1ST BIRTHDAY INSPIRATION

How we are already less than one month away from Harper's 1st birthday.....I have no idea. Somewhere between leaving the hospital with our teeny (& very jaundice) newborn and changing her 13 million blowouts she grew up into a toddler. 

With about a month left to plan we've decided on a woodlands theme party full of flower chains, mushrooms, and bambi!

Thanks to pinterest & some fellow bloggers like Jessica with little baby garvin and Amy Cavs, I threw together a little woodlands cheat sheet. The mushroom cupcakes and perfect braided pie are a must. As a housewife, I'm ashamed to say I've never made a pie by myself. I need recipes! For now we're sticking with a late brunch/lunchtime party. Of course I already have the dessert table stocked. For lunch I want everything to have a light summer taste. Chicken salad croissants with fruity chicken salad and side salad with peaches & pecans. Relying on replies and comments for the rest :)

On a trip to our local Target I passed up these fill-in invitations and decided handmade invites would happen next year. I also scored these balloons from the dollar section as well as the cute little wood rounds from the craft aisle. As for the birthday girl, I found this shimmery little number at baby gap last week. Between in-store sales and coupons I only ended up paying a little over 5 bucks for it. Momma loves a sale. 

Today, Justin and I tried to get Harper's 11 month picture with her chalkboard but girlfriend was not having any of it. My recent photos consist of 2 crying, 1 looking at her dad, 1 at the tv, and approximately 900 crawling away. More on that later in the week. Lastly, are first birthday traditions a thing? If so, what are they? We're new to the kid party game :)

Happy day before the day before the weekend! 

WILD & WONDERFUL. ARE WE MOVING?!

Rewind to the beginning of April. 

Justin got the news at work that we would be transferred to South Charleston, West Virginia almost immediately. We had already started packing to move in somewhere else in Pittsburgh on May 1st. So we cancelled that and continued to pack up. We found a beautiful townhouse down south that had everything we wanted as well as a big pool for Harper and wooded trails for us. Someone higher up in the company gave us a timeline and we continued to plan. 

After months of waiting when we got word that we actually wouldn't be going and the people who had arranged the move were no longer with the company. We also got some insider information that the branch we would move to wasn't one with had low numbers and high turn over. Now that we're only tied to a temporary lease, we have started our home search. By home I mean actual home! We're saying adios to renting and are excited to start the journey towards owning. More to come as we move forward with that :)

While we're excited to stay in Pittsburgh with friends and family, we constantly talk about how the mountains will someday be our forever home. With both of us working, Harper, starting up new business ventures (online based), and now house hunting we are constantly plugged in. By the end of summer I want to have 5 more full days spent outside. A lot of other bloggers have started doing social media free weekends as a way to turn off their phones & spend time with their family. We want to follow their lead and spend more time together, outside, offline. Including GPS. We have 1 trip to Big Bear WV planned in September with just the two of us. Otherwise, the rest of our excursions will be documented afterwards both on this blog and on instagram with #culottaventure. That is, if we can get where we're going with a regular old map...

Happy Monday, friends! :)

MONTHS 8, 9, & 10

Or the alternate title, hey I heard you were a wild one. My oh my, how our sweet, innocent 7 month old in the last post has changed in just a few short months. Kenny Chesney's Wild child is officially our theme song.

Harper started to crawl at exactly 8 months but was stuck in reverse for a solid month. As soon as girlfriend figured it out she was unstoppable. Most of the time she can be found waiving the laptop charger or pulling herself up on the toilet with her mouth firmly planted on the seat....In only a couple of months she went from 2 to 8 teeth, 3 of which came in all at once at 10 months. So for now, we'll blame the toilet licking on that. Since our last visit on here she has totally outlawed all baby food. French toast is her jam and she will make a piece disappear faster than you can cut it. She also loves chicken, carrots, bananas and anything beef. For us and for her, a Baby Led Weaning approach worked much better than trying to force cereals and purees on her that she hated. So far it has worked like a charm and we strongly stand behind it!

Developmentally she took her sweet time doing just about everything. At 10.5 months she's a strong crawler, says mama and dada, feeds herself, pulls up to her knees and almost her feet. It seems like everyday she starts doing something new. This past week she introduced us to her yoga skills with some downward facing dog, planks, and headstands (ehem, aunt Elise). She has also become quite the acrobat whether that means using dad as her own personal jungle gym or trying to escape the shopping cart at target. Anything is fair game for her. 

If you stuck around our way long enough growing up, you could hear my aunt sigh "child!" as my high energy cousin narrowly avoided death multiple times a day. Since Harper become mobile I've found myself doing the same thing and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Harper finally hit the age a couple of months ago where she's content to just hang out and it. is. wonderful. I'm not sure if it was early teething, bad sleep (which she CAN do through the night but  still chooses not to), or we just got a disgruntled baby. Although we're starting to experience some separation anxiety, she is the happiest little lady. We've started taking her out on little adventures where she can see new things and watch the big kids play which is hilarious to her right now. It took a couple of tries but as long as she's fed, napped, and has her tunes (homegirl has needs) she'll sit in her Thule bike trailer for ten or more miles. It may not be the mountain trails that we were used to before we were momma and dada, but it's a new kind of fun watching her love bikes & the experiences they bring.

Hours adventuring usually results in a nice, tongue out kind of nap. For her, I mean :)