Generations

Gordon Fraser Richards 1918 - 2009

Toes in her nose (or mouth)...

Juniper is such a charismatic, smart wonderful little girl. Even in the past couple of weeks, she has developed a number of useful life skills - for instance, as you can see, she is now a big fan of putting her feet in her mouth. Unfortunately, she can only manage this when her diapers are off, because otherwise there is just too much bulk in the way. But it sure makes changing easier - Juniper lifts her legs out of the way for you as soon as the diaper is undone!

She has also now purposefully rolled herself from back to front three times (the time I had mentioned earlier was, we believe mostly a surprise for her), although I have yet to catch that on film. And she is trying very hard these days to sit up on her own, although she can only manage it for about 10 seconds at a time. She is, however, very comfortable sitting if she's supported. Here she is, for instance, just chillin' in our living room chair:

More than just getting smarter and stronger and prettier on a daily basis, however, she is also getting bigger. We had a check-up last week, and she tipped the scales at 16 lbs 11 oz, which (according to those charts that keep track of such things) is in the 96th percentile for her age (she turned four months last week!!!) Our doctor told me to stop feeding her so much. I'm still not sure whether she was joking or not, but I'm not listening either way. Juniper can eat when she's hungry, thank-you very much! She's breast-fed after all. I say celebrate the triple chins and thunder thighs!

And in other news, there have been some nice visits lately - Juniper met our friends Tracy, Dan and their son Benjamin for the first time a couple of weekends ago. Here she is with Tracy - we might have gotten a better picture with all three of them, except that Clark very suddenly and unexpectedly got sick while we were visiting, and so we had to cut it short. We realized, in retrospect, that it was almost certainly a delayed reaction to the H1N1 shot (yes, Clark and I finally broke down and got them - a hard decision), but at the time it was a little scary. Anyway, here is a picture of Juniper and Tracy:

Lat weekend, Bill and Barb (Clark's dad and step-mom) came up for a very nice visit. Juniper was an absolute angel, and gave Barb, in particular, lots of snuggles. We were even able to skype with Barb's mom Helen, which was the first time Juniper got to "meet" her final great-grandmother.
And finally, here is a nice shot of Juniper and Erika, our next door neighbour, who was over for a visit the other day:
Alright, that's all for now, but stay tuned, because I'm still putting together those video montages (I'll finish them, hopefully, no later than this weekend), and before then, I'll also post some new duds that I made for Juniper. There is that hat an mitt set that I knit, and another pair of (very colourful) overalls that I just finished tonight (my fancy snaps finally showed up in the mail today!)
For now, I will leave you with a rather delightful video of Clark and Juniper competing for the Saturday Globe and Mail.

From smiles to giggles!

This is just a quick post to share a couple of videos. They are both of Juniper giggling - something that she has been doing sporadically for the last couple of weeks. As you can see, however, it takes some pretty hilarious prompting sometimes :) The first video is from a couple of weeks ago; the second is from earlier today. Enjoy!

The adventures of Gumby

Our little Gumby poses with a toy Gumby at Woozles last weekend

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted, but I've been working on a little something. A little video montage, if you will. It's not done yet, but hopefully it will be worth the wait. In the meantime, here's a few little photos and updates from the last week and a bit.

So, I've been continuing to experiment with making things for Juniper. Here she is, sporting some overalls that, after much tweaking, seem to work. They are a little big for her in the body, but I've decided that is just something I'll have to live with for just about everything I make her. These particular overalls are reversible - the other side is that floral flannelette you see in the rolls and the applique flower, and they have a pocket on them (you can kind of see them in a picture later on with Faye and Brent).

I've also recently finished knitting her a hat, and once I've knit the mittens to go with it, I'll post the ensemble.

As for visitors, my sister faye and her s.o. Brent came down last weekend, and seeing as though neither of them were diseased this time, Brent got to hold her. I figured that was worth a picture (notice the reverse overalls):

Clark's sister Theresa also came down that weekend, but it was rather bittersweet, as she had a sore throat, and had recently been hanging around some swine flu people. So she spent her time with one of my bandanas over her nose and mouth, and she didn't get to touch Juniper. Thus, no pictures. But we enjoyed her visit anyway!

Finally, Clark's cousin Eddy was in town yesterday, and got to meet Juniper for the first time! We had a nice supper together, and then Juniper went to sleep and the adults got to hang out for a bit.

