Harper has a new cousin!

Aiden Reid Jackman was born on August 27th and weighed 7 lbs. 8 oz. He is really cute and has red hair, we can't wait to meet him! Harper now has eight cousins (7 on Tom's side, 1 on my side). Here are some photos taken by Tom's brother Brent who is a wonderful photographer.

Here he is with his big sisters Emma and Sydney.

the first...

...week of school begins
I find myself in amazement that I am beginning my 3rd and final year at law school. The first two were indeed a blur. That means we have also lived in Los Angeles for two years! By this time next year we will have matched the amount of time I lived in Provo, which was a lifetime ago. I am going to be spending a bit more time on campus this semester than I did last year because of the nature of my class schedule, but I will still have Fridays off. A four day week isn't so bad and we plan on doing some fun things together this semester.

...time Harper has been inside a Chipotle (or been used as a lab rat)
Erica and Harper came up to the UCLA campus on Thursday to participate in a UCLA psychology department experiment that is trying to figure out how infants track movement. According to the guy running it Harper has excellent tracking abilities and throughout the test he kept telling me to close my eyes because he thought the machine was tracking my eye movement and not hers because she was doing so well. This is the payoff for Erica taking all of those DHA packed fish oil pills as soon we she found out she was pregnant. They also gave us a cute UCLA t-shirt for our troubles. As a special treat we celebrated by splitting a burrito at a nearby Chipotle.

Note: the shirt says "UCLA Baby Lab"

...time Harper has been to the beach
On Friday we took the car to Santa Monica to get its 12 month servicing. We then took a little stroll down to the Santa Monica Beach / 3rd St. Promenade. This was a nice chance to test out the Baby Bjorn that we got from our friends who are moving out of the ward. Harper definitely likes the fact that she can look at what's going on. We didn't stay in the sun too long as Harper still isn't old enough to lather the sun screen on. Must to Erica's disappointment, we were forced to spend most of our time in the shops that permeate the promenade.

Note: the bib on the carrier is used to capture the geyser of saliva that she is constantly generating. When she actually starts teething we are in trouble. Also, there is something magical about babies with hats.
That's it for news. Until next time.

WARNING: GRATUITOUS BABY PHOTOS AHEAD

If you made it this far you undoubtedly agree that we have somehow given birth to the cutest (now four months old) baby in all the land. We're still trying to figure out how that happened.

Harper's New Favorite Game

Untitled from Thomas Jackman on Vimeo.

four months

Harper is 4 months old today! She now weighs 14 lbs. 5 oz. and is 24.25 inches long. That just about the 50th percentile for height and a little above the 50th for weight. She hasn't had any new infections so it looks like the antibiotics are doing their job. We got her 4 month shots at this appointment so if last time was any indication, she will probably sleep for the rest of the day. She is such a wonderful baby, I can't believe how fast she is changing! Here is a photo from every week of the last four months (click on it to make it bigger).

Back to School

It's that time again. It's crazy to think that after all of this school, this is Tom's final year. School started yesterday, although Tom is actually working this week so he only went to one of his classes. It is going to be great having Tom home more and having Fridays off for the next few months.

Tom has really enjoyed being back at Irell for a couple weeks. We were able to go to dinner last night with a couple of people from the firm (thanks to the Floods for watching Harper!). It was nice to get out, but it is so weird to be away from Harper after having her with me all of the time. I missed my baby :(

Speaking of Harper, I cannot believe how cute she was in this sundress today. Is it just me, or is she the cutest baby ever?

appointment update

This morning Harper and I saw a pediatric urologist about her kidney reflux problem. The doctor confirmed that she has reflux on the left side and she said it is around a grade 2 (out of 5) problem. Normally, this grade of reflux would correct itself, but Harper's situation is complicated by the fact that she has a duplicated system (she has two ureters instead of one). The doctor said there is about a 50% chance that the problem will just go away. In the mean time Harper is taking antibiotics every day as a preventative measure and we will be seeing the urologist in six months for some more testing. If the problem doesn't correct itself, or if Harper has breakthrough infections, she will either need surgery to correct the problem or she will undergo a non-surgical procedure (I'm not sure on the details). I was very relieved to find out that the problem isn't too severe and is only causing minimal swelling in her kidney.
p.s. You can check out Harper's photo on a blog called Z Recommends by clicking here. I got an email asking if they could use her photo for post they were wanting to make.

growth spurt?

