I love weekends. It means two straight days with Harper and my hubs. After a long workweek, I cherish that family time and enjoy the relaxation.
We started our Saturday with a 3K walk at the Texas Children’s Family Fun Run. There was also a fantastic family fun zone sponsored by H-E-B that had a ton of great activities for kids including rides, bounce houses, etc. It will be really exciting when Harper can enjoy those things when she’s older.
(someone was tired #skippednormalnaptime)
We started in the 27th (and last) heat of the participants with a lot of the other families with strollers (there’s a special section for families with strollers so we don’t interfere with people who are actually running the 1K or 3K routes).
After the walk we stayed for a bit at the family fun zone to chat with some friends and then we went home for naptime and lunch from Zoe’s Kitchen (yum!)
Today we relaxed at home, cleaned up the house a little bit and meal-prepped for the week. Harper doesn’t eat purees anymore so we chop everything up for her to take to daycare for the week. I love that we can feed her normal food now and not have to puree and freeze stuff. I also love that once she enters the toddler room, the food is provided and included in our tuition dues. It was really important to us that her daycare have healthy food options and the menu is wonderful and everything is chef-prepared daily. Lots of whole grains, fruits and veggies, just like we would feed her at home.
We introduced Harper to a walker toy this weekend and she is obessed. She has always been great at cruising along furniture but she hated walking holding our hands. I’m in zero rush for her to walk because it’s already a workout chasing her around when she crawls, but I think the walker has made her comfortable walking forwards. Some experts believe that walkers actually delay walking because babies use them as a crutch and don’t develop the balance they need as quickly, so we decided to offer it a couple of times a day for a limited time so that she’s still practicing cruising and crawling to move around.
We got this V-Tech one and she loves the front that has all of the thing she can play with too. As soon as she started to use the walker, she will walk with us holding her hands too. We also noticed (even before she started using the walker) that she would sometimes stand for a few seconds on her own. Her teachers told us the same thing so she’s been getting more and more comfortable with balance. She’s also gotten a lot better at falling and more often than not catches herself or plops down onto her butt.
Harps on the go!
She also loves the DK Publishing First Words flashcards– she takes them out of the box one by one and we name each object/thing and talk about the shape and color, etc.
Harper’s Bow- thanks to Liv’s Lane | Harper’s Romper- Baby Gap
A 5 minute weekend chalkboard (I seriously just now erased the Valentine’s one…whoops!)
Naptime cuddles…I didn’t even wash my face or put on makeup today. You can see the previous night’s mascara smudged underneath my eye, Britney style. Lazy family Sundays are the greatest of all 🙂
Hope you had a wonderful weekend!
I think the concern about the walkers is referring to the "sit in" kind – not the push along 🙂 Very different!
I did not realize those were still on the market (the sit in kind)…I think they were banned in Canada years ago and given that I grew up there I guess I had it in my mind that they were not longer available. Thanks for the info!
Our Nanny takes Ellie to church with her during the week to play in the nursery and get socialization with other kiddos. They have a couple walkers in there that Ellie ha been practicing on. So she only ha access to it for an hour a day. Our Nanny says that Ellie loves them so I am thinking about investing in them. Ellie loves to walk while holding our hands but has a slight challenge when holding onto furniture. So I think having more time with a walker at home might help. Your Harpers is just adorable and it so fun seeig these updates as our girls are so close in age! I make a lot of Ellie's food too so it's nice to get ideas!
atparsons.blogspot.com
I just love her baby rolls! So great that you are so involved in good works and good causes. Motherhood suits you very well, too! 🙂
Love the family pics! Harper's outfits are way too cute. You pull off the no makeup/remains of last night's mascara look well haha! You really have incredible skin! I'm going to have to check out what skin products you use lol. Have a great week!
Looks like you had a great weekend! How did I not know about the family run? :/ My gf and I woke up super early to work out at Memorial and guess what? They had a family run there too…4 miles I think to support the park regrowing its trees. I hope they do this again next year because I'd love to participate. let's pray for great weather this Sat. I would love to take her to the zoo 🙂
Linh
https://abeautifulrawr.com
My daughter has the same walker toy and loves it! She loves picking up the phone and opening/closing the door over the chicks. She isn't walking yet but pulling to stand so I can't wait have her start walking with it.
Our walker definitely helped A with walking as opposed to cruising furniture, but ours was different. It moves pretty easily so it helped her with balance, because if she pushed too hard, it'd roll fast and she'd fall. She was literally running through the house with it and she was taking steps at 11months and walking by 1 year. I can't believe she's almost a year old, time flies!
That VTech Walker is the BEST. My 11mo is obsessed with it. It helped her learn to sit up, to stand up, and more recently she took some of her first assisted steps with it! She holds that phone up to her ear (usually backwards, ha) and her first goal every time she sees it is to pull out those three top shapes. Looks like a great weekend 🙂
What do you send to daycare for her? We're in the same boat and i'm running out of ideas!
I send mixed fruits as a snack or Greek yogurt with fruit mixed in and for lunch it's usually some kind of meat with past and veggies or just veggies
I didn't know about the walker delaying walking. But we were gifted that walker in pink and I think because we don't have a lot of open space, she didn't use it too much (and we're at 13 months and still not walking.) But she does love it when we walk around the house with her.
xx Viv at JoieDeViv
Someone in the comments mentioned it's the sit-in walkers that delay walking not the kind that we have. I can see how that would be true