harper lately.

Recently, Harper's personality is becoming more and more apparent. She is a very bright, active, rambunctious little girl. 

I always thought that Hayden was feisty, but this little girl is even more of a challenge. Quite frankly she is exhausting! 

I am going to have to work hard at training her. I know that sounds silly, but I am serious. I said the same thing about Hayden - in terms of relating the raising of young children to training them. A lot of it is has to do with classical conditioning and training (in my opinion).

Now a few little updates on her:

• She is officially off the bottle. I came up with this weird plan in which I slowly decreased the amount of milk in her bottle, while increasing the water. When the ratio got down to 2 ounces of milk to 7 ounces of water, she decided she didn't want the bottle anymore. So bye-bye bottles. It's a little trickier putting her down for her nap, because the bottles had been her "sleepy-time gateway drug" - but we are working on it (NOTE 1: Trickier meaning that she now cries when I put her down for her naps and at night. She only cries for about 5-10 minutes, and then she falls asleep. I am hopeful that in time - and the sooner the better - she will come to accept this new no-bottle reality and go to sleep without crying, because it hurts my heart to see her so sad. I have tried rocking her and reading books to try and reduce or eliminate the crying portion of the going to bed process, but my methods haven't worked - at all.)(NOTE 2: She doesn't like milk in a cup, so now she isn't really drinking any milk. I keep offering it, but she doesn't want it. We are going to keep offering her milk in a cup and also try soy milk, which is what Hayden liked at her age (he also refused milk). She does eat a lot of cheese and yogurt though.)
• Harper's first molar FINALLY came through. It took forever. Seriously. I think she was working on that tooth for 2 months. I know she still has more to come and I am not looking forward to it. She is not a "good teether."
• Harper only takes one nap a day for 1.5 hours (generally from 12:30pm-2pm). That's it. She sleeps for about 11 hours at night (generally from 7:30pm-6:30am). So that puts her at 12.5 hours a day. Not a whole lot (for a child her age), but it seems to work for her. And being that putting her down for naps now involves a good amount of crying (because she isn't getting "the bottle" anymore), I am sortove glad she only takes one nap a day!

And now for some recent pictures:

i love this picture - it is totally harper.

you can see the molar in this picture - it's on the bottom