Aug ...Sept...Oct...Nov!!
We have a ONE year old! Well….. we now have a 14 month old! Obviously time has escaped us as we kept trying to get updates out each month and then got sucked into many other priorities such as… caring for one Miss Iris Grace!
I’ll back track to late August (remember summer??) as IG has hit several milestones that we want to share about along the way.
As a full year of Iris Grace’s life is now gathered up in incredible memories of our first year of parenthood, we are still blown away by how INCREDIBLE it has been! It’s true, she did not come with any instructions other than she would keep us abreast of her many cues for comfort, all we had to do was listen!
Between late August & November many milestones/events occurred.
Here are some highlights:
AUGUST- we took a family vacation with the Rasera’s to Delmar for 4 days at the beach. It was fantastic and Iris was such a little trooper. Our “surfer girl” went into the ocean for the first time and loved playing with her many sand toys. It was special to be at the beach where Alisa’s family has been going since 1979. During that trip Iris started to have what appeared to be a tooth cutting through. It finally did and brought a friend along with it. Her two bottom ones became visible and two uppers were next.
SEPTEMBER- About two weeks before her bday. She decided enough with the crawling, she was ready for steps. So she took some beyond her furniture cruising and within a couple of days was fluently walking across the room. This is a huge climax for her first year of development. She also likes to go up the many steps in our home. While we are always right behind her, she finds this to be an exciting adventure.
She got her first shoes. Grammy Jo Jo and Maria our nanny insisted she have some little shoes for outdoors when at the park. She likes them and can identify them in english and spanish.
One year check up went great. On 9/23 she weighed 16 lbs. 8 oz and was 28 ¼ in long. Her development is spot on . and she is a petite little girl! Since then she has grown of course and when weighed a couple of weeks ago she was 17lbs. 11 oz.
She had her first birthday celebration. She was surrounded by tons of love from family and friends in our backyard which included some dancing, story telling, craft making, piñata swiping, blessing and singing to the bday princess. We were all exhausted by the end but grateful to the many hands that helped make our celebration of year #1 memorable . Grammy Jo Jo also made a beautiful wall of photos to commemorate Iris’ first year. On her actual birthdate, Grammy Jo Jo and mama took Iris to the Oakland Zoo and that night when her Grandma Jean arrived, we sang and she had vanilla rice dream, ice cream for the first time!
OCTOBER- We began with a new family for our nanny share. This was a hard but necessary transition as our former family was unable to continue do to economic circumstances and we were so sad to lose Rina and her family in that capacity! However we were blessed to begin a new with another local family with an 11 month old named Lucas. Since then, Iris and Lucas have become pals and Iris LOVES to stroke Lucas’ hair ( fascinating for her as she still has very little!)
During the month we spent a Sat. with our dear neighbors the Johnson's at the Livermore pumpkin patch. Iris was quite selective on which pumpkin she wanted! For Halloween Iris was a ladybug. Of course, dressing up is tons of fun so she had a few other costumes to celebrate the weekend with. For her bday, Grandma Jean made her a cute little cowboy sweetheart outfit, with sequence boot covers and all!! You will see the pictures of her winning hearts over at a social event at our church. She also wore a tinkerbell fairy costume to Lucas’ 1st bday party.
NOVEMBER- arrived which marked the one year anniversary since Iris’ baptism. We honored the day by bringing her baptismal candle to church for a blessing. IG takes occasional trips with mama to pilates and they take long walks everyday after work. The three of us spent a special Thanksgiving together alone in our home complete with tofurky and pumpkin pie. (Iris LOVES tofurky !)It was a precious 4 days of laying low, sleeping in and playing lots!
Finally… in addition to saying mama, poppa, da (dog) and probably words in Spanish that we are not recognizing yet….but the other day Iris said BABY!! Some of her favorite books these days are “Daddy Hugs”, “Barnyard Dance”, “Pat the Bunny,” “Goodnight Moon” ,“Goodnight California” and “My Dog.” She loves to open and close everything, pull and push, and play peek a boo. She and Soleil are having fun interacting more and she loves other children.
Year #2 has begun and just gets better every day! We are blessed.
Year #2 has begun and just gets better every day! We are blessed.
As usual you can see her latest photos on her website by clicking here
