FUN Week!

We have had a great week! We had something going on every night....but it was fun. Monday and Tuesday nights we had cook-outs with friends. Wednesday night we had a pool party with lots of friends as we said good-bye to the Pridmores. They will be moving to south Florida to plant Two Rivers Church South Florida. We are going to miss their family, but we are so excited that they are taking the message of God's Spirit and Truth to the people of south FLA! We had a great time visiting, eating pizza and swimming! On Thursday night, Beckett had a great time having his last sleep-over for a while with his buddy Will at his friend Matt's house. And finally today, Meesha, Emma and Olivia came by for a visit! They are friends that we met at Two Rivers about 3 years ago, and they moved away about a year and a half ago. We had not seen them in a little over a year and it was fun catching up with them!

Here is a pic of all of the kids at the pool party Wednesday night!

This one hurts me a little......this is Helen's first good friend Emma. This picture was taken over 2 years ago when they got together for a play date. Look how little! So sweet!

And here they are today! They have grown up SO fast! They had fun playing together again today! Thanks, Meesha, for calling and coming by to visit!

Have a great weekend!

If you are a fan of "The Slam", you might like to know that his blog has been updated! We took some time this morning to give a quick review of Beckett's summer, so check it out if you would like to! Remember, beware of the music on his playlist. It is highly annoying, but it is his blog, so I let him choose the music! :)

Shower/Celebration For Will

Last Tuesday, these two sweet friends, Amy and Sarah, hosted a welcome home shower for Will! Our referal and court date happened so quickly, that we did not have time to schedule a shower before we traveled to get him. So last week a bunch of moms and kids gathered at Amy's neighborhood clubhouse and pool for lunch and some swimming fun! It was such a nice day and I really appreciate all of the work that Amy and Sarah put into making such special memory for us!

This was the cupcake table! So CUTE!
And if you look closely, the white cupcakes had little brown babies on them! Loved it!
This is a picture of all of our yummy lunch items!

We have been blessed with so many hand-me-downs and wonderful baby items that friends have let us borrow, that we really didn't need anything else for Will. Instead of gifts, our friends wrote notes to our family with their special thoughts and blessings for Will. They used little clothes pins to pin them to the branches in this vase. They also pinned on donations for Hannah's Hope! We received $100 to send to Hannah's Hope in Ethiopia and we are so grateful for that wonderful gift!

Will got a lot of attention! Here he is with Holly, Natalie and Abbey! They started out in the kiddie pool, but quickly headed over to the big pool!

A few of the boys kickin' it up on the side of the pool!

Helen getting some love from the big girls....Natalie and Lydia.

Beckett and Matt were a great team when the boys were "chicken fighting" in the pool!

Finally, our Will with our friend Will!

Thanks again to everyone who came and celebrated with us last week. It was such a fun day!

Just for Giggles!

Will is 9 months old today! I tried to get some pictures of him this evening, but I had waited too late and he was not feeling very smiley! Today also marks 5 weeks home with Will, so just to give you an idea of why we love having this 9 month old in our family, here is one minute of fun for you to enjoy! We think that Will is absolutely precious and he is the fifth piece of our family puzzle that was missing! We are so glad that he is home with us forever! I hope you will enjoy this little video of Will as much as we do! He got so tickled when Sean would make funny noises and Beckett would make funny faces! I got a little bit of it on video. This went on for several minutes one night after dinner! Too cute!

Beware of Round Band-Aids!

For those of you who read this blog and have babies.....this post is for you. Today I experienced one of the most scary events in my 7 years of being a mom and it was all because of a band-aid!

I took Will to the pediatrician today for his 9 month check-up. He had to have one vaccination to catch up with where he needs to be! He cried for one moment and then he was OK. The nurse had a hard time finding the injection spot to place the band aid and I even told her not to worry about it since it wasn't bleeding. She went ahead and stuck one of those small round band aids on his thigh.

