texas trip

Evan's friend from high school was getting married in Austin. We packed up almost all of our earthly possessions and took a direct flight to Austin for a five-day vacation. We had to rent a portable oxygen concentrator for Iris so that she could fly. They don't allow oxygen tanks on airplanes.

Iris in sling, toting oxygen concentrator behind

Once we got to Texas we found that her oxygen saturation levels were super high since we were down at sea level. So we left her off oxygen for the duration of the trip. We both started wondering to ourselves whether we might have to move to sea level if Iris's lungs don't improve. We've both been disappointed that she's still on oxygen and I had been sure she'd be off by December. Maybe I've mentioned that. 

So we got spoiled in Texas letting Iris run around without a cord. 

Evan's parents drove in from Houston to babysit Iris for us while we went to the wedding. They had tons of fun reading books together.

The five of us went out to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center one day. It was really beautiful even though there were not many wildflowers to speak of. We did end up seeing some wildflowers on our drive to Houston later during the vacation.

Evan, Iris, and her bunny at the wildflower center

The wedding events themselves were a lot of fun, and for those interested I may cover them in more detail in a separate post. 

Here we are at the wedding

Iris did very well during all the driving. There was a bit of fussing, some of which I captured below.

Iris is mad

The vacation was sorely needed. In addition to reconnecting with some high school friends, Evan managed to work very little and truly take a break. Iris is on the cusp of becoming a walker. She is taking increasingly confident steps and has sprouted another tooth. On the top this time. 

eleven months old

Iris is almost too big for the onesie I put her in every month for her month completion photos. I took her for her Synagis shot earlier this week and she weighed 19 lbs, which means she's scrambling up the growth curve. 

 

She had an amazing night of sleep last night after a very long run of terrible sleeping nights. Last night she was only up once at 2:30am. Granted, she was wide awake and was not at all interested in sleeping, which is not the norm, but at least it was only once. More recently it has been more like she's up every 2 to 3 hours. One night I made the mistake of eating some ice cream with chocolate chips in it and I think it got into her system. She was up almost every hour the whole night. 

the declarative finger point

In the past several weeks Iris has adopted a new habit -- the declarative finger point. This is a common gesture that babies learn around this age, I believe. It helps in getting people to tell her what she's looking at and grows her vocabulary. However, she has also adopted the imperative finger point -- something I like much less. This occurs when I am trying to get her to do something she doesn't want to do and she very firmly shakes her finger at me. I couldn't figure out how she would have adopted this type of finger point until I remembered that I had been singing "Little Bunny Fufu" to her. When the good fairy comes down to tell Little Bunny Fufu to stop bopping the field mice on the head...well, she points her finger and wags it.

Incidentally, I just found a neat article about babies becoming more human as they learn to point their fingers on Slate.