This year irene was Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service complete with her own (cinnamon) broom and jiji.

Last year we speculatively bought a second set of pajamas for irene and—what luck—they fit her! Thanks for taking the photo, margaret!

Yum!

Irene's been big enough for a while now that she no longer uses the bathtub from the last set of bath photos

and as you can see, she still likes taking baths! what could be more fun!?!

Irenie turned 1!
How did this happen?

We celebrated with some balloons and cake:



Nailed it with the balloons... and she liked the way the cake looked:

A little lukewarm on the part where you eat it, though:


Happy Birthday Irene!

Irene is hitting another peak of adorable these days walking and laughing and loving every minute of it!

And walking!

Irene and I took a plane trip together without Kate which made for Quite An Adventure!

Our first flight was significantly delayed (so much so that we missed our connection and had to rebook for the next morning after 3 hours waiting at the gate) but that didn't stop irene from exploring the gate area and saying hi to people she'd meet.

All in all, once we were actually flying it went about as smoothly as you could expect.

but in the end i was totally exhausted (as was irene). there's only so much distracting you can do before you start to run down your own reserves.

i don't know that i'd elect to travel alone with a 10 month old again, but it had its moments.

Here are some photos from when we took Irene out and tossed her in a pile of leaves.





Coming soon... winter!

Irene is nine months old today. We started the day like we usually do now, in her playroom letting her use us as a personal jungle gym.

She is so curious about everything now. She's standing a lot, more and more without any assistance, though still tends to fall over after a few seconds without anything to hang on to.

She is looking more like a real person from certain angles.

She has her own ideas about things.

And she loves to laugh.

Can't wait to see what another month will bring!

I usually drive, so it's pretty rare that I get to sit in the back and make faces and take photos of Irene while she gets chauffeured about. She's got a sort of routine of staring out the window, playing with her hands, looking at her feet and playing with her jacket. What a seasoned traveler!