springtime activities

 

Iris had her first Easter egg hunt. She wasn't really interested in the hunting aspect, but more the egg-shaking aspect. She picked up two eggs at a time and shook them and that was good enough for her. The event was mostly overwhelming for her since there were so many kiddos swarming the place. Evan's mom gave Iris her Easter dress and my mom sent the white sandals.

We visited the botanic gardens on Tuesday--Earth Day. It was a free day at the gardens, so it was swarming with people. There is an iris and lily garden that had just a few irises blooming. We stopped to get a couple photos with some irises.

 

One of Iris's favorite springtime activities is to play in our backyard and put rocks and dirt in her mouth. 

We are headed to State College next week so I can defend my dissertation proposal. Iris is still on 1/2L of oxygen, which is a great disappointment. After getting back from Texas in March she had to go all the way up to 1/2L and hasn't come back down since. We are about to start her on a short course of steroids (prednisolone) after having tried a few days on a diuretic (Lasix), which had no effect. 

We visited Iris's daycare on Thursday. She is set to start the first week in May and I am terrified. Even though the staff will get trained on her oxygen care I am sure that they are going to neglect her snotty nose and one of us will come to pick her up one day only to find that she is completely stuffed up and therefore getting no supplemental oxygen. She also isn't great at taking a sippy cup and she is going into a room where they don't really do bottle anymore. Evan reminds me that I am doing my motherly duty, which is to freak out before starting daycare. 

first birthday

Iris's birthday weekend began with a trip to the cardiology and pulmonary team. Actually, it began on Thursday evening with my dad arriving from New Mexico for the weekend. He helped on Friday with cleaning up the house and also went with us to her clinic appointment.

Evan took off work early so he could be at the appointment in person (he usually attends by phone). Since getting back from Texas, Evan had been particularly preoccupied with the idea that we would have to move to lower elevation so that Iris could have a normal life. It was discouraging to us both to have to put her back on oxygen, and since returning she still has higher oxygen requirements.

After doing a chest x-ray to look at the lungs and an echo to look at the heart the doctors assured us that everything looks good on her and that we shouldn't be discouraged by her continuing reliance on supplemental oxygen. It seems that babies continue to develop lung capacity--more alveoli develop--well into childhood. At this point her heart seems to be working well so we don't have to go back to see the cardiologists for another six months, but we will continue on the 3-month track with the pulmonary team.

All this was enough to convince Evan that we did not have to start planning the move away from Denver, and we could continue with the plan to do a raised-bed garden out in the backyard.

On Saturday we had her first birthday party. Evan made red beans and rice and hummus. I made some of Iris's favorite items -- curried mushrooms and onions, sauteed zucchini. Jill made Iris's birthday cake for us. I had been planning to make some kind of fruit dish for her, but then decided it would be okay for her to have her first taste of cake. Jill decorated the cake with blue and green icing since these are my favorite colors. (She didn't tell me she was going to do this, but she did ask me what my favorite colors were earlier in the week, so it can't be a coincidence.)

Jill, Dara, Sarah, Iris in the kitchen with the cake. photo credit: Nelson Hoffman

The party was a lot of fun -- it was the first time we had hosted a large group of people in Denver and both Evan and I realized how much we miss having frequent social gatherings at our home. Here's to having a summer full of social gatherings.

Janna brought the youngest party-goer -- Bianca is just five weeks old. Iris was pretty interested in her and tried to give her a York peppermint patty.

Iris and Bianca. photo credit: Nelson Hoffman

 It was hard to get Iris to stay still for the cake and singing.

photo credit: Nelson Hoffman

 The actual eating of the cake was anti-climactic. She liked the cake and took some of it and continued to run around the room, but she did not squeal with delight and smash her hands or face into it.

The first taste of cake. photo credit: Nelson Hoffman

Running with cake in hand.
photo credit: Nelson Hoffman

Iris continued to run around outside where the frisbee players were hanging out. It seems that she is going to be a girl after her father's heart.

Running with frisbee.
photo credit: Nelson Hoffman

Running with frisbee.
photo credit: Nelson Hoffman

So. After a year, Iris's favorite things to eat are bananas, strawberries, kiwi, yogurt, cheese, Cheerios, curried onions and mushrooms, tomato sauce, and red beans and rice. She loves to read books, play with her toys, take baths, and roam around upstairs. She is walking very well--toddling, I guess you would say. And can also walk backwards and keep her balance while bending over to pick up a toy. She knows a few signs: "birdie," "all done," "more," and "help." She doesn't use them with great regularity, but she does know them. She also just learned how to throw her hands up into the air when someone asks her, "Iris, how big are you?"

Now that I think about it, her birthday celebrations probably began on Thursday night. Evan and I went back to the photos and video we have from a year ago. Yes, we have a film of her birth. I know, too much information, right? It was really incredible to watch and to relive so many of the emotions. Those early days feel so far away and they have passed so quickly by. That's what they all say...but that doesn't keep it from being true.

