Happy Halloween

In an effort to try to be more festive, we attended TWO Halloween events today and ate a TON of candy. This morning we went trick or treating at the law school with the parents in law school group. We discovered that Harper likes candy, or she at least likes the crinkly sound that the wrapper makes.Then this evening we went to our ward's trunk or treat. Harper was not a big fan of her costume, but she was such a cute little mouse!And here is our pumpkin. I wasn't ambitious enough to actually carve it. Maybe next year.
Lately Harper has started to reach out and grab more things (specifically my hair and Tom's face) and I was finally able to catch a photo of it. She and Tom are so cute together :)

Happy Birthday Carly!

Today is my sister Carly's 15th birthday (she's the one on the right). This blows my mind because when I was 15 I remember thinking that I was so grownup (ha ha) and I still think of Carly as being a little girl. Here are some interesting things about Carly:

-When she was born she weighed 11 lbs. 6 oz.
-She is brilliant. She surprised my Mom when she was 2 years old by reading her own bedtime story. We don't know how she learned how to read.
-She has the most beautiful auburn hair and her eyes are actually almost the same color as her hair. I'm totally jealous.
-She is my only sibling with whom I share a love for school.

Have a great day Carly! We miss you :)

so pleased with herself

We got Harper a booster chair a couple of days ago because she was hating the bumbo seat and we don't really have room for a high chair. She is sometimes liking it sometimes not so much, but when we first put her in it she was so excited. And she sat in it for 20 minutes in the kitchen with me while I made cookies yesterday (she doesn't normally like to do anything for 20 minutes at a time).

Visitors!

We had my mom and my stepdad visiting from Utah this past weekend and we had a fantastic time. It is hard to have so many of our family members so far away.
They had lots of fun hanging out with Harper, and I guess they were happy to see us too (ha ha).Harper loved hanging out with her Grandma and Grandpa, but apparently didn't feel like looking the camera in any of the pictures that we took. Here is Grandma feeding her some food.She watched some football with Grandma and Grandpa.
We also went to Venice beach and saw all of the crazy people and had gigantic snow cones (these were the medium sized snow cones).We also went to Mr. Bones pumpkin patch. As I think I've said before, Tom and I aren't very festive people. But we're trying. My Mom and Eric on the other hand, take holidays very seriously so we were happy that they were willing to come along. Harper kept trying to eat the straw.
And anything else within arms reach.But we had lots of fun and we actually got a pumpkin (photos to come later).We were sad to see Mom and Eric go, but we're excited to see them and everyone else in a couple of months when we go to Utah for Christmas!

6 months old and our 200th post

Wow, 200 posts. It seems like I was just making our 100th post, but since this has turned into The Harper Blog and she is infinitely more interesting than we are, I guess that explains the increased posting. For our 100th post we listed some interesting things about us. So I guess for our 200th post I'll list a couple of interesting things about Harper.

1. She currently weighs 16 lbs. 9 oz. and is 26 inches long. That puts her around the 50th percentile for weight and a little above the 50th percentile for height. When she was born she weighed 8 lbs. 1 oz. and was 20 inches long, so she's more than double her birth weight now.
2. She likes when I read her The Very Hungry Caterpillar. She has shown a preference for this book for a couple of months, but I haven't really figured out what she likes about it so much. It is a pretty great little book.
3. She has really bad cradle cap and eczema. Seriously, don't look at the back of her head. It's not a pretty sight.
4. She loves my cell phone and the remote control. If I'm holding her and I feel her diving for something, it is reasonable to assume that one of the two is somewhere nearby.
5. Harper loves squash. Ok, at this point she has only tried squash and peas, but the squash was a big hit. She got really excited every time I gave her a spoonful. It looks like she has inherited her parents' love of food.

what a difference a few days can make. . .

Here's Harper on October 14th:
Harper Learns How To Sit Up from Thomas Jackman on Vimeo.


And here she is yesterday, October 19th:
Untitled from Thomas Jackman on Vimeo.

Harper

We get A LOT of questions about why we chose to name our daughter Harper. I have been meaning to make this post for a long time, but several things reminded me of it today so here it goes. I always thought it would be really fun to choose baby names, but it turned out to be extremely stressful and really not that fun at all. There were a lot of names that I liked, but I couldn't choose that one name that I really liked and Tom and I had some difficulty agreeing on THE name.

Actually, about two thirds of the way through the pregnancy we did decide on THE name and started calling our little baby Hannah. But the more we thought about it, the more we realized that Hannah was too popular and wasn't the right name for our little girl. So we were back to the drawing board. I spent hours and hours looking through books and websites and making dozens of lists, but we couldn't make a decision. I wanted a name that was easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and not too popular but not too weird.

Earlier in the pregnancy I had mentioned the name "Harper" to Tom, but he said he didn't like it and there was no way we were going to use it. I had liked the name for a long time but I didn't think Tom would ever agree to it. About a week before Harper was born, he said (out of the blue) "I think I like Harper." But once he said that, I started to have some doubts (I am an indecisive person). We decided to wait until she was born to make a final decision, but we were pretty sure we would choose Harper. Tom let me choose her middle name and I thought that Grace sounded fantastic with Harper, so we went with that.