And what else is new? Well, Erika and Wesley have been away this week, so we've been taking care of Lenny. That means that he is sharing the bed with us as well, so in the mornings, all four of us are competing for space :) But it has all worked out fine.

Besides that, it's life as usual! Clark and I broke down last week and got our H1N1 shots. This wasn't an easy decision, and we wouldn't have gotten them if it was just the two of us, but wedecided it was worth trying to keep Juniper safe if we can. That, and I just had to stop over thinking it. I've been feeling a little under the weather since then, but nothing serious. We're still going to mom and babes yoga twice a week, I'm still teaching step on Friday mornings, and we've gone for lots and lots of walks when it's been nice.

Stay tuned for the videos!

Weekend (and early week) adventures

Pretty much everything we do these days is an adventure - literally. Even if Juniper and I are just going out for a walk around the block or a quick trip to the grocery store, I preface it by asking her "Juniper, are you ready to go on a little adventure?" Of course, she always is!

This past weekend, however, we made sure to get out on some especially fun adventures - that is, we took a couple of fun day trips. On Saturday, we spent the day in Wolfville. We went to the farmer's market, poked around town, and then met our friends Matt and Marchell for lunch at this great little place called "The Vegetarian Lunchbox", and checked out a neat little yarn store called Gaspereau Valley Fibres. Of course, we finished things off with a trip to "Just Us". Nothing to strenuous, but really, a very nice trip.


Then, on Sunday we braved the windy, rainy, foggy weather, and nipped out to Peggy's Cove. This was Juniper's first visit to this iconic Nova Scotia landmark, and she spent most of the time snuggling against Clark in an attempt, no doubt, to escape the cold rain and wind. It was, nonetheless, a fun little outing, and we were rewarded with some really great big crashing waves (can you make them out in the background?) Juniper decided she'd be a little saucy for the photo shoot :)


Finally, last night we had a really fun dinner visit with my cousin Claire, who is here this week for a conference. Although Juniper is seeming so big and grown-up these days, I'm sure she feels tiny to Claire, who has a robust (and adorable) little boy just over a year older than Juniper.


Stay tuned - I'm almost finished another pair of overalls, and I have a dress on the way. I'll post them when I'm done, and Juniper feels like modeling!

Storytime

This is just a short post - I wanted to share a new talent that Juniper has developed. We make it a habit to read to her most nights before bed, and recently she has actually seemed to enjoy the stories, and pay attention to them. More than that, however, if we have the right sized book, she actually knows enough (sometimes with a little prompting) to turn the pages! I mean, yes I'm biased, but that seems pretty brilliant for a 3-month old. Here is a little snippet:

A whole slew of stuff

Will Juniper hate me for posting this one day? Perhaps. But with a child this cute, how can you resist?

So much for keeping up on things as they happen! Since my last post, there have been a number of things I should have been casually throwing on the blog as I went along, but no - now I'm going to try and squish them all in again. First of all, juniper has, once again, met a bunch of people for the first time.

My aunt Janie, who is now living in Newfoundland, was in Halifax for a few days, and came over to meet her great-niece. I don't have a picture of it here, but she brought along a puppet for when Juniper gets older - a chef puppet that you can move his mouth and his hand. She said it reminded her of when I performed "Les Poissons" at the Junior High talent show. For anyone who was around back then, that was a little snippit of the past that I hadn't thought about for a VERY long time!

We also had nice visits from Clark's cousin, Sarah, who was doing some fieldwork in Halifax for the week:

And our friend Crispin, who has been trying to find a time to pop by for awhile now. Juniper, of course, was more than happy to meet all of her new admirers.


I've also been sewing up some new duds for Juniper. I'm still ironing out the kinks, but I think I'm getting closer. I broke down and ordered some plastic snaps and a snap applying thing from ebay. I had upgraded from "sew-on" snaps to "hammer-on" snaps, but even the hammered ones have been giving me trouble. So this is the next step up again. I held myself back from getting the 100$ profession snap press - that will be if I feel the need to upgrade again :)
Anyway, here are a couple of my newest endeavours:

This dress is made of fleece, so it's pretty bulky (but warm!). But I put a tie in the back so that it's not just a huge sac. I also did my "new" thing - that is, I made it double-layered, with the inside layer coming only about half-way down, and then attaching a cut-off onesie to this second layer. Can you picture it? If not, I can post pics. Anyway, this helps to prevent against the inevitable "dress-ride-up" syndrome.