Fast forward to lunch time. We stopped at Burger King for lunch. We were sitting at the table eating lunch and Will was sitting in the high chair eating his Gerber puffs. Everything was rocking along just fine until Will got choked. A baby CAN'T choke on these puffs since they disolve as soon as they get the first bit of slobber on them, but I assumed that he had just put too many in his mouth. I stuck my finger in his mouth to get them out, but he continued to choke. I patted his back and he continued to choke. I un-strapped him and removed him from the high-chair and began to lightly pat his back. He continued choking. I swept my finger in his mouth again. Nothing. Still choking. I knew he was in trouble. He wasn't breathing very well and he was crying and would gasp for air in between his cries. It was AWFUL! I turned his head toward the floor and began hitting his back a little harder and nothing was coming out. I was SO scared. The whole time NO ONE in Burger King was coming to help. That is a whole other blog entry in itself!! My mind was racing and I'm thinking, "How will I get help? Do I start screaming? Do I need to tell someone to call 911?" I kept lifting him up to look at his face and see what was happening. His eyes were closing and he was not breathing well at all. I again stuck my finger in his mouth and this time I caused him to gag. He spit up and that seemed to help. I lifted him up again to look at his face and he was lethargic and his eyes were droopy, but I noticed something in his mouth. Nothing had been there before, but when he had gagged and spit up, IT appeared. IT was the round band that the nurse had placed on his thigh! Evidently, Will had taken the band aid off his leg (or it fell off; those round ones aren't that sticky) and he had put it in his mouth. It was probably while he was riding in his car seat. His hand usually rests right there on his thigh when he is in his seat. I guess that the band aid had just floated around in his mouth, un-detected by me, and then when he began to swallow the puffs, the band aid tried to go down too, and it restricted his air-way! Oh. My. Goodness. This probably all took place in about one minute of time, but it felt like ten minutes! He was absolutely worn out and he just fell asleep in my arms. Of course, I kept checking him to make sure that he was breathing and that he appeared OK. He is doing just fine now and we have ALL recovered. It was so scary!

I just wanted to warn all parents of babies to NOT use the round band-aids under any circumstances! I'll have to ponder a little longer on the fact that no one at Burger King, staff or patrons, offered any help. I wasn't looking around for help, but Beckett even commented (when I was sitting back in my seat and everything had calmed down) that no one had come to offer us help. Just someone moving toward us as if they recognized that we were dealing with a scary situation would have been a little comforting. I was standing in the middle of the restaurant, beating my infant on the back, and it was as if all was fine with the world. I'm just not sure what this says about our society, but I know that there is a lesson there for me....just need to think on that for a bit!

Beckett and Helen said it best when we were on our way home! They said that Will was OK because God was protecting him! So true! Thank you God for your protection over our family today!

Random Cuteness!

Well, I have a lot of pictures to share, so get ready for a mega post of "random cuteness" from the last few weeks! I don't know how I didn't take more pictures on the fourth of July, but maybe it was because it was our first time to be with our church family (for fireworks) and Will was quite the attraction! I was busy introducing him to everyone, so I didn't take many pictures. I did get this one of Will with our friend Shae! He is so sweet with "baby Will"! This particular night, he just kept touching Will and checking him out! We were together again last night and he would feed Will his Gerber puffs! So sweet!

Will wearing a baseball cap for the first time. He didn't keep it on for long!
Will's first boat ride! Actually, this was Helen's first time on a boat too! We went to visit our friends, the Davis family at their camp site on Watt's Barr lake and they took us out on their ski boat for a ride! It was a lot of fun!

Beckett, Brady and Helen in the front of the boat!

This boy can sleep anywhere! He fell asleep after about 15 minutes of riding in the boat!

More random cuteness.....Helen and Will in the kid's playroom waiting area at Matlock's Tires in LC. We had to have the oil changed and tires rotated on the van before we traveled to North Carolina. We always get biscuits for breakfast and eat them in this little room so they can eat and play while we wait for our vehicle! Snapped this cute one while we waited!

