apple ball bird lights

If, in 1996, you would have told me that in 15 years I would be a "stay at home mom" strapped down with a kid and no paying job, I would have balked.  I would have said, Wait.  What?  Nooooooooo!!!  And I would have made every effort to avoid such fate--I would have been Doc wearing the bullet proof vest in the final scene of Back to the Future, except mine would have been kid-proof and, as an extra precaution, wedding-proof.  Which just goes to show it's a good thing we can't foresee our futures when we're 20 years old because guess what?  This right here is the stuff life is made of.

Okay, so yeah, last Friday I was all huffy and irritated because I wanted to get out of the house for our kid-play-group/mom-excercise hour and Juniper was sooooo cranky that it never happened (turns out she had a big poop brewing).  And, yeah, tonight I wanted to take a sledge-hammer to our bedroom wall just to open it up and get enough space to put a rocking chair because I am convinced that a rocking chair in our bedroom will eventually solve all of our sleeping-arrangement issues.  I didn't do it, but only because it's cold outside.    

I think Juniper is changing faster now than she did the first year, which seems impossible for a creature with an average lifespan of 79.1 years.  Shouldn't she slow down a little?  Right now (when she isn't bothered with a massive poo), Bugs is all smiles, giggles, hand-clapping, squat-dancing, stomp-dancing...a pure extraction of everything good...

...simple,

...and life-affirming.

:: Before she learned to walk Juniper was a crazy little bookworm, then she didn't want anything to do with books, now she is back at it--pulling all her books off the shelf, sitting atop the rubble and flipping through the stiff pages, often upside down and backwards.  I guess she just needed a little break from her studies to get that whole walking bit down.  

Also, she is sitting on her potty again.  (I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but we've practiced EC--elimination communication--since Juniper was born and she has been sitting on the potty since she was 6 weeks old.)  During the walking stage, we were limited to 2-3 times a day, tops.  Who wants to sit when you can walk?  But now that she reads books on the John again, she digs it.  And she loves to check out what she did in the potty.  We really ham it up for her,  Wow!  Look what you did!  Juniper went pee-pee in the potty!  Wow!  No, we don't touch our pee-pee, but we can look.  Yeah, 15 years ago if I'd have known that I would be having conversations like that, I would have doubled up on that bullet-proof vest.    


:: So many changes in the last week alone have me dumbstruck and speechless.  For one, after all that time we struggled to get her to eat solids she suddenly has the appetite of an adolescent boy.  But the biggest thing, the thing that absolutely *blows* my mind out of the water, are her words.  She'll take a new word and try it on for size and fit, but also she has her everyday favorites.  Right now they are apple, ball, bird and lights.  The last, as in Christmas lights, is her absolute favorite.  (Yes, we still have our Charlie Brown tree up.)  She'll point to the tree, roll her head back as though gathering the word from the very back of her throat, then roll her head all the way forward, chin in the lead, and spit out: iiightzs. 


I have a running list on the kitchen table:

apple :: app or app-el
beans :: bee
egg :: eeh
cheese :: choos
juice :: ju or dzeus (with a French accent)
no :: no (no surprise there)
lights :: ights
bird :: birr
blue :: boo
ball :: baawl (with an Appalachian accent)
down :: dow (when Osa is circling her highchair, Juniper will point at and say, Dow!)
don't :: doe
done :: duh
purple :: purp
pee :: pee
poo :: pu
balloon :: baa-ooo
um :: ummmm
oh :: oh
yes :: es
dad :: da
mama :: maaaaa-maaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!
book :: boo-h

^ This is Juniper signing (and saying) "book."^


:: While Juniper learns words by day, I have been a busy little elf by night.  While the rest of my family sleeps, I tip-toe around our Christmas tree-lit home, knocking projects off my list.  Right now, I am finishing a gift for a baby born one month early (she is doing great, but now I am a month behind), and also tying up some loose ends on Christmas gifts we haven't yet exchanged with our Montana family (who we'll see just as soon as the newest member enters this world).  I am loving the baby gift I've made and will most definitely share the details in a future post.

  

:: One other random, disjointed note for the week: J bugs loves to eat snow.  For a long time now, whenever we track snow in the doorway, Juniper makes a bee line to those white waffles sluffing off our shoes, sits and eats until it's all gone.  Being outside is, for her, the proverbial kid in a candy store: