Juner update.

For those of you who have been needing a little Junebug in your life, here you go.

June has finally master holding her own bottle. Yeah! This is especially useful now that mama and June have given up their 5am nursing date. Mama decided after June turned one that she didn't want to get up in the middle of the night anymore. But she didn't know how to accomplish this without June waking up at 5 am and staying up. (We all really like not getting up until after 8.) Lucky for mama, June was thinking the same thing, so about a week ago, she just started sleeping in. Everyone is pretty happy with the situation.

Gugger likes to sit on her chair. She also likes to sit on top of the train table. If Henry doesn't inform mama and papa of her position on top of the table, June makes sure to yell and squeal to let them know.

June has become a big fan of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. If you click on this picture you can see my two newest teeth. An unpper front tooth and one of my lower teeth.

June has mastered climbing up stairs and sliding down on her belly. Even in the buff. But she's still not walking.

We're still deciding what to do with her hair. Last night we put it up in a little pigtail.

Yesterday, everyone was feeling pretty low. June and Henry were trying to see who could be more pitiful. Juner won.

Riding a bike- Henry.

Papa thinks that maybe I've been spending too much time in my intellectual pursuits and not enough time trying to defeat the athletic ability that I inherited from my mother.

We decided that maybe a Big Wheel would be easier to ride, so mama picked this great Barbie big wheel up for $2. I just wanted to push it.

So papa pulled my bike to the top of the parking lot and let me ride down hill.

It was a mild success. I rode my bike a a few minutes but didn't have much interest in continuing.
This picture pretty much sums up my feelings towards my bike. I just wish I was inside working on math problems.

The real reason we haven't been updating the blog- Henry.

We got a call from a certain great grandmother in a certain northeast Ohio city today. She told us that it was time to start updating the blog again. But we have a good excuse!

It's called RockBand and it's our newest video game. It's got two guitars, a set of drums and a microphone. Every once in a while, they let me play . But mostly they spend all their free time playing it after we go to sleep.They spend so much time playing that they even have their own band. They started it with Mister Paul and Miss Susan. It's called TinRiver. The members are from left- Larry Needles, Ester Beasley, Stiggs McMurtry, and DJ Sparklenutez.

Larry is mama's RockBand persona. She prefers to have him play the drums.

DJ is papa's character. He's a guitarist and the front man for TinRiver. We'll try to keep the blog updated, but mama and papa like this game so much, we're afraid they might not even remember that we're around.

Playdate- Henry.

My friend TJ came over on Monday to spend the morning at our house.

Mama says she's thinking of getting a 4 year old to keep because we pretty much stayed out of her hair all morning. She set up the marble run and that kept us occupied long enough for her to read the paper and try to keep June from climbing on the table.

Later we went to the park, where June practiced her backwards downhill scooting skills.

TJ is a good example of how two high energy kids can be completely different. I prefer to channel my energy through car parking and random flailing of limbs. TJ channels his into climbing and running fast enough that mama had a hard time catching him while playing tag. We hope that his supreme athletic prowess is partly because he's about 8 months older than me. But it probably doesn't hurt that both his parents were college athletes.

At the castle, TJ wanted to lock the door and climb up the slide. I was too much of a wimp to even try it.

Back at home, we set up my race track and even let June try to catch some cars off the track.

New chairs- Henry.

Grams Cracker sent us down some new lawn chairs. Mine is a Car Movie chair, of course and Juner's has a chicken on it.

Mama quick bribed me to sit for a picture, but didn't realize her camera was on the wrong setting. So this is the best she got. I was already gone to go jump on Mister Anthony again.

But June stuck around for more pictures. She loves her new chair and spent most of the afternoon playing on it. Guess how long mama let this little stunt go on?

Once June got her talking to, she stayed on her bottom.


On Friday, we went to Greensboro to visit the Natural Science Center. It was STILL raining, so we didn't get to see much of the zoo. But we did go out to a new building full of bored teenage volunteers who let us pet a bunny and watch them feed crickets to an 11 inch centipede. It was gross and awesome all at the same time. Then we decided we were all hungry so we found a great new restaurant called Prissy Polly's, which features Eastern and Lexington style barbeque, wonderful fried okra, hushpuppies and delicious fudge pie.

After a meal like that, we all had to come home and just lie around for a while. Check out that big belly and dirty knees.

Mama and Aunt Girl were so pleased to find these little big shorts. They were hidden under her dress until June ate grapes and muskmelon and got it all wet. That's a classy lady.

Aunt Girl and Mister Anthony had to go home today, so we had to find a way to ease our pain in their absence. Luckily, there was a model train show at the fair grounds.

We made it for a few hours until we realized that it's been a long week without many naps and we were all exhausted. Thanks for coming to visit us Aunt Girl and Big Anthony! We can't wait for you to come back!

Pictures from Aunt Girl's camera- Henry.

Here are some more pictures from the week that we nabbed from Aunt Girl's camera.

She had plenty of good pictures from the park on Monday. Unfortunately, the rain started on Wednesday, and in true North Carolina fashion, it's been gray and drizzly since.

We wish we would have taken a picture of June after the playground. She was filthy!

No stairs can keep Juner down.

Aunt Girl calls this picture "fierce."

Mama gets her picture taken instead of just taking pictures. June may actually be a kid who likes to wear hats. She keeps getting this one out of the closet and wearing it around the house. For 3 seconds at a time before she takes it off.

June hitched a ride from Big Anthony during a visit to Wake Forest. The college ladies loved it.

On Wednesday, we headed to Spencer to visit the train museum. A midweek visit was great because we essentially had the whole place to ourselves.

Mister Anthony dreams big and can't wait for the weather to get nice so he and PawPaw can get their motorcycles out and go cruising. Mama shook her had and mumbled something about having a death wish.

Here we are posing in front of an old steamie.

June wants to be an engineer.

I climbed in the caboose to learn about what a caboose does. I told mama that someone has to sit in the back of the train to "watch for problems."

Finally, on Thursday, the rain continued, but didn't stop mama, Big A and Girl from heading down to Olde Salem to check out the originally Moravian community. While they were in search of sugar cake and those yummy flat sugar cookies, they came across a locally famous "sculpture" made of borrowed ladders that represents the community of Winston Salem rising up. Get it, ladder? Rising up? Sigh- modern art.

Other things that happened this week- Juner.

In addition to all the great fun things we did all week, we managed to get in a little time at home this week.

Mama wants Aunt Girl and Mister Anthony to come stay with us forever. They were very attentive to us all week and mama often took advantage of it by going upstairs under the guise of fetching something, but would just sit on the stairs and read a magazine in silence for 20 mintues before coming back downstairs. It was a great break for her.

Mister Anthony turned out to be a great artist and spent tons of time keeping Henry occupied with drawing of cars.

A big favorite in our house has been Henry's new Car Movie Town. Grams Cracker scored it at a church consignment sale and Henry has been earning it piece by piece by, ahem, doing his business on the potty, if you catch our drift. He finally earned all the pieces, including the accessories, and here's the town in all its glory. We were so pleased to find out that all of the signs light up, just like the scene in the movie where they fix up Radiator Springs.

Confidential to Disney: good for you. It's been 4 years (at least) since the release of Cars. But you're keeping it fresh. My new favorite tactic? Release a poster of all the movie race cars. Keep most of them our favorites, but add in a few so that we have to do a double take and wonder who that car is. Then brainwash all three year olds to say the words "I have Doc, I have Lightning McQueen. I have Boost. I have DJ. I have Wingo. I DON'T have Leak Less. " Then you make sure that Leak Less is in stock at Target for only $4! What is a mama supposed to do? Not get it for him? You are sneaky, Disney. Mama and Aunt Girl were estimating how many likenesses of Lightning McQueen exist in our house alone, and we're guessing it's in the thousands.

Annalise called our house requesting more videos of yours truely. We hate to disappoint.

Our master staller shows us how to put away all your lincoln logs with the least effiency.

On Friday, Mama and Aunt Girl took us to Bounce U, an inflatable playground paradise. It was great having an extra adult around so that I didn't have to go inside the inflatables and cry the whole time.

Henry had so much fun, but next time wants Mister Anthony to come too. Aunt Girl was too short to lift him over some of the climibing walls.
While Henry was inside playing, I hung around outside terrorizing babies in strollers. Mama did take me down the big slide a few times. I didn't cry, but I think it may be a while before I want to go down again.

Visitors!- Henry.

On Sunday, we were pleasantly surprised when we woke up to find that Aunt Girl and Mister Anthony had come all the way down from Ohio to spend their Spring Break with us!

In keeping with our effort to soak up the sun as much as possible, we packed a lunch and slathered on our high SPF and headed to the park.

We had a great time, although it took all three adults to keep track of June the climber.

I told mama on the way home that "I was a little afraid of the tall slides." But you never would have known it as many times as I went down by myself and with Aunt Girl.

June showed no fear and climbed up to the top of the biggest slide, but mama put a blue slide only restriction on anyone under the age of two.

I held still for a fraction of a second to get my picture taken.

You can't tell from this picture, but Juner was absolutely filthy by the time we left. Her knees, hands and dress were a dusty mess. We wish we would have taken a picture of it. But this goofy picture almost makes up for it.

Mama tried to get a picture of June by the daffodils, but Juner kept pulling the blooms off of them, so we had to abandon the project.

"Delicate flower."

Before we left, I did my best to outline the whole playground in chalk. I spent a good 30 minutes making lines on the edge of all the equipment. I wanted to finish, but mama said it was late and we had to get going. She said I could finish the next time we came back. I knew better and told her the rain would wash it all away. So she said I could just start over. Which sounds like fun to me.

Mama loves having Aunt Girl and Mister Anthony here because it means she has babysitters all day long. Yesterday, she took advantage of the in-home help and did 6 loads of laundry and made a killer eggplant parmigiana (way too much effort to make on a regular basis). Then I got to help her mae chocolate mousse. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a low fat recipe, considering it used heavy cream, chocolate, butter and eggs. But I still gave it a big thumbs up.