Cousins

At play...



...and at rest.

4-month checkup

Hazel recently had her four-month checkup. No surprises there: we already knew that Hazel is healthy and fat. She's 18.4 lbs and 27.4 inches (98 and 99th percentile).



Hazel wasn't too happy about her shots, but she LOVED crumpling and chewing the paper on the exam table.

Peace Offering

Juniper and Violet were absolutely delighted to see one another, and they still play together in an interactive, engaged way that's amazingly different from how Juniper plays with any of her other friends. But they are three, and they do still fight about the things that three year olds fight about. They had a big kerfuffle when Juniper "stole" Violet's flush by swooping in and flushing the toilet after Violet had used it. Violet was very upset, and the grownups had to facilitate a long discussion about feelings and fairness and who gets to flush when. It was at the same time completely serious for the kids and completely absurd.

Once Juniper understood Violet's take on the situation, she tried to apologize (a real apology, not the breezy and insincere "sorry" she usually tosses out), but Violet wasn't ready to accept her apology and tell Juniper "it's ok." Violet had been unjustly wronged, and it was not yet ok for her. Juniper briefly wandered off and then came back with the sweetest and most ineffective peace offering I've ever seen. She came up to Violet and oh-so-sincerely asked her, "Did you know that Phobos and Deimos are Mars' moons?" The look on her face was sweet and hopeful, shining with the generous satisfaction of having just shared something wonderful with Violet.

Kid, you mean so well, but you've still got a big lesson to learn about knowing your audience.

Four babies!

Cheryl, Jason, Violet, and Henry were in Atlanta last week. It was wonderful to see them and to have all four of the kids together. More photos from their trip to come soon.



Henry and Hazel



Violet and Juniper (We did promise you four babies. In this photo, Juniper is about 3 months old; Violet, 9 months.)

Alondra in Wonderland

This afternoon we got to see our niece Alondra in her school's performance of Alice in Wonderland. She played a very lovely singing Violet.



Alondra graciously accepted the accolades of her adoring audience.

Hello happy girl

Juniper goes to Arkansas

Map...check
Raincoat...check
Kiwi...check

Hazel and Dad

Sally takes the camera to record rare photographic evidence of the fact that the girls do, in fact, have a father.

Happy Birthday, Juniper!

Juniper is 3!

Full event coverage on Aaron's website, if you're interested.

The dragon and the queen

Juniper's Gramma, Ellen, made this dragon mask as part of a Puff the Magic Dragon Halloween costume for Sally. We're amazed by some of the things that our parents held on to, and we are starting those keepsake boxes for our own children. (Well, really, they're more keepsake piles at this point in time, but we'll get around to the boxes eventually...)

Who's that baby?

Juniper & Hazel (or is it Hazel and Juniper?) at 4 months.


A:



B:



C:



D:




A: Hazel
B: Juniper
C: Juniper
D: Hazel

View from behind

For the people who follow this blog and don't regularly get to see Hazel in person, here's a photo of her very odd baby hair. Baby soul patch? Monk's tonsure? Rat tail?

Big sister, little sister, and hippo

Juniper the pirate

Hoist the mizzenmast!

Step two in the fight against lazy eye is a patch for Juniper. She's supposed to wear it for 6 hours/day, which typically means that it goes on when she gets up and comes off around nap time. She's been wearing the patch for a week now, and so far it's going well. We don't know how long she'll have to wear it. Results vary widely by kid, and it can take anywhere from a few months to a few years for the patch to work.

I have to express my deep gratitude to the world that patches have gotten much cooler than when we were kids. We were able to go online and order two mixed boxes of patches that include rocket ships, dragons, flames, aliens, spiders, stars, trains, and soccer players. (Trains and soccer players came with the rocket ships, aliens, and dragons. We predict they will be the very last patches used.) So far she's very enthusiastic about putting on her patches in the morning. The only hard part is deciding which one she wants to wear. "Well, if I wanna be a dragon, I can wear this one. But maybe I wanna be an astronaut." So far, the patch with rocket ships seems to be her favorite.

