Summertime Update

Hello, everyone!  Sorry we haven’t updated in a while, but, well, you know how it goes…

But we’re here now to fill you in on everything that’s been happening over the last 5 months.  Honestly, it’s been more of the same, but that’s really what life is all about, I guess.

Since February, Harper has been changing constantly.  You’ll see in the VIP pictures that she’s gone from big, chubby, chipmunk cheeks to a more slender profile in a matter of months.  She’s still cute as could be, just looking more and more like a toddler, instead of an infant.

As we speak she’s sitting in her highchair, coloring with crayons, something she couldn’t do even a month ago.  She picks up crayons with both hands, though primarily eats with her left hand,  so we’re still trying to figure out if we have  a Southpaw in the family or not.  She also has almost all of her teeth at this point - just those pesky canines left to go and, from what we’ve heard, they’re a doozie.  She’s still a wee little thing- barely cracking the 20lb. mark and her 3-month younger buddy, Ezra, has almost a full head’s height on her now.   As a short guy I know how she feels.

Unfortunately, our daughter has been inflicted with a most horrible addiction.  I’m speaking, of course, of Yo Gabba Gabba! It’s the only TV show we let her watch - and only in small doses - but she pretty much insists it be on the TV whenever we’re in the basement now.  She knows all the characters, knows the songs when we sing them, and dances like a woman possessed when it’s on.  She can even say “Brobee” and what sounds like “Toodee”, two of the characters from the show.  Sometimes she really wants to go downstairs and watch, so she’ll go to the basement door and pound on it, then she waves her hands in the air (like she just don’t care) with her mouth open like she’s surprised, which is apparently her sign for “Yo Gabba!”  If we say no she’ll throw a small fit, but we can usually distract her with a book or her new favorite toy, her ball (which she says pretty clearly when she wants to play with it).

Harper is still fairly quiet, only saying a handful of words at the moment, but her comprehension is a little bit spooky.  She can point to an ostrich in one of her books, which it’s not like we bring up ostriches all that often in everyday conversation, so she’s obviously picked it up from us reading to her.  She knows all of the popular barnyard animals (cow, pig, duck,  horse, etc.), she points to all the Muppets when we say their names (Andrea almost teared up with pride when that started happening), she knows airplanes (she waves her hand in the air and goes, “Mmmmmm”) and cars (she waves and says, “bye-bye”), she has even started to tell us when we need to change her diaper, by patting it and saying “stinky”.  But when she knows a word, she uses it.  Just today we went to the grocery store, and when we came upon the dairy aisle, she yelled out, “Cheee!” and pointed to the string cheese hanging from the rack.  So, she’s quiet, but she’s still a smart little bugger.  We’re both really excited for her to start talking more, though, because she sometimes gets really frustrated when she can’t communicate with us.  Can’t say I blame her there.

In family news, I recently made a huge sacrifice (please note I’m severely exaggerating how awesome I am) by trading in my beloved Ford Ranger so that we could get a second vehicle capable of carrying a carseat.  We wound up buying a Nissan Cube (Here are some pics and my review), which some of you are going to call ugly, but we love the little thing.  We were actually the first people in the county to buy one, so we’ve been getting plenty of interesting stares and fingers pointed at us since we got it a little over a month ago.  It’s been really exciting for both Andrea and me, as this is the first new car either one of us has ever owned.

In other news, I’ve had some recent success with my writing for mental_floss.  Back in May I had a story reprinted by the Wall Street Journal and then just this past week I had another story reprinted by CNN.com, marking my second time on that site.  The story became pretty popular (probably in large part to my friends and family on Facebook and Twitter) and reached the Top 5 Most Popular stories on June 23.  Pretty cool, huh?

Speaking of work, Andrea was asked to come back to Borders to help them with some rearranging of the store, as well as fill in for a friend/colleague that has been out with a broken wrist.  So that means she’s away from home three nights out of the week and Harper and I get some quality time together.  She’s tired by the end of the day, but I think she likes the time away to talk to grown-ups, too.

Well, that’s really about it for now.  Sorry our long absence didn’t mean we were off backpacking in Timbuktu or anything, but it’s just been a really busy few months of doing the same ol’ thing.  So until next time (maybe before Christmas?), go check out the VIP section and enjoy some new pictures of Harper from the last few months.