Harper! Harper! Harper!  Harper is seriously the sweetest baby ever…one look at her and she has the biggest smile and makes the sweetest sound. She loves to be a part of things. I feel like she is already going to do things sooner than her sisters at the same age, just because she wants to do everything they are doing.  Harper is really playing with toys now.  She even crawls to get the toys or things she wants now.  She is still mostly army crawling as one arm often gets stuck underneath her body as she moves, but she is still getting around!  Now that she is sitting up and playing with toys, I feel like she is even playing together with the girls some too.  The other day I sat her on the floor in Avery and Emerson’s room while I got them ready for a nap; Harper crawled right over to the book shelf and took out all the books.  The other day Harper even pulled herself up using the help of the toy basket. She did it a few times in a row and was SO proud of herself.   Mommy and Daddy were pretty proud of her too.

In other news, Emerson does not have to wear her special shoes anymore!  She was such an awesome patient!  When we took her back to the doctor in mid-February the doctor could not believe the drastic change in such a short amount of time.  Although I was expecting the doctor to be impressed with Emerson’s results, I was not expecting her to say that she was done wearing them!  I reminded her that Emerson had only been wearing her special shoes since September (when we first started the process I was told to expect a year minimum).  So she said 6 more weeks and then she wanted to see her back in 8 weeks.

The first night we put on Emerson’s special shoes, our hearts broke.  We talked them up and she was actually pretty excited about them.  But once that bar went on that connected the shoes, she realized just how restricted she was and her cry and pouty lip was almost enough to make me cry. But after only a few days she really began to believe that her shoes were indeed special and she welcomed them as part of not only her bedtime routine but also her naptime routine.  In fact, there were a few times where Justin and I tried to get her to nap without them in order to expedite the naptime process and Emerson refused to go down without her special shoes.  They became a part of her and in time they weren’t so restricting.  She learned to crawl on her knees with them. She could stand in them and Avery often would taunt Emerson and tell her to walk in her special shoes; a challenge in which Emerson would always try and then all four of us would laugh.  Some nights Avery would even take Emerson’s special shoes and try to put them on as she wanted special shoes too.  So this past Saturday night when Emerson no longer had to wear her special shoes, we knew that we needed to let her know this in a way that she wouldn’t become upset.  We let her know how awesome she did wearing her special shoes; we were high fiving, clapping, and even Avery was offering congratulatory words.  Low and behold…Emerson thought she was something special and while she did ask a few times why she didn’t have to wear her special shoes anymore, once we provided her an explanation (again with many high fives) her face lit up and exuberated pride knowing she did worked really hard to achieve a goal and had reached the desired outcome.

As for Avery, Avery continues to be our little fashionista and comedian all rolled into one.  She likes to pick out her own clothes…a task that sometimes leads to her matching, sometimes to an outfit that I likely wouldn’t want to take her out in public in (but mightJ), and sometimes an outfit that doesn’t quite go together but is super adorable none the less.  She also continues to tell jokes and loves to make people laugh.  She has a habit of telling some of the same jokes repeatedly (like the fact that Emerson told Dr. Harrison that she doesn’t like Chinese food anymore…Chinese food is bad)…an ongoing joke for 6 weeks now that is still pretty funny most the time although it is starting to lose some of it’s luster and when the laughs aren’t as hearty as they were in the past, Avery demands laughter.

In other news with Avery, she is currently going through the evaluation process as she ages out of Early Intervention at age 3 and FCPS takes over and creates an Individual Educational Plan (IEP).  At first I was a little nervous about the process since Avery is doing so well and I felt that although she absolutely should qualify to make sure she has the tools necessary to do well in a classroom setting.  However, more recently I have started to feel a little better about the process as her main evaluation will be with the vision teacher Jenn, who used to be a part of Avery’s early intervention, and Lorna her weekly therapist will be in attendance.

And finally in household news…we closed on March 17.  We are doing some work on the house before we move in…nothing major….but enough that we are still about 3 weeks away from moving in.  We are anxious but know that we will be in our new place soon enough!!