Harper 7months (couple weeks late)

Harper is now 7 (and 1/2, but lets not split hairs) months. I pretty much just want to pick her up and squeeze her most days cause she is just too darn precious!! She is all smiles about 90% of the time. However this past month was definately NOT all smiles and cooing because she had a double ear infection, UTI and thrush. She was not her happy self at all, but she is much better now after a round of pretty strong antibiotics (which THEN caused a yeast infection but it's being treated too). So aside from being sick, what else is baby girl up to these days?

-scooting all over the place, and she will get up on her knees and rock back and forth then go right back to army crawling. She is pretty fast too, especially if she spots one of brothers toys laying around and wants it (He HATES this!)

-Saying Dada....no I don't take this personally; I only carried her for 9 long months with awful indigestion and headaches, had my tummy cut open to get her out (bye-bye abs!!), was her own personal milk factory for 6 (painful) months.....but NOOOO it's totally fine that she says Dada first!!

-waving bye-bye, it's about the cutest thing ever.

-will sometimes sleep all night and sometimes still needs to have a bottle once during the night. It's nice that I am done nursing so Josh and I take turns with this dreaded feeding. HE thinks that if she sleeps through the night when it's your night that it carries over.......it SOOO does not!!!

-Doesn't really want to be held or put in her exersaucer, she just wants to play on the floor.

-I felt a tooth poking through just today!!!

-She is eating snacks now, she loves her fruit puffs and MUM rice cakes. I am ready for her to have teeth so we can try new things.

I love watching her do all these new things, I am really enjoying it more this time around cause I am not so worried about messing things up, doing the wrong things, making sure they don't end up in therapy for the rest of their life!!! I realize that they will be ok as long as I do the best I can.

On another note, it looks like not only did she inherit my blue eyes (yeah!!) but she MAY have inherited my kidney problems as well (BOO). I had my first UTI when I was about her age and after many years of UTI's and kidney infections and hospital stays they finally figured out that my ureters were too short causing reflux (urine backing up into my kidneys causing the infection). Well she has now had her first UTI and given my history, the Doctor wanted to go ahead and have tests done to see if she has the same thing going on (it's hereditary). So we got up at the butt crack of dawn on Friday so we could be in Wichita @ 7:15 to check into Wesley to have tests done. Her first test was just a sono of her kidneys, she laid SO still the whole time, she just stared at the Doctor like "what is she doing to me?" We were told she would have to be sedated for the 2nd test, a VCUG, because they have to insert a catheter and fill her bladder with dye then have her hold completely still while they take x-rays of her as she empties out. I have had this test done numerous times, it is SOOO not pleasant!! However, once we were there they gave us the choice to sedate or not. If we chose to we would have been there for at least 2 more hours, but if we didn't, then they could do the procedure right away and have us out in 15 minutes. We decided not to sedate, I was so worried about that part anyway!! The procedure itself is not painful, just uncomfortable when they insert the catheter and then pump you really full with dye. She did great!! She cried when they inserted the catheter and while they held her down for the x-rays, but not a screaming cry, just a "you're really annoying the crap out me would you please leave me alone" kind of cry. Once they were done and I could pick her up, she was smiling away at us. We have not heard the results yet, and I am going with the motto "no news is good news." IF they do see reflux, she will have to be put on daily medicine to prevent infections,then they will do the tests again in a few years to see if the problem corrected itself, if not then they will do surgery. I had a left ureter reimplantion when I was 19, it was painful and I was sent home with a catheter for a week and the recovery was rough, so I hope it doesn't come to this.

Last week we went to KC to go wedding dress shopping for my sister, Sarah. We took Harper with us and she was really good. My sister found an amazing, beautiful, breathtaking, gorgeous, awesome dress and it's so tempting to post pics of it but she would kill me. I can't wait for April, it's gonna be FUN!

Here are some pics of the princess:

Her hospital bracelet. It's on her foot cause they are too big for little wrists (but not chubby cankles!! ALSO inherited from Mom)

This was after we got home from the hospital, she was all smiles!!

This was just today, I had tried putting her down and she just wanted to play, so Josh took her into our room and she was out within minutes. No, she's not a Daddy's girl or anything.

Bahahaha, so ladylike!! She was just laying on the floor chewin on her book, relaxin!