Goodbye 205, Hello 1204!

We BOUGHT a house!

Justin and I rented in a 600 sq. foot apartment for 15 months. It was a 2 bedroom, one big square type layout place. The bathroom was basically in the living room with the couch about 8 feet away. It was more than enough for the short time that it was just us, but as soon as Harper and all of her paraphernalia came along we had already outgrown it. Sometime in the end of July we called our good friends (who also happen to be the best realtors!) and we started our search. 

After looking at a few places in the area we stumbled across our new home. It was significantly less expensive than the other places as it was an estate that had been heavily smoked in and empty for quite some time. We knew the furnace was old, carpet would need replaced, and everything that had paint would need to be redone as well as some of the electrical outlets. We low balled our offer and received a counter of exactly what we wanted to pay. Because it was an estate we had a quick 45 day closing, packed up our shoe box apartment, and started the weeks of projects.

When we first talked about getting new carpet and painting it seemed like an easy task. Wrong! We quickly found out that in addition to painting we had to hand wash, prime, and then double to triple coat everything. We had a deadline to get everything done as our carpet was set to be installed 3 days before move in day. In addition, every single surface including floors, windows, lights, doors, and closet organizers all had to be washed. We crammed our schedule so full. As soon as work was done for the day one of us would stay home with Harper while the other was at the new place. She was less than thrilled to be caged in a play pen watching me paint but with the help of great family and friends we were able to reach our deadline with all but a couple of window ledges painted.

Moving day was a gigantic blur. Justin and his buddy started moving furniture and boxes while I stayed back at the old place with Harper and packed all of the boxes for them to take. It took from early morning until after dinner to get it finished. Our lease wasn't up at the apartment for another 3 weeks so we were able to leave some of the less important items there as we unpacked at the house. We're fortunate enough to have awesome friends and family who helped us move, paint, redo electrical work and get the apartment back in mint condition. 

On Halloween day Harper and I had to go sweep the floor one last time and drop off our apartment keys. I quickly realized that we would never again go inside our first place. The place we went after we were married, the place we shared all of our first memories living together and then later brought our first baby home to. The place we spent countless hours trying to get her to stop crying & and even more hours laughing with her. 

For about a week we had the hardest time making our new place feel like home. But since then Harper has taken her first steps here, adopted the role of neighborhood watch, and learned more than one way to crawl up/down steps even with a baby gate. While we still have a list of renovations to tackle, this is our home & we couldn't be happier. 

1204, we love you!

(insert shameless amount of baby pictures)

HARPER AT 11 MONTHS

Where oh where has my baby gone. With every day that passes she looks less chubby & more grown up. 

The only way we can get her to lay next to her board without rolling on top of it, eating it, or crawling away is to have Justin (see knee and toes to the right) tickling her and ready stop any nonsense. In short, bad cop. We know our roles ;) For the past week and a half she's been sticking her finger in her ear, running a low grade temp, not eating as much and sleeping poorly so we took a trip to the pediatrician. Luckily her ears came back clear but lady is working on some big molars. This poor girl has never gotten a single tooth in, only in pairs of 2 or 4 so it was no surprise to hear the top two were working their way down. Between that and the lovely cold/stomach bug her and I are currently battling we're completely miserable over this way. Pro: We found out her exact height and weight. Chunky lady is actually 24lbs 3oz. Sorry board, you stand corrected.

Harper's newest talents include furniture creeping, peek a boo, climbing, and getting into the dishwasher the second you open it. She's still obsessed with anything daddy and is developing an intense separation thing with both of us. Together, things have made Justin's workouts at home quite interesting. At least rack em' for him, kid. 

My best friend and I tried to take Harper to the pool for the first time this month (the pool we met at 19 years ago!) and she hated, no.....DESPISED it. I'm not sure if it was the number of people, the size of the pool, or the fact that it was about a million degrees. But something set her off and she was that kid screaming as if we were taking her into a pool full of acid. The second the water touched her she lost her shat. The little baby pool at Nana's however is still great fun. Unrelated, here's a cute picture of the man and the baby in the green boots (or lack there of).

TGIF, even if we are still 20 minutes away.

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 :) 

Harper 6 & 7 Months

7 months?! Where has the time gone. Clearly, it's going fast because she's pushing 7 and a half months and we're just getting around to the 6 month update....HA. Since the last update, girlfriend has grown up so much! Crazy lady is rolling everywhere and getting into everything she reach with her chubby little hands. As you can see by our new board location, she will no longer sit on the couch. Or lay next to the board, or stay off of it.

Since the last time we were on here Harper has become an absolute wild woman. She's into everything and reaches for things the moment she sees them. I fear we may have an accidental shoplifter on our hands when she realizes she can grab things off of shelves. She's also stopped sleeping through the night. A normal night goes something like 7:45pm bath, 8:15 bottle then put in bed. 12:30-1:30am wake up and scream bloody murder for a bottle then I change her, put her back down, pump, and get back to bed by 3/3:30. She's usually up talking and kicking any time from about an hour after she's put back down until 4am but puts herself to sleep. Then anywhere from 5:30-7am is time to wake up for the day. She has also completely dropped naps again unless she's sleeping on me or one of her grandmas. Lady, REST! 

After 2 and a half miserable months we noticed her first tooth had finally broken through the night before her 6 month birthday. The next morning we rang in her half a year with strawberry jello cake only to notice a second tooth had cropped up right next to the other. Then we felt like jack wagon parents because we couldn't understand how one tooth could make her so miserable. Jokes on us.

After the teeth ordeal seemed to finally end, I took her to the pediatrician's office for her well visit and exactly 4 days later she woke up insanely sick. We went back and they confirmed bronchiolitis (infant bronchitis) and said they couldn't treat it with anything and her symptoms could last a month. Poor Harpie was miserable as could be and also had raging tummy problems which resulted in raging diaper rash, too. Her pouty face earned her as many bottles and snuggles as she wanted and within 7-10 days we were finally germ-free.

Six Months was about the time that her sleeping woes began, then around 6.5 months she finally started accepting food. We switched from rice to oatmeal cereal and it was a huge hit! Baby bird loves her food, I feed her 3-5 times a day and she screams if her mouth is open longer than a second and the "plane" hasn't landed inside. Ah, teenager attitude already. Other firsts include sitting up on her own & finally rolling to the right. She was stuck only going left at an angle, aka, making circles into furniture and crying. We wrapped up her half a year month with her first trip to the park. She was unsure in the swing but loved the slide....or whatever her BFF daddy was on.

In March, we celebrated Harper's first Easter. Holidays are so much more fun when you have kids, even if they have no idea what's going on! We kicked off the morning with some sparkly eggs, church, and then headed to nana and pap's with geema and pappy to open a million more baskets and eat too much chocolate. Harpie got to stay up past her bed time since Easter marked her 7 month birthday. As for Mr. Green boots and I, we spent the rest of the night cleaning the glitter from the eggs off of anything and everything. And eating more chocolate.

Another exciting first for Harper was saying "Dada". Her love affair with Justin has grown from cute to almost disgusting :) She lights up and giggles the second he walks in the door, likes to be thrown every which way by him and loves when he plays the guitar and sings to her. 

Every month (or two in this case) we say that we can't believe how fast this is going. It truly has been a blink of an eye since she was born and now our little swaddled burrito is trying to crawl. Time. Slow. Down. We can't wait to see all that month 7 has in store for you, Harpie!

xoxo,

Momma and Daddy in the green boots