On Monday, she was particularly excited to wear one of her spider patches because they were studying spiders and making yarn webs at school. Juniper's been looking forward to making, "a whole mess of webs" ever since she helped Miss Shannon create this week's lesson plan.

Juniper says...

Explaining how to get to Arkansas: Go west and turn left.

Playing with a fire truck: This truck wants to make a fire, but it can't because it's not real.
After a brief discussion about what fire trucks actually do: This truck wants to put out a fire, but it can't because it's not real.

Cashew is a funny word for peanut.

Snuggling up to warm clothes right out of the dryer: It feels like a sleeping bag!

I'm so into mangoes that I just want more and more mangoes.

Cute defined

Spring! Babies! Daffodils! Can you handle this much cute?



Even her feet are fat.





Must...eat...daffodil. Perhaps this time the big ones won't stop me.



Baby experiment #4876: Can I fit Hazel's head into my mouth? (Luke seems to be convinced that if he just keeps trying, he'll find the right angle to make this one work.)



The end.

A body at rest

Juniper often resists her bedtime these days: "But I don't wanna go to sleep. It's not fun." A few nights ago, she was awake and playing for an hour or more after I left the room. When I went in to turn out her light, I found her conked out in bed, still touching the space book she was obviously reading when she finally fell asleep.

My big sister, the bruiser

Juniper took a pretty dramatic tumble at school on Monday and came home with this big shiner on her chin. We heard from her teacher that she was pretty sad for a while after her fall, but that she was eventually cheered up by getting to help Miss Shannon write out the lesson plan for next week.



Snuggly, cuddly, just-woke-up girls.

NASA pt. 2

Sally & Hazel, 2011



Sally & Mark, c. 1982

NASA

While in Texas visiting family last month, we took a trip to the Houston Space Center. It sparked a delightful Space Phase for Juniper. I don't know how long this phase will last, but Aaron and I are certainly doing all we can to encourage it. Our encouragement includes everything from regularly reading "the space book" (a picture encyclopedia we got at NASA), making up a bedtime song that's all about the Solar System, pretending the car is a space shuttle and counting down to blastoff before driving, and reading a graphic novel called "Zita the Spacegirl" (recommended by Juniper's teacher, who brilliantly picked up on the intersection of space and comics as a way to rock Juniper's world).

Juniper has requested that we get her some models of the planets, which we may do for her birthday. She recently told us that there's a "Planet Store" we should visit. It's between Arkansas and California; you have to take a plane to get there.



Juniper and her Gramma in front of the Saturn V rocket. The space shuttles made the biggest impression on Juniper. If you ask her whether she saw any rockets at NASA, she may say no. Here's photographic evidence to the contrary. In fact, she saw a rocket that's approximately the size of a football field.



Mission Control. It was pretty cool to see the actual, original Mission Control room. It looked familiar from countless movies, TV shows, and pictures, even though I couldn't tell you one specific media source where I know I've seen it. The red phone is a hotline to the Navy, which was used to coordinate pickup of the Apollo astronauts.



Mom took a spin (literally) on this astronaut training activity. She had to rotate the black circle on the device hanging above her, while her chair moved around in erratic circles.



This is a prototype of a possible rover for a future Mars mission. Apparently it's pretty new and exciting, even for people who are at the space center all the time. Our tour bus driver pulled out his phone and started taking pictures when we saw it.



In the kids' area, there was an exhibit about how peoples' weight would differ on various planets/moons. Apparently, on Jupiter Juniper would most resemble a butterball turkey. (And, yes, she has noticed that, "Jupiter is kind of like Juniper." That's her second most reliable planetary tag line, surpassed only by, "Saturn has 22 moons!!!")


To wrap up this long NASA-inspired post, here's a recent conversation between Juniper and Aaron:

A: (referencing one of Juniper's books) "I love you to the moon and back." The moon is pretty far away, but it's not the farthest thing away.
J: Pluto is very far away.
A: I love you to Pluto and back.
J: Speaking of Pluto, it's not a planet. It's just a planetoid.