Adventures in Parenthood: Tia Laurie and Tio Chino's wedding

This past week was a busy week for the little Wiggle. Tia Laurie and Tio Chino got married on September 28, 2013. I took off Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday from work to help with wedding madness and Clarita came along to help too. She was such a trooper as we were gone for 12 plus hours most days. We ran errands, worked at my mom's house (where the wedding was), and Clara even accompanied the bridesmaids to the nail salon (she slept the entire time). Clara was so good through all the madness. She took naps wherever we happened to be (often in the car), played with her toys, and was entertained by all the people. My Uncle Karl was so impressed with Clara's ability to occupy herself that he told my mom, "I only heard her fuss once all day!"

Clara loved snuggling with Aunt Sonja

She was great at the rehearsal smiling and talking to everyone, and slept through the entire rehearsal dinner and all the way home. Reedcito was at the rehearsal since his dad was one of the groomsmen. When he got there he immediately requested to see Baby Clara. He was very sweet to let her borrow his wagon and even asked if "that guy" wanted to borrow his bike too.

Clara was one of the flower girls in the wedding. The day of the wedding I had the perfect day for Clarita all planned out in my head, but figured that it would never go as planned. Clara must have known how important the day was because she behaved exactly as I envisioned! We got to my mom's house around 9:00 and Clara hung out with the aunts and uncles who were all in town and played on the floor. Luckily there were a ton of people to keep her entertained. When she got a little fussy I put her in her pouch and she took a nap. During the afternoon she played and watched everyone get ready. Then my mom rocked her to sleep (it literally took one minute) and she slept for an hour and a half! I finally woke her up at 3:30, nursed her, changed her, and got her dressed in her cute little outfit just in time to help us take shots before walking down the aisle. It was perfect!

Excited for the wedding

Silly bridesmaids

Clara learning how to take shots!

Clara went down the aisle in a wagon pulled by Russell's cousin Keiko who was the other flower girl. His cousin Kenji, the ring bearer, walked next to her to make sure she didn't fall over. Clara can sit up like a champ and rarely falls over, but we weren't sure how she would do in a moving wagon. During the rehearsal I put her in the wagon with just a blanket. This made Kevin really nervous as Clarita kept trying to move all over to grab the shiny bolts on the wagon. For the wedding she sat in the Bumbo chair covered in a scarf. It was much sturdier and she was pretty still. Clara loves people and I think she was in awe of all the people as she was pulled down the aisle. She was so in awe that she didn't even try to pull her headband off! My mom took Clara during the ceremony and apart from a little unhappiness when La Abuelita took her bracelet away from Clarita, she was very good.

Kevin and Russell's friends always pretend to lose the bride's ring during the ceremony. For my and Kevin's wedding it was in the oak tree. For this wedding we decided to change it up a little and have the bridesmaids do something with the ring. Merci had a genius idea of pretending that the ring was in Clara's diaper! We pretended to look for it and then I said, "Oh I just changed Clara's diaper!" and pretended to find it in her diaper (my mom had the ring on her finger). Some people asked if I had really lost it in there!

Is the ring in her diaper?

The wedding was absolutely perfect and we had so much fun! My mom has six brothers and sisters, none of whom live in California. Five of them attended the wedding so Clara got to meet all of them and got lots of snuggles and loves. She was in heaven!

Mr. and Mrs. Suemoto!

Uncle Karl, Uncle Pete, and cousin Jeff

Clara had lots of fun dancing the night away (she stayed up until 10:30), taking photos in the photo booth, and socializing. She even watched Laurie and Russell do keg stands and thought it was pretty interesting. It was a successful wedding and Clara is so happy that Russell is now officially her Tio Chino!