A day behind schedule, perhaps, but Lorraine DeLee Eastman easily claimed the distinction of being San Juan County’s first baby of 2013, just the same.
Born Jan. 2, at 8:52 a.m. at Mount Vernon’s Skagit Valley Hospital, Lorraine is the daughter Friday Harbor’s Giovanna Drew and Ed Eastman, and she is the first girl born to either of her parents, whose “blended” modern family boasts three boys, Aiden, 11, Issac, 8, and Zayden, 5, as well.
Weighing in at eight pounds and one ounce at birth, Lorraine missed her Jan. 1 due date by about nine hours. She was 20.5 inches long when delivered.
Drew said that Lorraine, named for a grandmother on her mother’s side, a multi-generational islander, already shows signs in her first few days of life of the spirited type of personality for which she herself is well known.
“She’s got my fiery attitude, that’s for sure,” said Drew, a Friday Harbor High School graduate, now 30. “But she’s sleeping through the night. I think she’s got the better parts of both of us.”
With Lorraine’s arrival on the second day of January, the Eastman/Drew family is this year’s winner of the annual Journal Baby Derby, an honor bestowed upon the first baby born to San Juan County parents each new year. As Derby winner, the family will receive what’s known as the “Baby Booty”, consisting of more than $500 in gifts, prizes and age-appropriate packages donated by 20 separate businesses, merchants and local retailers.
A year ago, Adelaide Pearline Vasquez, born Jan. 5, 2011, earned the Baby of the Year distinction, and Lorraine’s arrival makes the second year in a row that a girl has won the annual Baby Derby. The honor, and prizes, went to a newborn boy the three previous years before that.
Becoming parents of a baby girl is just one of several new chapters for the Eastman/Drew family. The couple recently built a home in Friday Harbor’s Country Village Estates, one of the 30 so-called “sweat equity” homes featured in the neighborhood, a collection of affordable homes with financing, construction and technical assistance provided by Homes for Islanders.
With Lorraine in the mix, the Eastman/Drew home and family now includes six.
