it stung me. I was not happy."

So we now have the first bee sting under our belts. Thankfully, Hadley is not allergic to them.

Here are some videos of Happy Harper:




Did you not understand that? Well, here's another one:





Here's one last one of Harper in her duck (remember Hadley's was yellow?). The funniest part of the video is not on here, sadly. Hadley says, "Let's take a bath together!" And promptly rips off her clothes and tries to get in the duck with Harper. You can see part of it, but I turned the camera off too soon.

Here Come The Irish

Here's my cutie pie Harps ringing in the beginning of the Notre Dame football season at BW3s. The hat seems fitting, and I think she is looking just like her Great Grandpa Lewis and Grandpa Lewis right now. This seems appropriate as I know football is an important part of their lives (though they might not admit it).
Jesse and I were very excited to have found a BW3s in the area since we have a lot of fond memories of patronizing this restaurant while we were in South Bend. We thought that today would be a great day to introduce our girls to this establishment.

Here's my 2 going on 13 year old - "Oh my goodness, Mom, don't even think about taking my picture!"

And here's Jesse as happy as can be with his buffalo wing and celery stick:

Here he is saying "Talk to the tshirt"

And here's a video of the girls playing with a balloon. As you might be able to tell, Harper loses her mind when she sees balloons. Hadley was happy to entertain her with it.




I'm writing this entry knowing that the Irish won, but I'm not allowed to say anything because Jesse is still watching it. At least I know he won't be disappointed when the game is over. And at least he doesn't have to worry about me going into labor when the game ends, like I did the last time he watched an ND game.

A Post Where I Don't Complain about the Weather

I won't put away the flip flops yet, but fall is definitely in the air, and I am thankful for that. I don't have too much to write that has to do with one subject, so I'll share a few tidbits of information having to do with H1 and H2 and then post some pictures.

Hadley got her third haircut this morning. Nothing drastic, just a little snip to give it a little shape. She loved her first two haircuts, but this last one she was quite anxious about. It always catches me off guard when Hadley needs me to comfort her because she is usually so excited to do things by herself.

Harper had her 9 month check up yesterday. I know she is almost 10 months, but it was difficult to get an appointment in August because of all the sports physicals, etc. Besides, we were there often enough to check to make sure her ears were OK, so I wasn't too concerned.

While Hadley has impressed us with her weight and head size, Harper has decided to be the length of the family. She grew 3 inches in 3 months, which doesn't sound like a huge deal, but when the nurse measured her she came out in the 105 percentile. Well, there was no way to record that on the chart, so she had to "remeasure" her and get a number that would be acceptable to record. So Harper is in the 100 percentile for height, but technically it's 105%. I like to share in this accomplishment since I don't believe I've received 105% in anything before.

Over the weekend we went to Tysons Corner, the biggest mall I have ever been to in my life. It's like the Mecca of malls. I can't believe how big this place is. When I mentioned to a couple of my friends that we went there for the first time, they couldn't believe I have been living in the DC area for as long as I have and have not made a trip to "The TC" as I like to call it. We didn't do much shopping, but we did get to hang out in the indoor park for a bit:

No, it's not Jabba the Hut's mouth. Hadley's sliding down a tree trunk.

Here's our happy giant:

Hadley's always been into books:
Here's a short video of the girls together. Lately, after their afternoon naps, they have been "reading" books for quite awhile. Hadley's begun making up stories to go with the pictures on the page, and Harper likes to beat the books up a bit and then eat them.