This afternoon Harper and I attended the AvalonBay Halloween party at my office. Every year they invite all the kids in to trick-or-treat around the office. Harper gave her stegosaurus costume a trial run and managed to rip two holes in it. Hopefully Lala can fix it for tomorrow! Harper's costume is very funny when she crawls because she has a long orange spiky tail dragging behind her. I forgot the video camera but got a low quality video on our regular camera of her crawling into various peoples' offices:

This is a video of Harper trying to crawl under someone's desk. It is VERY low to the ground but she was just determined to get under it and tried for about 15 minutes before I made her leave!

This is for my parents – I've been bragging about what a good eater Harper is, and up until a few days ago she would literally eat anything that we gave her including: tofu, edamame, acorn squash, and mango. Well now she refuses to eat anything except for twisty noodles and Cheerios! Hurray. To illustrate, tonight I attempted to feed her sweet potatoes and apples, which she used to love, and she methodically spit out each bite and wiped it all over her tray. I finally gave up and dished out the twisty noodles. I hereby apologize to my parents for being the pickiest eater in the world!

I have a goal of making Harper just as crunchy as her mom and dad… well maybe just her mom! Today she is sporting her (RED) onesie – 50% of the proceeds go to the Global Fund to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. Next up is her ONE t-shirt…

Tonight Harper and I met Portman for dinner at Generous George's Positive Pizza and Pasta Place… yes, that really is the whole name! Harper spent most of the dinner with her head craned back to look at the ceiling. With all this stuff hanging from it, wouldn't you want to look at it too?

When her neck started to get tired she turned to her balloon and spent the rest of the meal aggressively shaking it. We took a pretty low-quality video on our regular camera, but it's still cute:

We ended the evening with a ride on the carousel horse. Harper absolutely did not want to get off of it, and was even more upset when she figured out that Daddy was not riding home in our car!

Usually when Harper gets really quiet, we know where to find her. Take this morning at 7 AM for example:

Tonight we celebrated our friend Peter's birthday at Comet, a restaurant in DC that features ping pong and pizza. In Portman's ideal world, every restaurant would feature ping pong and pizza, so there was no way he was going to miss this! We kept Harper up 3 hours past her bed time, but she was a trooper and entertained everyone at the table with her voracious appetite for Mardi Gras beads and croutons.

After I took this picture, she swept the table with her paddle and knocked over everyone's drinks.

Harper and Amanda. Yes, Harper was as exhausted as she looks!

Every year around Halloween, the Burke Nursery builds a Pumpkin Playground. For the past 2 years Portman and I have been dying to go but didn't want to be the only adults elbowing kids to get to the Miners Mountain slide. So today our dreams came true… except that Portman couldn't come with us. You snooze, you lose! Harper and I recruited some friends to battle the crowds and 85-degree temperatures. It was definitely more geared towards older kids, but Harper was thrilled to climb over towers of pumpkins and even rode down the slide with Emily. 

Please excuse any type-os or poor grammar – I’m embarrassed to admit that I am watching Kid Nation as I write this! Shhh, don’t tell anyone.

Harper has been putting things in her mouth for months, but a few weeks ago she realized that she could free up her hands for crawling and playing if she carries things around in her mouth instead of her hands. It’s hysterical! She looks like a little pet carrying its toys around. Her favorite thing to carry is UVA Barbie‘s pom-poms, but for the past few days she has been carrying around anything from a DVD to a diaper. This morning I went into her room to get her up from her nap and she was standing in her crib with both of her socks in her mouth. The best part is that she knows she is hilarious – we both end up belly-aching laughing!

Today was uncharacteristically warm for October and I was too stubborn to turn on the A/C, so Harper and I had to play on the porch most of the day or risk suffocation indoors. We had an awesome day though. I honestly don’t understand how people can say that they get "bored" playing with their kids. Harper reminds me every day just how much fun life is! Everything is new to her and I love to watch her reactions when a leaf falls from a tree or when she hears a garbage truck. She doesn’t miss a thing.

I do get a little worried out on the porch because there are so many things for her to choke on, so when she woke up from her afternoon nap I decided to spice things up with a little bit of finger paint! It probably isn’t safe if ingested in large quantities, but at least she can’t choke on it. It turns out that Harper is quite the budding artist, and she had a blast smearing paint all over the place. She got so much on her body (mostly on her big belly), but she had even more fun "cleaning up" in a bucket of water. One of her favorite things to do is splash, so she was crawling around on the bricks smacking her hands in the puddles – I wanted to join in but I was too busy taking pictures!

Harper finger painting before she tasted the blue and ended up with smurf lips.

Harper turned 9 months old today and I am celebrating by starting a blog to keep everyone updated on our growing family! Our real celebration was having lunch at Daddy's office. This is always an adventure because I routinely miss the exit for Memorial Bridge and find myself stranded on the 14th Street Bridge, negotiating pedestrian traffic around the National Mall at lunch time. Today was no exception. Harper was not pleased about the extra 15 minutes in the car, but in all fairness it was her fault for insisting on having her juice on the freeway. In the end she seemed quite pleased with her birthday lunch of twisty noodles and French bread from Marvelous Market, and Daddy appreciated a little recess.

We rounded out the afternoon by playing on the porch. Strike that…. Harper played on the porch while I battled nature. Final score: mosquitoes 4, Caitlin 0. I guess it's not officially fall until I can step outside for more than 30 seconds without inciting a mosquito riot.

Harper rediscovered her sand toys (still in a pile from the beach) and spent the better part of an hour tasting every leaf in sight. I am trying to let her explore everything rather than spending the day saying "no don't touch that," and there are few things that I don't let her at least touch. That being said, I had to call it a day when she projectile vomited 2 pieces of acorn and a basil leaf. I think she explored quite enough for one afternoon!

We ended the big birthday with homemade pesto ("green spaghetti"). Harper helped me make it by pulling every single pot out of the cabinet and banging the lids as loud as she could. I think this might qualify as the best birthday ever!