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:

Last Spring semester swim class

Harper's first semester of swim lessons ended in April, and Saber was able to come to class and take some great pictures and video of how far she had come in just a few short months. She loves swim and being in the water, and we're really looking forward to starting the Summer swim semester in a couple of weeks.

She's great at floating, going underwater, and of course splashing, as you'll see in one of the videos. There are a lot of children's songs sung throughout the class, so you'll have to endure hearing some of those if you want to watch the videos - but I think they're worth it.

The beginning of crawling

Here is a video of Harper from when she first started crawling. I looked at the date on this video, and it is from April 23rd - 7 weeks ago! As you can imagine, she's much faster now, and she's actually standing without holding onto anything and is very close to walking on her own...but you're going to have to wait to see the video of that. Hey, I need to hold back on posting too much at a time if I'm going to live up to this "blog-a-day" promise I've made.

Harper's Baptism

I warned you in the last post that we would be going back in time a little....

Harper was baptized on Easter weekend in Austin. Despite the fact that the service didn't start until 8pm (an hour past her bedtime) and lasted for 2 hours, she did great and loved looking around and taking everything in. She of course screamed when the actual baptism happened, because she did not love the water OR the oil on her forehead.

Other than the wonderful experience of having our first child baptized, the most memorable moment of the evening came when I carried her up with me for Communion and she proceeded to grab the chalice and spill an unbelievable amount of the wine down the front of her white gown. It must run in the family - those of you that were at our wedding (in the same church) remember that by the end of the evening there was a huge red wine stain down the side of my dress. Luckily my mom, the domestic magician, was able to remove the entire stain and rescue the Christening gown to be used for potential future Sherrard/Murray children and hopefully generations to come.

Team Sherrard

With her Godparents Angela and Jeff:

With Grandma:

With Grumpy:

The Blog-a-Day Challenge

I have caught so much flak for not keeping up with the blog, and I am so behind - so now I am challenging myself to post one blog per day until I get caught up. I'll be going back a couple of months, so you'll probably be able so see Harper growing in these posts!

I could take the easy route and count this as today's blog, but I'll get things started on the right foot and post one with some pics right after this one.

Conquering Harper's fear of the bath

So...this actually happened a few weeks ago, but I am just now getting around to sharing the story. One day, all of a sudden, Harper developed a real fear of the bath - she would literally start screaming right when she saw the bath filled with water and cry through the entire bath. There was no traumatic experience that led to this, and we knew that it wasn't a fear of all water because she was still loving swim lessons.

We did some research (what did parents do before Google?) and found that this is actually somewhat common, and Saber devised a strategy - he decided that if Harper saw him enjoying hanging out in her inflatable bathtub, she would see that it was okay and she should enjoy it again too.

Saber actually spent a couple of days sitting in the inflated duck and watching TV in the living room while Harper played on the floor next to him, and then he went through the phased process of getting her back into the duck tub. He also made up a bathtime song that talks about how fun Mr. Duck is and how he's Harper's friend, which we sing to H at bathtime. It all worked! Saber's a paternal genious, and Harper has been happily enjoying her baths in the duck ever since!

The process is documented in pictures below.

Saber hanging out in the duck:

Bringing Harper into the duck - Dad's in it, so it must be safe, right?

Still not so sure about this...

Happily hanging out with Mr. Duck again!

On the move...slowly but surely

Harper has really been working on her crawling skills for a few weeks now, and she successfully pushes herself backward, but has had a hard time getting herself to where she intends to go. Well, today she started to master the army crawl and has been slithering herself along the floor. We hear it's just a really quick hop from here to chasing her around like crazy and fondly remembering the days when she wasn't mobile. Congratulations on getting yourself in motion, Harper!

Swingin' into Spring

Yes, it has been WAY too long since I posted on the blog, and I apologize for that. To hold Harper's loyal fans over, here are a few pics from her first trip to the park a couple of weeks ago - she loved the swings, and DID NOT love the slide.

Water baby!

Harper had her first swim lesson last week, and we're happy to report that she absolutely LOVED it. She was really comfortable in the water and gave us so many smiles throughout the class. She'll go once a week through mid-April - she's brushing up on her swimming skills in preparation for some time on the lake during the summer!

Saber actually had a bit of a break at work, so he was able to come to class and take some great pics and videos. Doesn't H look cute in her ruffled bikini?

Holiday Pics

Just a few belated pics from December and the holidays:

Bundled up to go for a walk

Dressed up to meet Santa

Checking Santa out

Our little Christmas elf

Her favorite part of Christmas was chewing on the paper