4 Months!

The little bugger is four months now. He is still just as jolly as ever.

recently . . .

I have been lazy about posting lately because 1) we haven't been doing much, 2) we are currently without our normal camera (we sold our old one and are waiting for our new one to be released), and 3) Tom has been coming home earlier so even though we've still just been our boring selves, Tom has been home so I have been spending time with him instead of updating the blog. 

We did go to Bakersfield on Sunday to spend today with Tom's parents. Yesterday Harper kept saying, "Grandma's house, YAY!"  I did take a couple of pictures but they are upstairs and I don't want to wake up Harper from her nap so those will have to wait.

Jonah has been going through a rough phase.  He is normally so happy and smiley, but for the past few days he has been very clingy and starts to shriek if you set him down.  That made for a very interesting experience at Target today.  He is still big, and I just boxed up most of his 3-6 month clothes.  I weighed him on our scale the other day and he weighed 17 pounds.  We go in for his 4 month appointment next week so we will see how much he actually weighs. 

Harper is hilarious and Tom and I are always laughing at things that she says or does.  We are still struggling with her eczema.  She will just go crazy scratching her feet sometimes.  She gets upset, we get upset, and we don't know what to do to help her.  We are taking her to the dermatologist again in a couple weeks so hopefully he will have some answers for us.  Right now she is obsessed with grapes and wants to eat them all of the time.  She will come in our room every morning and say, "Okay, it's grapes time."  This is the face Harper makes when I ask her to smile and say "cheese." 

I will post 4 month and 2 and a half year updates for the kids soon, but I know that our parents were anxious for updates!

evening walk

Lately I have been walking over to the mall near our house with Harper and Jonah in the evenings to get out of the house.  If Tom isn't busy he will walk over and say hi, and sometimes he will even walk home with us. Today was one of those days, and it was a lovely evening.  To the east we saw a lovely rainbow over a very tiny Hollywood sign.

And to the west we saw a beautiful sky and the LA temple. 

Tom and Harper (who had just woken up after falling asleep in the stroller).

And Jonah, who loves to go on walks.

Also, Harper has recently started doing something funny after her nap.  When she wakes up, I go to her room she will say, "Only color in coloring book," and then she walks to some item in her room that she has colored on and says, "Oh no, messy!"  Luckily, they are washable crayons and Harper is happy to clean up the mess herself with a damp washcloth.  While she was cleaning off Jonah's bumbo seat today, which she had colored with an orange crayon, she kept saying, "No, no, no color on bumbo."  It was hard not to laugh.  I keep her crayons too high for her to reach and I have searched her room to make sure they are all put away, so I have no idea where she keeps finding crayons.

HOT

I took this screenshot on my phone earlier today:

We were at Costco this morning and Harper kept saying, "Mommy, it's too hot."  I agree.

3 Months, 29 Months

Jonah is 3 months old. 

• He loves to sit up and look around.  He has recently started to lift his head like he is trying to sit up when he laying down.
• He really responds to music.  As soon as music comes on or we sing to him, he calms down.  Harper did the same thing.
• He has regressed with his sleeping habits.  The last two nights he has woken up every 3 hours.  Boo.
• He "talks" all of the time.  He will make cooing noises for 20 or 30 minutes at a time for no apparent reason.
• He loves taking baths.
• He drools a lot.
• He likes to hold onto things, and is starting to enjoy holding onto toys and putting them in his mouth. 
• He likes to hold his hands together, kind of like he's praying.  It's cute.

Harper will be 29 months in a few days.

• One of my favorite things is when Harper spills or drops something, she will say, "Oh no, what happened?"  It is very cute.
• Recently Harper has decided that her dolls need to have "tummy times" every day.  
• She loves to say hi to everyone.  We walk over to the mall by our house a few times a week to walk around, and Harper says hi to pretty much everyone we pass.
• She does this really funny timid walk when she is being shy.  She will just take these really tiny, bouncy steps until she is more comfortable.
• She is pretty good with her ABCs, counting to 10, and most colors.  Though sometimes she thinks it's funny to say that everything is pink.
• We recently got Harper to start eating cereal for breakfast.  I know that it's kind of strange that she hasn't eaten it before, but we have never been able to get her to taste it.  Lately she has been having honey nut cheerios with almond milk for breakfast.  
• When Jonah is crying, Harper will say, "Oh no, Baby Jonah is crying.  Be happy baby." 

Happy kids

We love how quickly Jonah goes from this:

to this:

He loves being talked to, putting things in his mouth, and holding on tight to toys.  He even started laughing last week and he has the cutest little giggle you've ever heard. 

We've been having a little bit of trouble with Harper hitting Jonah when she wants attention, but other than that she loves him and is always very concerned with where he is and making sure he has lots of toys to play with. 