On our way home from the Beckett Family Reunion in Charlotte, NC, we stopped along several streams in the Smokies so Sean could fly fish and so the kids could play in the COLD water! This was Will's first time in the mountains, so we took a few pictures!

It was a beautiful, cool day!

We LOVE this "bumbo" seat! (Thanks Kathy!) :) I bought the little tray to attach to it and we take it everywhere! Will is sitting up on his own now, but not on slippery rocks beside mountain streams!

Will loved sitting on the rock watching Beckett and Helen play and splash in the water!

Not sure that this qualifies as random cuteness, but I thought I would give Sean a little love and show him in his element! He gets in a zone when he is fly fishing. Loves it! He catches and releases his fish, so I hardly get pictures of the fish that he catches because I am watching 3 kiddos and can't get to him fast enough when he catches one. He enjoyed his time fishing that day and we all had a great time!

Stay tuned for my "penguin post" later this week!

Happy HALF Birthday Helen!

Tuesday was Helen's half birthday. She is half-way to five years old! We like to celebrate half birthdays with a trip to get ice cream, so on Tuesday evening, we loaded up and went to Menchies Frozen Yogurt! Menchies is new in our area and this was our first time to go there. It was great! The kids really enjoyed it and we all had fun celebrating Helen as she officially turned four and a half! :)

Here is a picture of Helen modeling her new dress that Marilyn made for her!

Here are all three kiddos at Menchies! Will is strong enough now to sit up in the restaurant-style high-chairs! No frozen yogurt for him! We like to wait until first birthdays to introduce the sweet stuff!
Helen enjoyed her frozen yogurt down to the last drop!

We like em' chunky!

OK! I'm back! I've got my USB cable and I'm ready to blog again! So, just for fun, I've got to share about one of our nicknames for Will! We are big on nicknames here and one that has stuck for Will is "Moto Moto"! Now, if you aren't familiar with the movie Madagascar 2, then this will not mean anything to you, but the picture to the right is the character Moto Moto and hopefully this will give you an idea of where Will's nickname came from. The song that you hear playing on my playlist is the song that Moto Moto sings in the movie. Well, this nickname just perfectly fits Will and when you see the following pictures, you will understand why! We are very proud of our "Moto Moto" because it wasn't long ago that he was very thin and needed some nourishment! He is eating well (as you will see) and he is packing on the pounds! So, several times a day, you will hear one of the kids singing, "chunky chunky, plumpy plumpy" while they play with Will! Too cute! These pictures were taken a little over a week ago when we took Will swimming for the first time!

Ain't nothin' wrong with lovin' chunky!

Moto Moto's big sister with her swimmies on!

Moto Moto's big bro!

He loved the pool! He is just so laid back and takes it all in!

Our Journey to Will

Hey Everyone! I finally just went to Walgreen's and had our pictures put on a CD so I could go ahead and share them! This is my first attempt at a Photobucket slideshow. I hope it works so that you can enjoy the images from our trip to Ethiopia. It was amazing!

Three Happy Harpers

We hope that you all have a safe and happy weekend!

God Bless America!

We're still here!

Hello friends! Sorry for the long time between posts! I know many of you have been looking for new pictures of Will as well as his big brother Beckett and big sister Helen, but there has been a minor technical issue! (The only pictures that I have posted since we returned were ones that Susi took at the airport and downloaded on to my computer before she went home.) I have over 200 pictures on my camera that have not been transferred to my computer and therefore cannot be uploaded to The Harper Hullabaloo! Why? You might ask? Well, my sweet husband, who does not always pay particular attention to details, was in quite a hurry to pack up the Verizon global telephone that we used while we were in Ethiopia! As soon as we were home, we transferred back to our regular phone and we had to send the "global" phone back. Verizon had sent us the box to return the phone and all we had to do was put it in there, along with all of the accesories, put a FedEx sticker on it and send it away. Well, I had not been able to find my USB cable for my camera and we finally determined that Sean stuck it in with all of the other accesories for the global phone and mailed it to Verizon! Do I expect that Verizon will recognize that and send it back to me? Uh, no! So, I just got off the phone with Nikon and have placed an order for a new USB cable. It may be another week before I can transfer any of my pictures to the computer, but in the meantime, I thought I'd check in and tell you a little bit about life here at the Harper Hullabaloo since Will Tekalgn Harper arrived home!