Harper seems to have undergone a significant growth spurt over the last couple of days. Two of her 3 month sleepers are now too short and it looks like she might be getting her first teeth. I have been able to see her bottom two teeth for the last few weeks, but they seem to be a little more noticeable now. Her drooling has gotten out of control; sometimes I will be holding her and feel or a big splash of drool on my foot. Yuck. She has also started grabbing things more accurately. Today Tom was feeding her a bottle during Sacrament meeting and she grabbed the bottle away from him. She is such a wonderful baby, we are so lucky to have her in our lives :)

Tom has finished up work with Hogan for the summer and is now spending some time with Irell before school starts. Here are some photos from the summer events he attended.

Here he is at the "welcome fiesta."Here he is at Speedzone.And at a cooking class.And doing some indoor skydiving at ifly.And working hard at his desk.This is all of the summer associates from Hogan's LA office.He worked hard this summer and I'm so proud of him!

just because

We're not up to much, so I thought I'd just post some pictures from the last couple of days.

ETA: I can't believe how red her hair is getting, I love it! It looks a little like my sister Carly's hair, which I have always been jealous of.

why I'm wishing Harper was a little bit more fussy

Note: this is not Harper, it is her evil twin who has less hair...

I ran across an interesting article today on www.msnbc.com that talked about the current parenting culture and the vast number of resources out there which claim to know the best way to parent a child. It goes on to saw that these resources don't really account for genetic predispositions which may cause our children who we are so diligently training to act in a completely different way than we are expecting them to based on what "experts" have said.

It was this little segment that caught my attention:

"One of the strongest and most counterintuitive findings in this nascent field is that children with a sweet temperament, which is under strong genetic control, are the least likely to emulate their parents and absorb the lessons they teach, while fussy kids are the most likely to do so."

Now I'm not so certain I'm happy that Harper is such a "good baby"...

Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/151758

doctor update

Harper had an appointment with the radiologist this past Wednesday to have some tests done and we found out that she does have the kidney reflux problem. We won't know how severe it is until we meet with a urologist, but the radiologist described it as "not too severe." Whatever that means. Harper was actually really good during the testing, but it was hard to watch. For now she is on a low dose of antibiotics every day and this will probably continue until she outgrows the problem or has to have surgery. We're hoping to get her in to see the urologist in the next couple weeks, so I will update when we find out more.

I hope Harper likes cereal

Tom and I both really like breakfast cereal. Whenever I see one of our favorite cereals for around $1.50 or less, I will usually buy it and stash it in a random cupboard. I didn't realize how quickly the boxes have been accumulating. Tonight we decided we should try to figure out how many boxes we have and which ones are expiring soon because things have been getting a little out of control. If I remember correctly, there were 47 boxes of cereal plus a few boxes of oatmeal. I think I paid less than a dollar for most of these and quite a few of them were free after coupon, but I think I should probably take a little break from buying cereal before it overtakes our apartment.

weekend

Tom's third year of law school is quickly approaching. He has one more week of work at Hogan and then he will be working back at Irell for a couple of weeks before school starts. I am so excited to have Tom home more often :) A few of Tom's friends just finished taking the bar, so they got together on Friday night for some video games. Unfortunately, we forgot to take a picture. So many of our friends have moved out of our ward over the last few months and we really miss them.

Harper seems to be feeling much better. She had another antibiotic shot on Friday morning and weighed 13 lbs. 10 oz. at her appointment. She seems to be in a much better mood, although her sleep schedule has been crazy so she isn't quite back to her old self. We have moved her to her crib which is going pretty well. The first couple nights she woke up around 3, both times because her head was against the crib railing. After the second night we realized that the mattress wasn't level and she was gradually moving toward the railing at night. We put a towel under one side of the mattress to level it out so hopefully that fixes the problem. Her swing has been a lifesaver over the last week because it was the only thing that she would let me set her down in. Here she is hanging out in her swing:

On Saturday night we went to Malibu to the house of a partner at Hogan for dinner. Their house is beautiful and it overlooks the ocean (you can't really tell from the picture, but that is the ocean way in the background).
One of Harper's favorite things to do lately is stand up (assisted, of course). Tom helped her stand up this morning in her crib and she got really excited.
Here we are before church this morning. She was a little grumpy, but still so cute :)
Here is a photo I took a few days ago. The one on the left was taken when Harper was about a week and a half old and the one on the right was taken at about 14 weeks. She's getting so big!