On Sunday we went to the baby blessing for our friends Sean and Rachel's little boy Dean, who is about a month younger than Jonah. 

Right before we left for church Tom got an email from work and had to stay home :(  The blessing was beautiful and Dean is adorable.  I won't go into details, but Harper and Jonah were both a handful and I'm pretty sure no one in the singles ward is going to ever want to have children, so we spent the rest of Sacrament meeting playing in the nursery.  But here we are before church.  We have the cutest kids in the whole world!

Visit from Kara

This past weekend my sister Kara came for a visit.  None of my siblings have ever visited me until my two youngest sisters came for Jonah's blessing and Kara came this week.  We have really been enjoying having visitors. 

While she was here Kara turned 24.  To celebrate, we hit up Sprinkles . . .

Where we waited in line.

And ate breakfast at the Griddle Cafe . . .

Where we also waited in line.

And enjoyed some oreo pancakes.

Harper is a big fan of Aunt Kara.

We went to the beach where Harper and Kara (well, mostly Kara) went for a jog.

We went downtown.  Here is Harper hugging some pink fabric.

We got together with my cousin Anisa and did some shopping.  Anisa is a pharmacist at Cedars Sinai and has lived in LA for the last couple of years, but I am a bad cousin and this is the first time I've seen her.

Kara and I ate dinner at Pink Taco (without any kids).

And then today did some more shopping before we had to take Kara to the airport.  Harper has been asking for "Aunt Kaya" all afternoon.  Thanks for visiting Kara, we had lots of fun!

Our BIG Baby

On Friday we took Jonah in for his (slightly late) 2 month checkup.  He weighed in at 15 pounds 5 ounces and was 26 inches long.  The doctor said that makes him in the 94th percentile for weight and "well above" the 95th percentile for height.  For comparison, Harper weighed 15 pounds when she was 5 months old and was 26 inches long at 6 months old.

Jonah continues to be a very smiley, sweet baby and has even slept through the night two times. 

Harper and her tutu

I feel like I need to make more posts about Harper because things have been a little all-about-Jonah recently.  Harper is a little obsessed with her tutu.  I made it for her last Halloween and she refused to wear it, but now she wants to put it on every day.

She wears it while doing her "cheese" smile for the camera.

While eating applesauce in the rocking chair in her room.

While dancing in her room.

She frequently asks to wear it during her nap.  No photo.  I don't actually let her wear it during her nap.

Jonah does this thing occasionally where he takes a REALLY long nap in the morning.  Like the whole morning.  But Harper and I like to stay upstairs so we don't disturb him while he is sleeping.  It seems like now that Jonah is around Harper really enjoys just hanging out with me and/or Tom.  Here are some self portraits we took this morning.

 They were Harper's idea.

I think I have complained before about Harper's eczema.  It hasn't really gotten any better and we haven't really gotten any better with dealing with Harper saying "itchy, right here," eight thousand times a day, but we have found a new distraction: gummy bears.  I don't actually mean gummy bears, that is what Harper calls gum.  Maybe she is a little young to be chewing gum, but it is buying us all a lot of sanity right now.  Except now we hear her say, "gummy bear, okay," all the time.  But at least she's not scratching her skin up.

Harper hadn't really shown any interest in babies or dolls until Jonah was born.  Recently, she has started carrying around these 3 little dolls with her around the house (she has to have all three).  I got them for a dollar a few months ago at a garage sale.  One dollar well spent.

And one picture of Jonah.  He has started sleeping a little better at night and has actually only gotten up once the past three nights.  We just love him SO MUCH.  He is the best little boy. 

ICE MEAM!

Yesterday we went to the grocery store and brought home some ice cream. Harper saw what we had purchased and was extremely interested in having some. Since she had just had a few cookies I gave her one small bite of ice cream and told her she could have some more "tomorrow." That seemed to appease her and we went on our merry way.

This morning Erica and I were lying in bed, fast asleep, when a loud voice from the room next door penetrated our slumber. "Daddy, wake up! Wake up daddy! ICE MEAM DADDY! WAKE UP!"

I gotta start watching what I say, because Harper doesn't let anything past her these days. I always thought that once she understood what "tomorrow" meant that she wouldn't be our little baby girl anymore. Looks like those days are over.

a Harper post

Harper loves to sing, though usually she makes up most of lyrics.  Recently she has been singing the alphabet song a lot and it is so cute.  After I recorded this video with my phone Harper watched it about a dozen times and laughed hysterically each time.

Harper has recently started playing with other kids better and making friends.  She particularly likes her friend Kate and always asks to play with her.  Last week she came over to play one afternoon.  They saw me swaddle Jonah before his nap and Harper and Kate wanted me to swaddle dolls so that they rock them to sleep.

And then on Friday we went to a park in Santa Monica with some friends and here are Harper and Kate playing in the playground.