Our big little girl

Working full time has really cut into my blogging time! Just wanted to share a couple of quick pics of H so you can see how big our little girl is getting!

She's a full-on toddler now, and pretty much every day I marvel at how quickly she is growing and wish that I could freeze time for a while. I absolutely love this stage - it is so much fun to see her develop, learn, and express herself in new ways every day.

Here are a couple of pictures of Harper playing with her wagon - she loves to pull all of the blocks out of it, climb in, and be pulled for a spin around the house. As you can tell from the pics, she's completely outgrown it but we still let her climb in. Looks like it's time for us to invest in a Radio Flyer...do you think they make an indoor version?

Harper's Second First Birthday Celebration!

As many of you know, Harper was lucky enough to have TWO first birthday celebrations - one in Austin (pictures below) and one in Denver. We're all lucky to have so many people that love her and want to celebrate her first year with us. Here are some pictures from the Denver celebration:

Harper's First First Birthday Celebration!

As promised, even though they're a little late...here are some pictures from Harper's "first" 1-year birthday celebration!

Look at her go, she's a walking girl!

Yes, it has been pointed out to me many times that I failed the blog-a-day challenge...but let's look at the positives here, people - at least it's got me blogging again, right? Right.

I still need to sift through all of the birthday pictures and post some good ones, but I wanted to be sure to share H's big news - she's walking! She's by no means nimble on her feet, and she still prefers to crawl when she wants to get somewhere quickly, but she's taking lots of steps on her own. I'm proud to say that her first steps were to get to me, and she landed on me with arms outstretched for a hug - definitely melted my heart.

Here's a video - this is actually not her best walking display, but I love that she's truly "toddling" and actually falls down and gets back up and keeps going.

Forgive the crazy camera work at the end - she wants a hug as a reward for all of her walking displays, and it's hard to play camera-woman and hug-giver at the same time.

More details and pics to come....

I was totally called out on my failure in the "blog-a-day" challenge by Angie. I will post more pics and details about the past couple of weeks, but here's a quick summary of what we've been up to:

Harper's birthday was treated like a family holiday, and she had parties in both Austin and Denver, and we all had so much fun. We returned from Denver at around midnight on Sunday night, and Saber then had to leave for Charlotte for work at 7am on Monday morning (which means a 5:30am car to the airport - NOT FUN). This week H had her first 2 days at preschool and her nanny Marla started with us, so we've been busy getting up to speed with her. Today was Saber's company picnic and the weather was a cool 102 degrees outside in Dallas - perfect for hanging outside! Saber and Harper are both nursing bad summer colds, and H has a lovely croup-y cough that she's powering through like a trooper. I start work on Monday and Saber will be back in Charlotte for the week and we're all trying to get our acts together by then.

All in all a busy but exciting time around the Sherrard house, and I'm trying to soak up every minute with my girl before I head back to the land of the working on Monday. I promise to post pics from her birthday over the weekend!

Austin Birthday Celebration!

I'm posting a quick blog to live up to my blog-a-day challenge - we are in Austin and had a great birthday celebration for Harper today with family and close friends.  We're having a great time and can't wait to share pictures and more details once we're back in Dallas!

One thing we learned about Harper today - she doesn't seem to be a fan of sweets.  Rather than dig into her birthday cupcake and smear it all over her face like we've seen other 1-year-olds do, she pushed it off to the side and wouldn't even taste it.  Even after we tried to entice her by showing her how yummy cupcakes are and making a big show of enjoying them ourselves, she wouldn't even open her mouth to take a taste of the icing.  Don't worry - we have faith that she'll warm up to sweets in no time!

Happy Birthday Harper!

To honor this day, I am jumping forward in time a little bit from my last post to say Happy Birthday to our beautiful little girl. What an amazing year it's been, and I just can't believe how much she has changed and enriched our lives. It's funny how much parenthood changes you - Saber and I have done a lot of "what were we doing at this time last year" reflection over the past couple of days, and though I can remember the hours and moments really clearly, I somehow can't fathom that there was a time when Harper wasn't an essential part of who I am and who we are as a family...don't know if that makes sense to you, but somehow it makes sense to me.

Happy First Birthday to our girl, and we can't wait to celebrate many more!

Here's a little comparison of our family a year ago vs now: