Typical Junie-look. Kind of knowing and bashful at the same time.
Oh, Junie. How do I describe this girl? I love looking back over the last two years and seeing what baby-traits have carried through. It's one of my favorite things about watching babies grow up: looking backward, you can see the person-traits emerging in the baby, but looking forward, you can't pick out WHO this stranger might turn out to be. We still don't know, really. Sam and I look at her and shake our heads and say she's a mystery wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in an enigma (or whatever that Winston Churchill quote is---we never get it right when we say it, either). She's just some of . . . everything!
She has seemed to grow up so much in the last few months! Now that she can wear "Junietails" and use the toilet and speak (more) like a person, she reminds me more and more of Daisy. Sometimes one of them comes into the room saying something, and I can't tell which one it is out of the corner of my eye. But Junie is her own person too---so happy and exuberant and animated. We love her so much!
Opening presents---with three eager "helpers" to oversee the process
A bit taken aback, but shyly pleased, about everyone clapping for her after she blew out her birthday candle at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I love this look.
Party hat (at Sam's office)
Also at Sam's office. Coloring underneath the box robot. She exhibited great fearlessness when the robot, later, came crashing down nearly on top of her. One of Sam's coworkers leaped heroically to the rescue, holding the robot up like someone lifting a Volkswagon off a trapped child. Junie allowed herself a few blinks and show-sniffles before forgetting about it and getting, unruffled, back to coloring.
She is also fearless on the playground, (boldly?) going where no baby has gone before. (Nor SHOULD go. I have to keep hauling her down from rock-climbing walls, larger-than-baby-size-holes, and other hazards.)
More playground-climbing. Unaware of being watched. Singing some secret (only in meaning---the volume of the singing definitely does NOT say "secret") song of her own.
She wants to do everything big people do. And succeeds at most of it. She balances here on this rope with great seriousness. (I THINK she is pleased with herself, but doesn't like to be too demonstrative about it.)
Seb is dressed as an astronaut. A little while later Junie showed up saying "Astronaut!" and wearing HER coat and boots. (She had a backpack on too, before this.)
She really does love her brothers. Often in the morning she will come in sleepily to cuddle with us in bed. Then she'll wiggle away saying, "Cuddle Malachi?" She goes and climbs into his bunk bed and snuggles in with him (waking him up if she has to).
I still see calm and serenity in her, but her serenity often manifests as a sort of unruffled determination, or maybe calculation . . . more like, "Hmm. And now what will I do NEXT . . . ?"
I can't wait to see who she is in another year! Love you, Junie-bird!
I liked reading this. I don't feel like I know her well...I guess because she wasn't talking much when I saw her last. Where is the park pictured with the rope she's walking along? That looks fun.
ReplyDeleteI am always surprised when I see her now, thinking she's a Daisy rather than a bug. She is heir, as they all are, to two lines of brilliance. And her life, if she follows her mother, will be full of wonder, grace, delight and a deep, underlying, dogged joy in the work of it. She is your gift, and you are hers.
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