These are overalls that I made. I cut the legs a little high - I'll have to fix that on the next pair I make. But they are reversible! Fancy! They will be far easier to do once I get my snap-putter-on thing.

And what else? Well, Juniper is practically an old woman now. I take that back - that's kind of a disturbing image. But she sure is getting older. Here she is, in her little high chair that attaches tot the table - she has been sitting up there with us when we have meals! We chomp on our food, she chomps on one of her toys and teething ring.


Teething ring, you ask? Yes, I think her little gums are feeling the first tingles of teeth. They have not come close to poking through yet, but she's doing an awful lot of slobbering and chomping on things in a teething sort of way. Or what I imagine a teething sort of way to be. Here she is, having a little nap, teething ring poised and read for action:


And finally, a video for your viewing pleasure. It is Juniper doing some push-ups during "tummy-time". As you can see, she likes to take lots of rests in between push-ups.

Out and about and other newness

So, this is my last catch-up posting. Let's see how clever and concise I can be!

1. Sew-sew
One of the things I've been experimenting with lately is making some oh-so-cute dresses for Juniper. I thought to myself "how hard can a miniature dress be"? So I just started loosely cutting a made-up pattern, all care-free and willy-nilly. Hmmm. Not as easy as I had thought. The problem? I wanted to have something fitted, but soon came to realize that it is a fine art to have something that is fitted and can fit over a small squirmy creature who can't put her arms above her head. Thus, a whole lot of ripping things apart, starting again, etc etc. There might have been tears involved, I can't really remember, but there was at least one sleepless night where I kept trying to come up with solutions to the problem. Here is what that first dress turned out like:

As you can see, my solution was to put in elastic at the top, so that it would stretch over her arms and then settle into place afterward. Good in theory, but i didn't quite perfect the technique, and it was still too small and tight to get on with ease. The two times we put her in it, it was slightly traumatic for everyone involved, and so this dress has now been retired. I might try a similar technique again, but not make it so tight. We'll see.

In the meantime, however, I decided it would be wise to invest in some real patterns and see if I fared any better. I have now made a couple of dresses using a bought pattern, although I ended up altering it quite a bit (shortening the straps and adding snaps, adding a tie in the back, etc). Here is one of those dresses, which I made from an old piece of my clothing (I don't have a picture of the second one):

They are not difficult - I have visions of more and different things I could do, like maybe at a onesie bottom to the inside portion so that it wouldn't ride up as much, or make it reversible. The problem, of course, is finding the time... I whipped these ones off while my mom was here and keeping Juniper amused during the day.

2. Mommy-daughter outings
One of the things that has truly kept me sane over these last few months, espeically once Clark started going back to school, has been getting out of the house - going on excursions of various sorts with Juniper. Of course, we still get out for walks whenever it is nice out, like this glorious day that Juniper and I took a trip to Frog Pond.



There are quite a few things we do other than just walks, however. For awhile, most of these excursions involved various breast feeding support groups, which were such a life-saver. There were a few women and their kids, all of whom were born around the same time as Juniper, and all with midwives, who I would see week after week, and after awhile, these groups became more about chatting with our new buddies than about breast feeding support.
We have since branched out, however - I've now gone to "reel babies", for instance. This happens about twice a month, where one of the theatres in town will show a movie (something current), and parents bring their babies along with them. The lights aren't dimmed all the way, the sound is lower, there are change tables and bottle warmers, and often the movie is slightly drowned out by crying. A very surreal experience, but such a treat to go to the movies!
We've also now been to "mom and babes yoga", and infant massage, both of which we'll keep going to.
We had a particularly nice day last week, when Kata was on vacation - the three of us did some beading, then went for lunch. If only Kata was off all the time! Juniper and I are going to have to find some other moms and babes who are looking for fun day-time outings.

Tonight the three of us headed out to a dinner that is thrown every year for people getting a Killam scholarship (which Clark currently is)... we almost didn't bother, because we weren't sure how it would work with Juniper (we'd be there long past when we usually put her to bed), but we decided to give it a go. Of course, Juniper was an angel. And she gave us an excuse to leave after the meal, and before the really boring part where they go through all the scholars. Here we are post dinner. Notice my new, really short hair. I'm not sure what I think of it yet!


