First Month

Lots of updates from Iris' first month with us. Tia Amy and Grandma and Papa came to visit - stay tuned for those pics. It's been a bit crazy, we've had a few bumps, but overall, we're adjusting. Nico loves his "baby sister" and has started calling her Iris, after insisting for months that she was "Red." He is constantly trying to touch her, kiss her and...kick her (not hard, just wants to put his feet on her). He's mostly very sweet with her though. Whenever he sees her spit bubbles he says "oh no, baby sister," and runs to grab a tissue or wipe  to clean her up. He likes to help bathe her and sometimes helps pick out her outfits - he prefers her in pink :)

Nico is starting to talk a lot more; you'll see in the pics that it looks like he's on the phone. He was calling Kiran and chatting away with him. He likes to list out all the people he knows, all the movies he likes, all the candy he prefers...it's really cute. He's also making some entertaining observations. His Mater car "ate" Lightening McQueen other other day and I asked him what Mater tasted like..."Pizza!" We're also mostly giving up on naps with him these days and that seems to mostly help with the bedtime issue. He does usually come into our room in the wee hours, bringing along Owlie, Giraffey and Tse Tse. As you can imagine, our bed is a little cramped by morning.

We've had a few crazy experiences lately that I will consider "classic toddler" behavior. Last week, Nico took off upstairs while I was still feeding Iris downstairs. I could hear him playing for a few minutes and figured he was fine. All of a sudden I heard a huge crash and took off to see what had happened. As I was trying to get to him, I nearly slipped and fell. I looked around to see that he'd gotten a bottle of bath oil and had poured half of it all over the hard wood floor. He's slipped on it, which was the end of his fun. Fortunately, no major damage, but I spent 2 hours cleaning up the floors while he was a Jashmins :( A couple of days later, I went to get his clothes while he was in my room; Iris was sleeping in her bassinet. When I came back in, I found him laying down next to her in the bassinet! I almost went for the camera, but decided that it might cave in on them any minute and pulled him out. He was trying to be sweet, but...As you might have surmised, the lesson is not to let him alone for more than 30 seconds. I need a velcro wall and suit for Nico for when I can't keep my eyes on him. Do they make such things???

Iris is also changing. She's now out of her newborn stuff - today it was pretty obvious when I could barely snap the snaps on her onesie. Her head is getting really strong and she's staying up more during the day. She likes the balloons that we received as welcome home gifts and watches them when she's up. She's also starting to grab at things (usually my hair). She's mostly a good sleeper, although we had a rough night last night, and can do 3-4 hour stretches overnight. Mommy's hoping for better sleep tonight that's closer to what she usually does. I got one little smile from her the other day while she was awake - it might have been involuntary, but she usually doesn't do that when she's awake.

In other news, the kids and I will be in WA for about 2 weeks in April and look forward to seeing folks. Here are some pics from the past month.