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.