I mentioned that we took Will to the doctor the day after we got home. He took breathing treatments for a few days and was on an anti-biotic for a few days. I didn't really think that the breathing treatments were helping much. I took him to his first check up with our pediatrician on Wednesday and she took him off the breathing treatments and changed his anti-biotic. His ears were still pretty infected. His breathing is a little better, although he still rattles a bit when he breathes! Our doctor sent orders to Children's Hospital for all of Will's preliminary blood work and we went there last Friday. They took 10 vials of blood from his little body! He did so well! Not even a whimper! The technician who took his blood was SO good with him! I was not looking forward to that, but it was as smooth as possible. They gave us the "equipment" for a stool sample and sent us home. (The "equipment" was a little plastic container that looked like a butter tub and a tongue depressor!) That was interesting. We got our little "sample" on Saturday morning and took it back to the hospital that afternoon. That same day, Will attended his first Homeschool Curriculum Fair and his first baby shower for a former student of mine. Does that seem possible? That I can have an 8 month old baby and one of my former first graders can be preparing for her first child? Someone is getting old! Oh my!

Beckett attended Worship Camp at a local church each morning last week and they had their performance on Sunday night. My parents drove over from Brentwood and Sean's parents had just returned home from a vacation in Puerto Rico, so they all came to the "Take it All" performance. It was great! We are very proud of Beckett. He sang and danced and praised God with everything he had! Will slept through most of it, but he was quite a celebrity when the program was over. He was passed around and ooed and ahhed over for quite a while!

Sean had last week off and returned to work this past Monday. It was good having him home that first week back. He took Helen on a couple of father-daughter dates and took Beckett for an afternoon of fishing! We also stayed home a lot just hanging out as a family! We are working on helping Will to bond with our family. I know that I had mentioned the term "cocooning" to some of you. This is the term that the bonding and attachment specialists used to explain the importance of helping Will to learn who his immediate family is (dad, mom, sister and brother) so that he can begin to trust us and feel safe with us. I hope that I didn't over use this term, or scare any of you away! We would love to have visitors if you are in the area! I am giving him all of his bottles and changing all of his diapers and doing most of those care-giving types of things, but we would certainly love to hear from you and introduce you to Will!

He is doing well and has had many "firsts" in the last week and a half. Our pediatrician OK'd us to go ahead and begin introducing baby food. He had been eating cereal (as well as his formula) while at Hannah's Hope for about a week before we arrived. Since being at home he has had both rice cereal and oatmeal cereal as well as green beans, carrots and bananas! He is a great eater and loves his food! He is even attempting to self-feed with the Gerber puffs and Cheerios. This keeps him busy while the rest of us are eating dinner! I just hate that I can't share pictures! I've got some cute ones, so be prepared to be over-loaded with pics when I get that USB cable! Will is still not sleeping through the night, but at least he doesn't stay up for 3 and 4 hours wanting to play. Mostly he just wants a bottle and drifts back to sleep. This happens twice a night. I'm looking forward to some un-interupted sleep one day, but I do enjoy the cuddle time that I have with him during those early morning hours!

Well, if any of you are still reading this, thanks. Sorry to make this so long, but I just wanted to catch you up on the last week and a half! We are so happy to have Will home and we are enjoying him so much. He has fit into our family perfectly. God's plans are perfect and Will is definitely part of God's perfect plan for the Harpers! It is just amazing! We love him so much!

Stay tuned for pictures soon!