Juniper, our little late-talker, is finally erupting with a barrage of new words in past few weeks. Her burgeoning lexicon is still mostly focused on identifying animals - giraffe, bird, llama, etc. Here is a little video of her trying out her newest and thus current favorite word - owl - though you will notice that, when put on the spot, she falls back on her first love - bee.
Juniper is still thoroughly enjoying the Carolina summer. She is all sweaty-baby curls and skinned knees and dirt-under-the-fingernails. While I'm counting down the days until Fall, Juni is loving popsicle afternoons and baby pools and green grass and doesn't even notice this mama-wilting heat and humidity.
We hosted Charlie's summer lab party last weekend with a characteristically over-the-top menu in both quantity and variety given that we were feeding twelve undergrad and graduate students who have never heard of edamame, Thai satay, or soba noodles. We could have saved ourselves a busy, stressful Saturday by throwing some burgers on the grill and opening a few bags of potato chips. The three different cupcakes on the menu, however... those were for me. Far from being intimidated by the dozen adultish people who invaded our house all at once, Juniper was the life of the party, basking in the attention (and the cupcakes). She showed off her iPhoning skills, her toy piano playing, her twirling, and her dancing (to our music playlist, which was described as "old school" by one of the young punks).
Speaking of old school, I turned thirty-two this week. Thirty-two is one of those ages that is neither here nor there. I'm far enough into my thirties that I just need to suck it up and stop bemoaning the loss of my twenties, yet I'm not quite old enough to be worrying about the downhill slide into forties. So the big three-two was celebrated by spending a nice, low key day at home with the family. Charlie made delicious, decadent chocolate chocolate chip pancakes with blueberry sauce for breakfast that Juni spurned in favor of plain yogurt. He also took the day off, which was gift enough for mama, who didn't have to change a diaper or do the dishes all day long. ahhhhhh...
