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.