3. And one more thing...

I don't know if this will be interesting to anyone else, but Juniper pooped in her potty for the first time the other day! No, we are not crazy and trying to potty train her or anything, but there is something called "ec" (elimination communication), which is based on the theory that if you watch your child's cues, you know when she is about to poop. As the theory goes, a baby is much happier if they don't have to soil a diaper, so if you can get them on the potty instead, it's a good thing. We haven't been very diligent about this at all, but it worked the other day, so I thought I'd take a picture to commemorate. Yay Juniper!


Alright, so I wasn't very concise or clever, but at least now I'm caught up. Maybe now my posts don't have to be quite as epic, and will come more regularly. We'll see. Don't hold me to it. I'm thinking about starting to integrate in some thesis work - should I have mentioned that out loud? I'm not pressuring myself into anything, though, not yet anyway.

Growing, growing...

Wow! If our analytics program works at all, it would seem as though a whole whack of people have been looking at the blog recently! Therefore, I will fulfill my end of the bargain, and keep putting new posts up of all the stuff I'd been meaning to blog about over the last month. And what better way to do it than today, the 30th of October - Juniper's 3 month birthday. Happy birthday, Juniper! It's also the day before Hallowe'en, which means we have Juniper in one of a few great Hallowe'en-y outfits that people have given her. She is currently sporting a top from Faye (which, if you can't read it, says "This IS my costume"), and some candy corn pants from Carroll. Stylish, as always!


I know the old adage about how quickly babies grow, yadda yadda, but honestly, I wouldn't believe it if i didn't see it with my own eyes. Juniper had her first doctor's appointment last week (she had previously been going to midwives), and it was the first time in over a month that she had been weighed and measured. She came in the 95th percentile for both weight and height, at 14 lbs, 24.5 inches. I think Clark and I must be getting progressively stronger as Juniper gets progressively heavier.

When she came back from Fredericton (which was almost a month ago, now) we realized that in the week we had been gone, Juniper had literally outgrown her bassinet. Check out the picture of her in the bassinet the day she came home, and then the day we moved her out of it (almost a month ago now).



So what this meant was that she was now ready for the crib - whether I was ready to have her in there or not! The crib had been set up in her own bedroom, but after hemming and hawing, I realized that I was not ready to sleep in a different room from her. Not yet, anyway. So after a day of moving things around and disassembling and reassembling her crib, we finally got everything set up so that she now sleeps in her crib in our bedroom. I hadn't decorated, of course, (all the decorations are in her nursery), so we bought some glow-in-the-dark planets and stars and put them over her crib. While she looked huge in her too-small bassinet, she now looks just teeny-tiny in her crib:


She's still an absolute angel to put to bed - we can lay her down fully awake, and she'll suck herself to sleep without complaint. She's still waking up on average 3 times a night, but it's a very small ordeal - wake up, feed her, and lay her back down. None of the diaper changing and rocking back to sleep that used to happen. At around 6am, she usually decides she's had enough of her crib, but is happy to sleep for awhile longer between her mom and dad. I understand how lucky we are with the whole sleep thing, and I also acknowledge how quickly things can change. But for now, it's wonderful!



Juniper is also developing such a strong personality! She has always been very alert for an infant, but now she just takes everything in all the time that she's awake. She's been figuring out her hands, and will grab at things and hold onto them, and apparently (though I wasn't here to see it), she rolled from her tummy onto her back the other day!! And boy, does she enjoy chatting. She chats with her friends (the dangling toys that hang from her playmat and her bud, Mr. Lion), and most of all she chats with me and Clark (and whomever else is visiting when she's in a chatty mood). I don't even mean that she makes cooing noises - I think she's actually chatting. Here's a video I took the other day.

OK, that's enough for now, but I'll post again in the next couple of days. I'm on a roll!

October visits!

Well, it's been almost a month since we got back from Fredericton, and I have hit that awkward stage where I have all these things that I have been meaning to post about, but there are now enough of them that I feel stymied every time I sit down to write. Where do I start? Do I try to post chronologically? By event? Do I smush everything into one post, or just string it out over a week, or what? Well, folks, I don't know the answer to that question yet, but at least I have now officially started the process. (This picture has nothing to do with anything, really, except that I wanted an excuse to put it in):

So... let's see. Why not start with some visits? People meeting Juniper for the first time is always important to post about, AND there are always pictures to go along with it! Shortly after getting back from Fredericton, my cousin Julia and her significant other, Riley, stopped by for a visit. Although they live in Halifax, they are both ridiculously busy (med and law students, respectively), and Julia had been fighting a cold for awhile, and (very nicely) didn't want to pass on her germs. So this was the first time either of them had actually met Juniper in person. As you can see from the photo, Juniper was quite tickled by the visit!