We really liked the association of the name with Harper Lee because To Kill a Mockingbird is a fantastic book. Plus, Atticus is a fantastic lawyer and since Tom is in law school it seemed fitting. An added bonus is that Harper Lee's birthday is April 28th and that was Harper's due date.

Since Harper was born, one of the Dixie Chicks and Lisa Marie Presley have both named their daughters Harper. I don't really mind, I think that it is a fantastic name and I don't think we're in danger of it getting too popular any time soon. Overall, I think we chose the perfect name. I am not really looking forward to choosing another perfect name in the (very, very distant) future.

Harper's new favorite toys

Harper has been interested in playing with her hands for a few months. She likes to clasp them together and look at them:A couple of weeks ago, she discovered her feet. She loves holding onto them and trying to put them in her mouth, particularly if she has socks or shoes on. This has made life a little easier for me. Normally, Harper does not like to be left on the floor to play for more than about 10 seconds. But now, I just set her on a blanket and hand her one of her feet and she will stay occupied for 20 minutes or so. Ok, I know she's not playing with her feet in that last one, but it was too cute not to post.

Tom and Harper

Harper loves her Daddy. She does this really funny thing where she will look at him until he looks at her, and when he does she smiles and then turns her head away really fast. It's cute.

She also love sitting on his lap while he's at his computer. I think we have a little computer geek on our hands.Here she is this morning before we went on a walk. Tom is really good at getting Harper to take a nap at church. This is no easy task. This last Sunday she fell asleep holding onto his tie.

Yum, Rice Cereal!

Earlier this week we decided to give Harper some rice cereal. She wasn't in the greatest mood the first day, but she is really liking it now. Earlier today I gave her some rice cereal mixed with a little mashed pears and she got so excited. It looks like she has inherited her parents' love of food :)

Harper's First Meal from Thomas Jackman on Vimeo.

garage sale shopping

Last weekend while we were Tucson, we went garage sale shopping with Tom's mom and his sister Robyn. It was a lot of fun. In the area that Robyn lives in, they have biannual community garage sales so we went to probably two dozen different houses and got several cute things for Harper.

This past week I have been looking forward to doing a little garage sale shopping in LA so I found a sale in Venice that looked good (it didn't start until 9am, hooray for not getting up early) and headed over there this morning. I was a little worried that everything would be overpriced or that everything would be gone by the time I got there, but it was pretty fantastic (let's face it, I'm kind of a sucker for clothing brands that I can't afford). The woman who was hosting the sale only had one child but had enough baby clothing for about ten. There were crates and crates of little girls clothes. We got a very new looking pair of these for 50 cents, some really cute Janie and Jack outfits for a dollar each, and a bag full of other things. Yay! I think I'm going to be doing more garage sale shopping in the future, anyone want to come with me?

making progress

Harper has been getting a little better about sitting up (wow, there are a lot of double "t"s in that sentence). She has moved from sitting for about 10 seconds at a time to about 30 seconds at a time. Here she is sitting on our bed this morning. I couldn't get her to look at me, so here is the baldest part of her head.She prefers standing to sitting, so she gets a little impatient and shoots her legs out after sitting for a few seconds. We're working on it.

She is back to sleeping through the night again after our trip (thank goodness). And she seems to be getting over her cold, although her cry is still a little hoarse. I feel bad that she doesn't feel good, but the cry is so cute.

family photos

Tom's brother, Brent, was kind enough to take photos of us this weekend. We are absolutely thrilled with how they turned out.

So if you're ever in Tucson and need some photos taken, give him a call.

we're back

I don't think I mentioned that we were going anywhere, but we just got home from spending a few days in Tucson, Arizona, visiting family. This was the first time that Harper has spent more than 90 minutes in a car and, while it went better than we anticipated, we are completely worn out from the trip. It didn't help it that Harper slept horribly the entire time we were there and we all returned home with a cold.
Despite that, we had a great time and it was wonderful to spend some time with family. Tom's sister Robyn and her family were moving into a new house, so there was lots of moving, hanging out, garage sale shopping, bowling, BYU-game-watching, and trying to get Harper to take naps. This post is going to be a little picture-heavy because I don't really feel good. Pictures are more interesting anyway.

Here is Harper hanging out with her cousin Mia
and Sydney
Here are Wyatt and Don eating pizza at the bowling alleyAnd here I am with Harper at the bowling alleyHere's Brent and his brand new baby AidenKids with bowling balls (Ryan, Sydney, Emma, Mia, and Wyatt), photo taken by Brent. Tom with sleepy HarperHarper with most of her Jackman cousins (we're missing Aiden and AJ)
On our way home we had an enjoyable stop by Tom's Aunt Judy's house for dinner. We were also able to see Denise, John, and AJ, who had been unable to make it to Tucson, and Tom's cousin Rachael and her family. Thanks for dinner Bob and Judy!