Oh so cute!

When I do Harriet’s monthly photos I like to try to get some of the girls together at the same time…because I just don’t get enough of these two.  Haha.  Just kidding.  I probably get way too many of them, but I’m allowed to because I’m their mama.  To get both of them cute and looking at the camera at the same time doesn’t really happen much, so these aren’t the best of them, but they are the moments I want to remember.

And then I took some of just Elna.  She was being really cute.  Here she is dancing:

I can’t stop looking at these darling pictures of Elna—they are just so her!  I hardly ever get a good smile of Elna on camera these days—I think she tries too hard (or I force a smile) and they turn out fake.  But these—these turned out so cute of her! 

Yesterday morning Elna said “I sunbeam”—we have sung “Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam”, but not very often or very recently, so it makes my heart sing to know that she at least a little bit understands that she is a little sunbeam.  She is so full of light and joy!  She is always kind to Harriet and she can be so tender and sensitive if she knows I am having a sad day.  She can also be nuts…but we won’t talk about that right now.… 

Harriet—6 months!

Her face on the right makes me laugh.  It’s a little tricky to stand when you’re only 6 months old.

At 6 months, Harriet:

--is still just as sweet as can be.  She does no wrong!  She’s happy about 99% of the time.

--is sleeping through the night!  Well, I should say that I feed her at 7 p.m. and put her down and she doesn’t eat again until 7:00 the next morning.  She occasionally wakes up once, but goes back down right away when Brian goes in and puts a paci in or pats her bum.  Yay Harriet!

--can roll both ways!  This probably helps a lot with the sleeping through the night! 

--has been eating solids for a month now.  This also probably helps with sleeping through the night.  She loves everything she has tried.  Sweet potatoes, applesauce, peas, oatmeal, pumpkin, banana.  She is a messy, messy eater!  She sticks her hand in her mouth the second we put the spoonful of food in her mouth, and then the food smears all over her body.  She is covered from head to toe every single time we feed her.

--makes the silliest noises.  We were at a baptism Sunday and she was making such a happy racket of noise—someone said she sounded like a dolphin.  Between her sweet noise making and Elna being a crazy handful, we were not a very reverent addition to the baptism.  I really like the idea of being involved and having our children grow up being very involved and supportive of those in our church and community, but boy oh boy, it is not always easy!

--loves being held or being in the pack. 

And we love holding her!  Sometimes Hattie will wake up from her afternoon naps about a half hour before Elna wakes up from hers.  I really love it when I get one-on-one time with her, since I get so little of it.  I love it when she nuzzles into my neck and gives me super slobbery kisses—and her smell!  I can’t get enough of her smell.  There is nothing sweeter than the smell of my baby!  We feel so blessed to have Hattie!  She fills us with joy every day!  

Elna & Harriet—side-by-sides.

Occasionally people think Harriet looks just like Elna…I so don’t see it.  I rounded up some pictures of the girls in matching outfits at around the same ages:

About 6 months old.  If I cover Elna’s hair they look a little more like each other, but mostly I think they have very different looks.

Check out Elna’s hair!  Can you believe it?!  I knew it was crazy, but woah!

One dress.  Three babies.  Me (1981) Elna (2011) Harriet (2013)

Elna’s big girl room.

Elna’s big girl room was mostly done 6 months ago, but we were waiting on a few things to be able to completely finish it.  I really love how it turned out.  I love decorating my home—I wish I had a bigger budget for it, but Brian has really been great about letting me dabble in it with as much as we can afford right now. 

The bunk bed was made by Brian’s dad long ago when Brian was a kid. 

I made the green polka-dot bed runner, the floral pillow, and the pink pillow with pom pom trim.  I bought smaller pom pom trim for the curtains (which I bought at Ikea).  Brian hung a rod for the curtains.  I was going for bright, happy colors, with lots of polka dots.

The name poster and photographs I just moved from her nursery—I just had to reframe the photos.  The photos are of Elna and the women she was named after—top left going clockwise: Grandma Fae, Grandma Elna, her great great grandma Elna, and Elna Fae.

I think she likes it!

We were given this old dresser when we first moved in and it stayed there for 3 years until we finally painted it.  I was worried I had overdone the polka dots, so instead of doing a polka dots for the thing on the left, I punched a ton of hearts out of free paint swatches, we modge-podged them to a piece of plywood we painted white—then we stuck that all in a frame.  I found the “E” at an antique shop.  The molded hand was done of Elna’s hand by Chris and given to us for Christmas last year.  A treasure for me—I don’t want to ever forget that pudgy hand of hers!  The oval mirror was given to me when I was a girl—it was my grandparents.

The bracelet on the bottom left was the bracelet Brian made her from one of my pearl necklaces that she wore at her baby blessing.  To the right of that is where I (mostly in theory) put the postcard she gets each week from my dad.

A bed made for a princess!  I’d love to say she sleeps like a princess…maybe the princess and the pea?

Little photo shoot.

I got out my real camera one morning when the girls were playing on my bed.  Elna was being so funny! 

Swoon!

I know she’s just staring at us in this picture, but the pose is just too cute not to include.

And she’s falling…

That smile fills me with so much joy! 

So in love with these girls!