Another first time visitor was our friend Lydia, who we grew up with in Fredericton. It was a lovely visit, except that it was unfortunately timed with what I believe was a growth spurt on Juniper's part - that is, in was in the middle of a good week of cranky-pants-edness. poor Lydia would try and hold Juniper, and she would only stand for it for a couple of minutes at a time before she turned on the crank. This was one of the only pictures I managed to snap where Juniper wasn't crying - a good one except for the unfortunate placement of two tines of our hanging star above Lydia's head, giving her lovely purple horns. Ah well.

A very special visitor this month was our dear friend Judith, who came all the way from Manitoba to meet her honourary niece. Although we missed seeing Simon (Judith's husband), who was not able to get the time off of work, it was a huge treat to be able to spend some good solid time with Judith. Juniper obviously adored Judith, and essentially just smiled at her all weekend long. As you can see from the picture, they even have very similar taste - one morning, Judith and Juniper found that they had quite coincidentally worn the same leg warmers! How embarrassing :) We went on nice long walks, made some yummy meals, stayed up far too late chatting, watched a movie... essentially all the things we used to love doing when we lived in St. John's together, except with a new little addition to the festivities.


Finally, both Juniper and I got to meet Brent (my sister Faye's significant other), for the first time last weekend (Clark had already met Brent on a couple of occasions). Faye and Brent came up to Halifax for the Pop Explosion, and seeing as my parents were also visiting, Carroll and Stephen very generously invited everyone over for dinner on Saturday night. Faye was, unfortunately, quite sick with a cold, and seeing as Brent was quite possibly contaminated as well, neither of them were actually allowed to hold Juniper (what stickler parents she has!) Thus the rather funny picture of Faye and Brent with Juniper hovering in the background in my mother's arms.


And.... well, that's all for new visitors, I guess, although we did have a lovely visit with my parents last weekend - they came up so that Clark and I could go to a concert one evening (more on that later), but mom and Juniper and I especially had some fun times doing things like snuggling (mostly mom and Juniper snuggling, that is), making clothes (more on that later as well), and we went on an especially lovely walk in Point Pleasant Park on Monday before mom and dad left for Fredericton.


Also, Clark's sister Theresa came to Halifax for a visit for the Thanksgiving long weekend, which was quite lovely. We hung out, went for walks, visited coffee shops, and prepared a nice Thanksgiving meal that we shared with our next door neighbours (/landlords) Erika and Wesley.


Whew! I think that is quite enough to constitute a blog post all on its own. Stay tuned though - I actually have a bunch more to post about, and now that I've broken the seal, I'll probably be updating pretty regularly in the coming week or so.

Her first Autumn, and pictures to prove it.

Hi everyone. This post is in response to some nagging (er, reminding) that we've been getting from people far away from us that it's been awhile since we added any photos to our Picasa album. And we like to listen to those people from far away. So check out the two new albums for lots of pictures from our recent trip to Fredericton, and from the rest of this lovely October here in Halifax.

http://picasaweb.google.com/clark.richards

Fredericton, Part 2: All the other stuff

So, apart from all of the new important people Juniper met in Fredericton (see the previous post: "Fredericton, part 1"), this trip was noteworthy in many other respects as well. This was in large part because it was our first real trip... that meant the first extended time for Juniper in the car, the first time we slept away from home, the first time we had to pick and choose which clothes and baby stuff that would be necessary to have with us... obviously a big deal for all of us.

Packing was a wee bit chaotic. There were multiple lists involved, WAY more bags than I even considered possible, and by the time everything was packed in, you could hardly see Juniper. (that's maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much). Finally, we strategically fed Juniper, then got into the car, started on the road, and held our breath. We needn't have worried; she was a perfect angel. She didn't even sleep the whole time - in fact, for half of it, she was wide awake and just keeping herself amused, either by talking to her friend, Mr. Lion (the following picture captures them mid-conversation), or sucking on her thumb and checking herself out in the baby mirror.
We made it to Sackville, and then stopped to see Clark's sister, Theresa, and have a late lunch. We spent a couple of hours visiting, Juniper ate again, and then we hit the road for another completely serene stretch from Sackville to Fredericton. Amazing!

