Oooops, I forgot...9 months!

I guess I haven't been the best for remembering to post at each of Harper's monthly birthdays. I've gotten most of them but have missed a few, including this last one on the 14th.

Ok, so here's the 9 month up date on the little miss.


1.) She is still not crawling in the traditional sense, or in an organized fashion, however, she is extremely mobile. She gets from here to there in the blink of and eye in her own way. Mostly rolling, and scooting, with the occasional short crawling span. I think, like many other kids whose parents we talked to, she will skip this stage.

2.) She has started pulling herself up on everything, and walking all around her crib and the furniture. She is not taking steps on her own yet but she does challenge herself by letting go for a minute and them grabbing back on. I'm sure it won't be long.

3.)She is sporting 6 teeth now and working on more. The teething has pretty much been a constant since 3 months. She seems to deal with it pretty well with only the occasional outburst.

4.)Our little princess is a semi-verbal baby now. She says "mama" and "dada" clearly on a regular basis. She has a couple more words in the works that will soon be additions to her vocabulary... book, bottle, and Ella.

5.)Harper has also become quite a vision on the dance floor. She loves music. Whether it's a toy, the T.V. or the radio, she will dance when the music starts. No one's gonna say my girl doesn't have rhythm.

6.)A budding phase is banging things together. She will bang anything she can hold on the table, in her hands, or a personal favorite, on mom or dads head. Whatever keeps her happy right?

It's amazing how fast things seem to be happening. Watching her figure things out is truly amazing.

After her last appointment, Harper is in the 50th percentile for weight and the 75th for height. Adam keeps saying "she's so big". She is looking more and more like a kid now. It's crazy to think that by next Christmas she will be.

Keep watching, we will have the 9 month pictures coming soon.

To keep you occupied until the pictures come, here is a little routine Harper put together with her Kidz Bop cd. Watch out this little "shorty" is fire burning.

It's Hard to be the Baby on Christmas.

Well, poor poor Harper Olivia. This was a truly unfortunate Christmas for our little princess. She was completely overloaded this morning with the love and generosity of her mom and dad, 2 sets of grandparents, 2 aunts 2 uncles, and one set of over the top godparents. I think next year we will all need to cut down on the gifts a little. I don't want her to think this is how it's gonna go every Christmas. It was a pretty incredible day for everyone. She is definitely blessed to be the first grandchild. I feel pretty comfortable saying the special treatment will slowly diminish the more and more we have, so sad.
A very merry first Christmas for the Brown family.

Happy Birthday Dad

Sunday night my mom had a Christmas/birthday party for my dad. Today is his real birthday, however, the weekend worked better for the celebrations. He has been working on finishing the basement at their house, along with all the renovations at my house. He finally finished it so it only seemed right to have the holiday get together held in the new "adult entertainment room" as my dad calls it. This only means it has a bar and pool table, not what you may think. Everything went beautifully despite our horrendous return from DC. Happy Birthday Dad.

...in good times and bad.

I have to say that Adam and I have never needed a Christmas more than we do this year. This has been a December to remember that's for sure. I think the only thing that has kept our spirits remotely high is the thought of our little girl having her first Christmas.

Our problems started 2 weeks ago when we decided to put new tile down in the kitchen and add banquette seating. We thought that with 3 weeks before Christmas we would have plenty of time for these minimal renovations. Come to find out that we had asbestos backed vinyl underneath our existing tile. Oh the loveliness of owning an older home. We, at this point, had to find an asbestos removal team, get them to come out last minute, and still leave enough time for the tile installer and my dad to get back in there before our family came for the holidays. Well, we finally found someone to come and remove the asbestos. It was only going to take one day, then the tile guy could come back still giving us time to spare. This, of course, not only put strain on our nerves but our wallets too. It came to total about 4 times the original cost!!! We also went 2 weeks with the refrigerator in the family room, the dishwasher in the dining room, and no hot water. Talk about crappy situations. Now that it's finished it looks beautiful and definitely worth all the trouble. The only thing we have left to do is move the light over the table. That will just have to wait until AFTER the holidays.

