Thanksgiving!

We flew to Indiana for Thanksgiving. It was Iris' first plane trip and she did great! I fed her during the take-offs and then she would fall asleep until we landed again. She was very good. It took some team work for Brad and I to get the car seat and stroller folded and unfolded before and after each flight but by the end of the trip we were experts. We had Thanksgiving dinner at Brad's parents house with all of his family including his cousins who all have small children. Thanksgiving dinner was a little loud with all of the children but it was very nice to see everyone and see all of Iris' cousins who are growing so fast. Iris was being passed around like a little hot potato visititng with everyone but she handled it very well. I was slightly distracted trying to keep up with her plus visit with everyone so I completely forgot to take pictures on Thanksgiving Day. I'll see if someone else in the family has any and upload them to the blog later.

Friday night Brad and I left Iris with Brad's parents and went to West Baden Springs resort for the night. It was VERY nice. We worked out (which I haven't done in forever), went swimming in their pool, got in the hot tub, went to the spa for massages and then had a very nice dinner. It was great to get away for a bit and just relax. Of course, we missed Iris the whole time! Saturday we drove back to Bedford and met Iris and the family at Kaitlyn's basketball game. Then we visited with Nana and that night we had dinner at Barbara's house. Fortunately I remembered to take pictures!

Four Months!

Yeah!!! Iris is 4 months old. She just had her 4 month old check-up and she weighs 14 lbs. and is 26 inches. This month she has learned to roll over from her stomach to her back. She now laughs and she smiles a lot more ---especially when you hold her arms and sing Pat-A -Cake. That is her favorite song and the quickest way to get a big smile from her. She is also babbling constantly. She holds her head up great but can't quite sit up by herself yet. We think she may be teething because she is chewing on EVERYTHING. She constantly has her hands in her mouth, and is drooling a lot more than usual. She is now also blowing bubbles. The Dr. said we can go ahead and give her rice cereal. That will be our next big adventure. Stay tuned for those messy pictures.....

Visiting Grandma in the hospital

As some of you know, my grandmother was diagnosed with colon cancer several weeks ago. She went in for surgery and had a portion of her colon and appendix removed. The surgery went great. She spent a little less than a week in the hospital and made it home just in time for Thanksgiving. We are not sure what is next, maybe a mild form of chemo, but she is home now and doing great. Taking the grandkids to the hospital always seemed to cheer grandma up. As always, Iris' cousin, Avery, wants to hold her and Iris enjoys it because it gives her new fingers to chew on. Lord only knows where those have been. I'm sure we left the hospital with a ton of germs that day.

Jump, Jump, Jumperoo....

So as some of you who call me during the day (and have been lucky enough to get an earful from me) know, Iris likes to be held all day long. That really doesn't work well when there are clothes to be washed, dinner to be cooked etc, etc. So, I started pulling out all of her "contraptions" and putting them together to see if there was anything she would stay in for longer than 20 minutes. First we have the Jumperoo..... she starts out interested, playing for about 2 minutes.....

until we wonder if this too, may be edible. This buys me another 60 seconds.....Then we start to get really frustrated as we realize this thing is not producing any milk and may, in fact, not be edible after all...

30 seconds later we somehow get our arm stuck in the leg hole and playtime is officially over. The next picture after this would have been her screaming but I threw the camera down and once again picked her up so we didn't get that picture. So the Jumperoo gives me a little less than 5 minutes to get things done. Of course, that is if I actually use those 5 minutes to do something other than taking pictures if Iris!

Look who rolled over!!!

Rolling......

Rolling.......

YEAH!!!!! Iris did it! During "tummy time" today Iris just rolled on over without warning. I missed the first roll over because it caught me by surprise. I think it caught her by surprise as well because she had a look of sheer panic on her face the first time she rolled over and ended up on her back. She had no idea what had happened. So I grabbed the camera and put her back on her tummy and she did it again, this time I started clapping and smiling at her so she finally thought it was funny. It's so fun to see Iris reaching all of these milestones. She's growing up so fast.

Winnie the "Pooh"

Iris: Earlier today mommy said we were going out in my cute purple "Winnie the Pooh" outfit. I wore it all morning and mommy kept saying how cute I looked in "pooh" so that's exactly what I gave her ....and a lot of it. I guess I did something wrong because she immediately took me out of it, tossed it in that big tumbling machine and left me in a diaper for the rest of the afternoon. Then daddy came home and started calling me a "Redneck Baby." I have no idea what that means. Sometimes life can be very confusing....

Election Day!!

Iris participated in her first election! Brad and I weren't sure what would be the best time to go vote but he had a full day at the office and I didn't really want to stand in line by myself with Iris so we decided to just go ahead and get in line first thing in the morning. We packed breakfast bars and we each took our travel coffee cups with us. We plucked Iris out of her bassinet while still in her PJ's, packed a bottle and headed out. It was a rainy morning so Brad and I each took turns holding the umbrella over the stroller while the other read the newspaper. It was kind of fun for a little while but once we started to hit the 3 hour mark we were about done. Iris did great. She napped, Brad fed her breakfast, she met some of our neighbors in line and then napped again. The long wait started at the back of St. Johns High School a little before 7:00am...... Still waiting, still working our bottle.....

Trip to the Aquarium

On Sunday, Iris and I met my friend Courtney and her sons Hugh and Julian at the Aquarium. Unfortunately Courtney and her kids were not able to stay long ( see Courtney's blog for full explanation and pictures). However, Iris and and I stayed for quite a while. I took her out of her stroller and held her up to the tanks with the bigger fish. She followed with her eyes and seemed very content just looking at everything.

Baptism

Iris was baptized on November 2nd. Msgr. Lofton baptized her. Her Godparents are my sister, Mary, and Brad's partner and friend, John Britton. Iris was very good during mass, she did a few shouts out to the lord but other than that she was pretty quiet--thank goodness!

More pix from Halloween weekend

Just some more pix from the weekend with Brad's family...