Harlow-3 months

I guess since Harlow had her four month appointment yesterday, I am officially behind with her. Oh well...give it a few months and I wont care that I couldn't be a little more timely with this and I'll just be glad that I did it at all. 

Harlow at 3 months is just like Harlow at 1 month, 2 months (and 4)---sweet and calm as can be. I keep waiting for her personality to do a flip flop on me, but so far she continues to be easy going, super smiley and a dream baby for me. I remember when I used to do these posts for Ruby, I would have a hard time at this age catching pictures of her big smile. With this girl, however, I can almost not help but get smiley pictures every time I pick up my camera.

This is how she wakes up. Even in the early morning hours after her 6 hour stretch in the night I know she's awake because I can hear her talking/singing to herself. I've never had a cheerful waker, so I think it's pretty amazing.

Happy to hang out in the bouncer while I make dinner.

Her laugh is low and gurgley and just as infectious as her smile.

While she sleeps is one of the few times she's not smiling.

Harlow is my only child that has not slept in our room for the first 3 months of life. The bassinet we had for her was too small from day one home from the hospital. (Have I mentioned that my girl is off the charts tall?) Sam convinced me to put her in the crib right away and just use a video baby monitor to keep an eye on her. I was reluctant, but it has really seemed to work for her. I think it's made her a better sleeper at night, but I do miss having her nearby sometimes. Watching her on the monitor is not quite the same, but it still makes me smile.

She's still loves to "talk", and we love to talk back. She prefers to listen to and mimic lower tones and I love it. It looks like she and Sam are having the quite the conversation here.

Harlow has Heterochromia iridum, which just means she has two different colored eyes. You don't really notice it too much, but in this picture it's pretty prominent. Just one more thing that makes her special.

She's still a very popular gal in our house and still gets fought over now and again.

Obviously, she takes it all in stride.

Even with all the eager Harlow holders, Sam still gets his fair share of time toting her around.

Sam's not the only one that gets to take her off my hands once in a while.

Aside from being everyone's favorite, she is getting cuter and stronger everyday. The kids absolutely love it when she shows off her skills. Lifting your head is pretty exciting stuff over here.

It's hard to believe we've only had this sweet girl for three months (ok..actually 4). She really is such a happy little person and we are thrilled that she is ours.

Summer Hike

I knew having a new baby in the mix was going to make this summer a little less adventurous than most. I had secretly hoped that somehow with baby #4 I would be so experienced that everything would be effortless and I would still be able to keep up our normal summer speed of activities. Ha! The secret is out and I was wrong. New babies are never effortless for me. Even with a practically perfect one, I feel the weight of my inadequacy as I try figure out our new normal. Even so, I think we've had a good summer, although it has definitely been more low key and much of it spent very close to home.

While I have understood the necessity of not venturing out too far, I have also missed some of our normal summer outings. So last week, when some very California-esque perfect weather arrived, I knew we had to do something with it and headed just outside of our neighborhood for my first hike with the kids on my own. Even though it was only a couple minutes from home, I felt pretty brave taking on the challenge. The kids were of course were thrilled and within mere moments of the idea's mention we were all ready to go.

My sweet baby girl wasn't a huge fan of the baby bjorn, but in typical Harlow fashion she didn't make too much of a fuss about it.

Reed decided he was going to use the hike to get ideas to continue working on a sketch he was making of a "super bug" habitat that they had all been working on before I sprung the hike plan on them.

Max, was clipboard free, but full of smiles.

One of the reasons we moved to the neighborhood we did was because of the easy access to these trails. We have enjoyed them, but not as often as I would like. There are a few paths that parallel each other. The kids decided that I should go on the more worn one while they took the more "treacherous" one.

One of the paths follows a creek. I love this type of water, so it was a must-stop on our hike. The kids certainly didn't mind having time to try skipping some stones.

When the kids got tired of throwing stones, we made boats out of leaves and watched them float down the stream. I actually thought Max's simple design was pretty cool.

This is the closest we could get to a group shot. It's amazing to me how quickly Ruby has just become "one of the kids", pretty much abandoning her "baby" role completely.

Sweet Harlow.

Reed was eager to move along the trail, but was patient and helped out when I needed to stop in the middle of our adventure to feed Harlow.

Another unexpected discovery along the way was a butterfly breading ground. I have seriously never seen so m many butterflies in one place.  They didn't show up too well in any of the pictures, but the kids had so much fun dashing about trying to catch one. Max really wanted to bring one home, but thankfully we finally convinced him that the butterflies would be much happier right where they were.

My happy and adventurous bunch.

On our way back to the car the kids were a little more reckless in their hiking and ended up a lot more muddy. Especially when we discovered a lovely mud puddle.

At first we just looked.

Then we got a little closer.

It didn't take long before all three found their way into the mud.

After a while though, they were ready to be clean again.

But not before Reed made a very important discovery...

... a caterpillar which he was confident was a new species.

On our way out.  Reed is always eager to be my photographer.

Once we got home, it was straight to the hose to wash off.

I think the kids enjoyed the clean up even more than the getting messy part of this adventure.

Overall, I think my first "brave" outing on my own was a success. Summer hike? Check.