I'm thrilled to have a one-year old and revel in each new word she learns and sound she makes. She has recently taken to hugging our legs while we stand in the kitchen preparing breakfast. It's enough to make up for all the sleepless nights. 

twelve months

At twelve months old, one of Iris's favorite toys is a rolling pin.

 

marjorie: on grandmothers

When I found out I was pregnant, one of the first conversations Evan and I had about the coming baby was what name we would attach to it. The conversation continued over the course of several months but fairly early on I issued a declaration: "If we have a girl, her middle name will be Marjorie, after my grandmother. If we have a boy, his middle name will be Miles, after my grandfather." 

I had great affection for my grandmother (my dad's mom) and liked that I was often compared to her, even when those comparisons involved character flaws, such as being indecisive. [I have since worked much harder to always know the kind of salad dressing I wanted before giving my order at a restaurant.] I was recently talking to my mom, who said, "You look so much like Grammie did." I can't really say that I see the physical resemblance, but I'm happy to have it made. 

Many of my cousins were probably closer with Grammie than I was, owing to geographical proximity. This is something I regret. Especially now that I am a mother I wish I knew so many more things about her. Did she breastfeed, for instance? My dad was her oldest child (after an initial miscarriage). Here is a picture of them, taken in 1949 in Hyderabad, India. 

The back of the photo has her handwriting on it: "July 4, 1949. On the porch of the Hyderabad bungalow."

Grammie's birthday recently passed -- on April 3. I had hoped that Iris would be born on April 3, when I found out her due date was April 10. When April 3 passed and I had still not given birth, I then hoped that I would give birth on the day Grammie died, but Iris couldn't wait that long. Grammie died on April 13, 2013, two days after Iris was born.

I look forward to telling Iris about her. I have the photo of Grammie and my dad in Iris's room along with the prayer that Grammie wrote for me on the back of the stock advertising paper they put in picture frames:

grandparents and grandchildren

Written by my dad -- Sunday 12 June 2005

Since there is sometimes said to be a link between grandparents and grandchildren that “skips a generation”, I asked Grammie (my mother, Marjorie Mendenhall Hoffman), on behalf of my daughter (who, by universal agreement, greatly resembles Marjorie), to tell me about her grandmother, Geneva Pedlar Morrison.

Geneva (called “Neva” by her friends and family) was the daughter of Franklin and Glendora Hurlburt Pedlar, born in March 1875 in Woodland, California. Her father was a schoolteacher and later assistant director of the San Francisco Mint. (His activities in protecting the Mint after the great San Francisco earthquake of 18 April 1906 are another story.) One day when Neva was going home from a party, at the age of 18 or 19, she and her friend heard music and followed the sound to discover a Salvation Army band playing on the street corner. She became involved with the Salvation Army and their evangelistic work, which embarrassed her family. Her parents sent her to live with her grandmother in Sacramento, to distance her from the influence of the Salvation Army. Not long after her arrival, her grandmother (Mom…which grandmother? Do we know? This story is about grandmothers, after all!) took Neva to a camp meeting where a traveling evangelist from Kentucky was holding services. The evangelist, Henry Clay Morrison, was a widower with three young children. He was about eighteen years Neva’s senior, and evidently a convincing suitor, for they were married a short time later.

Geneva Pedlar Morrison gave birth to five children. She had studied at California Polytechnical College (?) to become a schoolteacher, but after marrying, she traveled with her husband between California and Kentucky, spending two years in each location alternately, until Henry Clay Morrison became president of Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. After this, he continued to travel as an evangelist and fund-raiser for Asbury. During his absences, Neva directed operations at the college.

Once, at a camp meeting in Indian Springs, Georgia, a very poor young man came up to the Morrisons and told them he wanted to become a preacher. Neva told him if he would come to Asbury, she would see that he had a place to live and that he could go to college. The man’s name was Zachary Taylor Johnson. Neva prepared a small storage shed near her house for Zachary and his wife, and she ensured that he graduated from the college.

(Mom, add details about Neva’s leg injury and wooden leg.)

In 1910, when Neva was pregnant with her fifth child, H. C. Morrison left on a year-long world tour with a group of other evangelists. During this time, she operated the school. One night in winter the heating plant of the college failed. Neva got up in the middle of the night and walked on her wooden leg down to ensure that the plant was repaired. Neva died in March 1914, at the age of 39. Marjorie never knew her grandmother.

One time in the middle 1940s, Marjorie was visiting college and walked into the cafeteria, where Dr. Zachary Taylor Johnson (now president of the college), called her aside and told her she looked like her grandmother Neva Morrison. Z. T. Johnson called Neva a “saint” (perhaps because she had been so kind to him years before, and perhaps partly because she put up with H. C. Morrison!) All her children thought of her as a saint, too, and adored her.