Very shortly after arriving at my parent's house, however, Juniper finally had a meltdown. You could hardly blame her... she was a perfect angel for the whole day, and the at the end of it, instead of being in her own house and her own bed (with all her own smells), we were in this completely strange environment. Very unsettling! Finally, however, she settled down, and we all collapsed into bed. We set up camp in my parent's room (they were still in Vancouver), with Juniper between me and Clark in her little co-sleeper bed. We had opted not to bring Juniper's bassinet, as it took up too much space, and figured it would be fine for a week of all three of us in the same bed. That first night proved us wrong. We had used the co-sleeper pretty regularly up until that point, but only in the mornings, for the hour or two between when Juniper was not interested in going back into her own bed, and we weren't interested in getting up for the day. We had never used it for the whole night. So, while Juniper slept relatively well, Clark and I tossed and turned, trying not to fall out of bed.

We were unsure of how to solve the problem, but Clark's step-mom, Barb, saved the day by suggesting we borrow their foldable play pen. We set it up at the end of the bed, and put Juniper's little co-sleeper in the bottom of it. Although I had to get over the initial weirdness of not having Juniper directly beside me, we ended up all sleeping very well from that point on. Luckily for us, even after my parents got back from BC, they let us stay in their room, as we had everything set up so nicely, with a change station in the next room over, so it all worked very smoothly.

As was evident from the last post, much of our Fredericton time was spent taking Juniper around to meet people, or having visitors come over to my parent's place to visit us. I had planned on taking Juniper out for lots of beautiful fall walks (one of my favourite things to do in Fredericton), but alas, most days were cold and rainy. Faye joined the three of us on one of the rare nice days, however, to go apple picking, which was a very nice fall-y thing to do.




We also ended up having relatively decent weather for our trip to Clark's grandparent's farm, as well, which meant that Clark and his dad were able to go for a sail, and Juniper and mom and I were able to go for a leisurely walk along the grounds (mom came with us, mainly, I think, so that she didn't miss a day of Juniper time. She and Juniper chatted the whole way there and back in the back of the car).


The other highlight of the trip was the shower that Sue McLeod threw for us, mostly with women from the neighbourhood - some of whom I've known my whole life; others that had moved in since I had moved out, and therefore I was meeting for the first time. I was apprehensive about how Juniper would behave - it only started at 7pm, which is pretty late for her, and I had this vision of her being a real crankypants the whole time. But I dressed her up in her nice party dress that I had been saving for the occasion (a beautiful gift from my supervisor, Diane), and put on her teal blue ruffled leg warmers, and we set off.


Almost immediately upon arriving, Juniper started to howl. I could hardly blame her - it was a huge influx of noise and energy (directed almost entirely at her) as soon as we opened the door. Mom took her to another room to try and quiet her down, but Juniper just screeched louder. So I came in to intervene, and I swear, it was like magic - only a couple of minutes of walking around with her snuggled in close to my chest, and she was happy. We returned to the party, and after having a bit more snuggle time with me, she was a perfect angel for the rest of the night. She was even fine with getting passed around to everyone at the party. I was amazed!

While Juniper was getting passed around, I opened gifts. I was just blown away by everyone's generosity. We got some absolutely adorable clothes, most of which she will have to grow into , which is great. The 12 months and beyond range is where her wardrobe is the most sparse right now, so this filled in the gaps nicely. Cathy Baker made a beautiful quilt for Juniper - apparently, she had made a boy's one first, and then had to start a girl's one as soon as Juniper was born! (for the record, I had told her my motherly intuition was pointing towards girl, but apparently she didn't trust my intuition!)

We also got some beautiful Waleda bath and skin care products (the only products I trust on Juniper for now, so that was great!), some nice books (always a welcome present), a great warm zippered thing for the stroller, which will be perfect for this colder weather, and various other wonderful and useful items like toys and a sippy cup and bath stuff. A really neat present from Sue were these labels with Juniper's name, that I can put on whatever I'd like, and are dishwasher safe etc. Very neat! One particularly thoughtful and wonderful gift was from Kathy Hicks, who got us a Juniper tree! This was something I had been wanted to get ever since Juniper was born, but of course never got the chance. I am so thrilled to have it! My mother planted it in her garden for now, and we will unearth it and plant it whenever we are someplace a little more permanent.

Anyway, I'm sure I could go on and on with other details, but this post is now ridiculously long, and I'm tired (and fighting off a cold, I think), so I will leave that as the end of our Fredericton chronicles. Stay tuned for more (non-Fredericton) stuff, coming at you soon! Also stay tuned for a Fredericton Picasa album, which we'll post in the next day or two.