So moving on to our next issue. We all traveled up to DC last weekend for my cousin Kyle's wedding. We left Thursday morning and all went to the rehearsal dinner that night. His fiance` Erin is such a sweet beautiful girl and everything they had planned was to perfection. Friday we had a casual day touring the area and running some errands, then got ready and headed to the event at 6:00 that night. Everything was gorgeous, and Harper was the cutest thing in her little dress and feather headband.
So with the winter storm warnings for the area we had decided to get a head start on things and leave Friday night instead of Saturday morning as planned. The snow was scheduled to start around midnight but instead came about 8:00. We hit the road at 9:00 and the roads were already pretty bad. We saw several cars off the road before even getting to the highway. We finally got to 95, with full tanks of gas (thank God) and my parents leading the way in their car. We were astonished to not only see how bad the road was but how many cars were traveling on it. We traveled for about 5 hours going no more than 20mph at top speed, with thousands of other cars and tractor trailers. Cars were off the road all over the place and some even stalled out in the middle of the highway. Things had been coming to a head for the last hour or so but it was an eighteen wheeler losing control of it's trailer and almost sliding into us that put me over the edge. We needed to get off the road, it was 2am and we had the baby with us. It was by far the scariest night of my life. I couldn't get over how much danger I had put myself and my baby in. Once we finally decided we needed to get off the road we realized that all the exits we had passed for the last several miles were blocked with cars and trucks that couldn't get up them. We were STUCK!! We couldn't get off the road nor could we just pull over to take a break. People were using the break down lanes on both sides as driving lanes. There was no side of the road to pull over on. It was like an episode of "The Twilight Zone". We couldn't get off the road, we couldn't stop moving yet it was 4am and the roads were a death trap. I suddenly couldn't breath and was in a full fledged panic attack!! Finally, at 4:30am we found an exit ramp that was able to be driven on. At the end of this magical ramp, we found ourselves at the mecca of hotels. There were 7 hotels we had to choose from, however, after checking, we found not one of them had any rooms left. Talk about kicking a horse when it's down. We, so far had driven 92 miles, in 7 hours, average speed... 11 mph. We decided, at this point, our final resort was to sit in the Waffle House for a little while then go park somewhere and try and get at least some sleep before tackling the roadways again. After about an hour of shut eye we took off, luckily, finding the highway much less crowded and slushier than just a few hours before. Still not the best driving conditions but worlds better. We finally drove into our driveway at 11:00am Saturday morning, 14 HOURS after our initial departure! We are so blessed to be safe and sound, and I can not say enough about how extraordinary our sweet little girl is. She slept the ENTIRE time with the exception of our time in the Waffle house. She woke up for the last 2 hours of the trip and just enjoyed the ride. I have already marked it in the books to buy her a car when she turns 16. She deserves it.

Last but not least, to top off our super fantastic month of December, we had to cancel our New Year trip to NYC. We were so excited to go up and see the city in all it's Christmas glory. We were going to see all of Adam's family, including a second cousin we have yet to meet. It was going to be our first, much deserved, vacation without the baby.

I certainly hope 2010 brings better luck. We have definitely had a fantastic 2009, however, this past month would bring anyone down. Time for Christmas to come and bring us some cheer.

The party girl

Harper and I had quite a weekend of Partying. Our first outing was on Friday. We all went to a Christmas party over at the Alderson's. Grace was sweet enough to host a party for all of her friends, and all of the kids were nice enough to bring their parents along. It was fun to get the kids together and see everyone all dressed up. Harper even got to bring home her very own, hand made my mom and dad, ornament for the tree. Beth and Jay are always having parties and get togethers at their house. I guess Grace is just following in mom and dad's footsteps, and she does throw a damn good party to boot.

Our second party of the weekend was Saturday morning/afternoon. It was our friends, Whitley and Steve's little boy, Tully's 2nd birthday. Again, I think the adults had as good of a time as the kids did. It was a pirate themed party (having nothing to do with the fact that both his parents are ECU graduates I'm sure). There were kids from 9 months up to 9 or 10 years old. Steve was in charge of the grill and Whitley was in charge of everything else. We had a ton of fun. It got me excited for Harper's rapidly approaching birthday.

Our last party of the weekend was Saturday night. It was our annual Tacky Sweater party at the Ramsey's. These parties are always a good time and have become one of the staples of the holiday season.

The little elves got me

Ok, so I know these things are totally annoying and stupid, but I got sucked in. While I was doing it I swore I was NOT going to post it on the blog, however, I had tears in my eyes watching Adam. I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did. Especially Adam since he's at work and hasn't seen it yet.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Thankful to be catching up

I'm finally posting our Thanksgiving trip to DC. Things have been crazy this holiday season. We have packed a lot of activities into a relatively short period of time. We are trying to enjoy every minute knowing it will be over soon.

Every other year we go up to DC to my Aunt and Uncle's house, leaving every other year for them to come down to us. This year, as it happens, was a year for them to come down here. We ended up going up there because my cousin Justin's wife Vangie was due with there second baby on Thanksgiving day. She ended up having her a week early so we were all able to meet and fawn over little Jada.

There were only 3 of my 6 cousins there, but including us and a few more still made a grand total of 15. It's always nice seeing everyone again, and Harper LOVED playing with all of her adoring fans. We did a lot while we were there so I'll break it down for you with pictures and all.

Harper really enjoyed her first Thanksgiving. She stuffed herself to the brim, like everyone else, and took a nice nap after dinner.

Harper and Juris had a GREAT time playing together. I'm not sure who loved who more. Isn't she the cutest, she looks like a little Gap Kids model.

Little 7 day old Jada was on her best behavior and made quite an impression on the fam. Under 6 pounds and still rocking the triple chin.

Harper gave us all a run for our money in Mexican Train.

We went to go visit Harper's great-grandma. It was the first time meeting her for both Harper and me. She was so sweet, there was an instant bond with her and Harper.

Every year my family goes out to cut their own Christmas tree. It's a fun tradition and quite an event. It was fun to have the kids with us this year to enjoy it all. The place we went had goats and sheep to feed.

We all went on a hay ride out to where the trees were.

This one looked good to Harper.

The family Thanksgiving 2009

Santa's Little Helper

Yes, I have already wrapped all my Christmas presents. I can't stand having a bunch of bags hanging around the house. I need order and sanity at all times. Harper and I sat around the family room the other night and wrapped presents while listening to Christmas music. It was quite festive. Harper had a great time "sorting" through all my ribbons and bows to find the perfect one for each gift. She is such a big help around the house.