summer's end

We've had a lot of rain recently and it feels like summer is coming to an end. There are a host of things we didn't manage to do this summer. But really, who cares? We've made a lot of happy memories, if only in our backyard and living room. 

Iris has been getting more and more rambunctious, energetic, and quick to laugh. The other day she wanted to get up on the La-Z-Boy with all her stuffed animals. 

 

Then I asked her to smile.

 

She has become very obsessed with water. She really loves playing outside in the little wading pool we have. The photos below show her encounter with the hose. She got a little too much water in the face and got scared off.

Water from the hose! Yay!

Water in the face! No!

Time to flee from the hose

fifteen months old

The summer is flying by so quickly. There was a heat wave recently that made sleep extremely difficult. Evan got a portable air conditioner for the upstairs. Luckily cooler weather means that I'm getting more sleep, as long as I don't have any caffeine during the day.

Iris and her juice

I took Iris to the Mordecai Children's Garden at the Denver Botanic Gardens on Monday. There is a man-made creek to wade in that she loved. She also met another 15-month old girl named Iris! The mothers were amazed. 

Iris and her juice, again.

Iris is adding new words to her vocabulary every day. So far she says, "Mama" and "Dada," obviously, but her most recent additions are "on" and "up!" She's a little confused about "on" and "open" so she just says "on" when she wants something opened. And, well, she says "up" when she wants down. Her other words are a little hard to understand for the uninitiated. "Gaga" means car or dog; "gugu" means cookie; "dudu" means juice; "nana" means banana, or Nonna (Evan's mom); "baba" is anything starting with a b, mostly bear, or ball.

Her sign language is also pretty good. She uses the signs for "more"; "help"; "all done"; "milk"; "Daddy"; "owie" (or "it hurts"); "birdie"; and "book." And, of course, she points and grunts at things she wants.

Iris and her juice, again.

 Perhaps most surprisingly, she has figured out how to say "I don't know" and also it's appropriate usage. As in, "Iris, where's your bear?" To which she responds, "I don't know," if she actually doesn't know. I had taught her the sign for "I don't know" so she also uses that, but mostly just for fun.

A few days ago I had been out for a bit and when I got home I found this baby, below. Everything looks fine, right? Well if you look closer, you'll see her diaper is on backwards. Evan claims not to have noticed that he put her diaper on backwards.

What's wrong with this picture?

As for other happenings, Evan and I went on a double date with some friends last weekend and had dinner at a French restaurant after exploring Hudson Gardens in Littleton. We also had our first visitor from Pennsylvania. A friend of mine from my PhD program was making the cross-country trip to start a new job in California and he stayed with us a night. It was so good to catch up with him and it got me very motivated to keep working on my dissertation.

the dirty projectors dance

Summer is upon us. The last week was very hot and Iris spent much of the time in diaper only. She is increasingly active and loves to run across the room. She also loves music, as you'll see below. She is dancing to "Impregnable Question" by The Dirty Projectors. 

We have a pulmonary check-up in about a month. Iris continues to have increased oxygen needs, her happy spot is somewhere between 1/4L and 1/2L. This is more than double what it was in October of last year, when she was down to 1/8L. I try not to think about this troubling fact very much because there's nothing we can do about it and the doctors are firm in saying that she will, eventually, grow out of the need for oxygen supplementation.

Iris was sick with a stomach bug again. It seemed worse than the stomach bug at the end of April, if it was in fact a stomach bug. She lost some weight and that really worried me. She's much better now, though, and has gained back the weight she lost. She really has the appetite of a horse.

When Evan feeds her, he models the deliciousness of the food by pretending to put the spoon of food in his mouth and gives a satisfied, "Haummm!" grunt that is supposed to suggest satisfaction. The effect has been that Iris has started giving the same sound effect when she eats something she likes. It's very adorable. She also has heard me say "Achoo!" after she sneezes a lot so she has started mimicking that noise by saying, "Atoo!"

The last piece of news is that we've had to confiscate all books from Iris's toddling radius for the time being. She is teething and has found books to be particularly tasty. This means that she is literally devouring books. She is usually pretty loud when she plays, if not squealing or babbling, then she is banging things together. Sometimes when I'm in the kitchen and not watching very closely, I realize that things have suddenly gotten very quiet. This is never a good sign. And recently it has meant that yet another book has been sacrificed for the sake of Iris's teeth.