Juno Ruby Ryan

Rollin' along

2006-08-06T16:16:00.000+12:00

Where to start? Since the last post Juno has seemingly grown into a little girl - the days of being a baby are definitely over. She wanders about the house, mimicking everything that Jess and I do.

Jess was sweeping the floor the other day so Juno rushed into the kitchen and grabbed the little broom that she has and began industriously swiping at the floor. When I put my tie on in the mornings, the little bug stands there beside me tucking her little cuddly under her chin and then wandering around looking very pleased with herself.

She also makes a point of what looks to be pointing nappies on cuddly, that is, placing her change mat in the middle of the floor and carefully arranging cuddly on it before wrapping him up and proudly carrying him around for both Jess & myself to inspect and make the appropriate approving noises.

Her vocabulary has similarly grown, and has her command of the language emerges, so too the gestural vocabulary that accompanies it. Quite a few things in the house are designated with an open palm thrust toward them and the word 'hot' (it sounds closer to hā, but we all get the drift.)

The clincher for me was a couple of weekends ago as I walked back up the steps (I had been outside for all of 10 mins, Juno came rushing towards me, screaming excitedly "dad-ee, dad-ee." First cars at 16 are made of this stuff...

Speaking of cars, Juno has now mastered vehicular transport. Margam bought her this little lady-bug to ride last time she was down. She has now mastered the mount & the dismount and manages to cover quite a bit of ground, either around the living room or out on one of the decks.

[You will need Quicktime to view the video]

The blur

2006-06-11T16:16:00.000+12:00

Since the last post, Juno is now walking exclusively. In other words, if she falls over rather than continue to her destination by crawling, she will now stand up and keep tottering on. She has an interesting technique as well: this involves hunching her shoulders (for balance?), pointing both of her index fingers in the direction she is heading, and rolling from side to side as she walks like she is crossing the deck of a ship rounding the Horn. The combined effect is rather like James Cagney as a gunslinger advancing down the middle of the street towards his adversary... more video to come.

Her vocabulary is also increasing at an astonishing rate. She now has mum, ma (with a hard 'a' for max), up, hello, da (which is a variant of ta, or thanks) and bye - the last rather delightfully accompanied with a very limp wristed, yet regal, wave. The words she understands, however, run into the dozens. You can mention the oddest things, things that you don't really expect to be part of her world, and she will look around for them and point at them with an excited 'Aa' when she spots them.

Mum has been over this weekend and can't quite get over how much she has grown up and changed. If I look back over the posts and photos since we were in Oz in february, I suppose it would be more apparent to me too. As it is, it really just moves at such speed that it is something of a blur.

Walking

2006-05-23T20:36:00.000+12:00

It is funny, but you are conditioned to think that there is something momentous about your child's first steps -and understandably so. What they don't tell you, however, is that she won't just get up from a sitting position one day and wander across the room to pick up her cuddly. It all happens so naturally that, truth be told, paying as much attention as I was, I just sort of, well, missed it.

Not missed it completely as in I come home from work one day and Juno walks up to give me a kiss, but missed it in the sense that you watch so intently for something, try and determine exactly when the first steps take place, distinguish from all the other developmental stages where she is merely standing, or experimenting with shifting her balance, moving around the room holding on to fixtures, that you dissect and discard such a range of movements, refine your definition of what exactly it is 'to walk' that finally one day -in the face of all the evidence- you are forced to say, well hey: now she is walking. And she is. I will put some video up on miromiro.com in the coming days.

Her confidence is building day-by-day and she continues to experiment. Once she has successfully completed a particular manoeuvre she will repeat it ad nauseum, getting the full range of movement down. Getting on and off the sofa, or down from the bed are part of that repertoire now, as she expands the circle of chaos around her... But there is that moment, when she completes the sequence and turns to you, her face radiant with delight at her accomplishment and the desire to share that joy with you, and you just burst with love, and pride, and the childish thrill of it all.

Walking? I'm floating.

The gene game

2006-04-25T16:40:00.000+12:00

What do you reckon? Where does Juno get her fair looks, her winsome charm and her studied intelligence? My money is on that handsome looking devil lurking under the japanese maple. Talk about an art shot: deck the kid out in his sunday best and send him out into the garden to squat under a tree for a couple of hours while a professional (read 'suburban') photographer snaps off roll after roll of black & white... It's just a good thing that the kid is so damn photogenic.

Speaking of which, I have finally posted some videos of Juno to our site. There are a couple of crackers - if I do say so myself. The final one, Trolley Girl, shows her behind the wheels of her birthday present from Brian. She is a Hutt Valley natural: takes charge of the vehicle, points it vaguely in the direction she wants to go in, floors it and hopes for the best.

When she inevitably crashes into something, she reverses an inch or two and showing all the ~~damned intransigence~~ steely determination her parents are known for, slams straight back into the obstacle again. And again. Hasn't quite got the gist of the three-point turn yet. It does make my eyes water, needles to say, when she heads for the speakers...

I'll try and post some snaps of her in a black Holden t-shirt for the afficionados out there.

Birthday girl

2006-04-11T18:41:00.000+12:00

There it is: One Year Old! How about that? Looking back on the past 12 months has proved to be a lot harder than I imagined. One, there are the astonishingly large gaps in my memory that are probably due more to sleep deprivation than to certain dubious pursuits in my 20's (and 30's, truth be told), and two, it has all just happened so damned fast.

I was looking through the photos we have taken of the little bug over the last 12 months -for a sort of retrospective that you can view here- when the enormity of the change started to dawn on me: she is practically unrecognizable in the photos from the first day or so.

Anyway, we had a bit of a shindig on sunday: had Inde & Macy from the antenatal group round (bit like Juno's first class reunion, actually) and the whanau for some afternoon tea. We dined on delicious banana cake covered in chocolate icing, asparagus rolls (apparently it is a kiwi/Grouden tradition), but the appeal is totally lost on me, brandy snaps, fruit covered in chocolate mousse, you get the idea...

Juno (and the rest of the nippers) got home baked sourdough bread spread with unhulled tahini. Sweetheart, when you are reading this in 20 years time just remember, this was your mum's idea.

Music lover

2006-04-02T19:21:00.000+12:00

I posted a while back about how much Juno loves music - and, don't get me wrong, this is a very good thing: I wholeheartedly support her interest in the arts... However, can you imagine what it is like to get home after a hard day at the office, to take off you coat and tie and wander upstairs to see the two girls that light up your life and make every day of mind (and, as the Americans say, ass)-numbing drudgery worth it, to find your little girl appreciating your cd collection like this?

There she is, grinning at the sound of her dad's weary tread upon the stair, surrounded by what? 10 or 15 years of your beloved music collection, hurled from one end of the room to the other? Yep, the Japanese imports, the expensive boxed sets, the vestiges of youthful rebellion (the staunch indie pop stuff and the hard core freakout rock), all dispersed in a radial fashion around the indescribably gorgeous little force of destruction.

And it is not like it is intentional. She is actually having fun. That's right, dad's cds are actually great fun to remove (very carefully, nay delicately) from the shelves, inspect both sided attentively, studying the photography and -in the case of some of the more obscure jazz?- the liner notes, before deftly flinging over one's left shoulder and moving on to the next.

Oh, for the days of 8-track...

The end is nigh...

2006-03-16T13:45:00.000+13:00

OK - we are rapidly approaching Juno's first birthday which means, for those of you that have been paying attention, I have been posting for the last 11 months. My intention had always been to retire the blog after a year and present it to Juno when she turned 18 as a sort of journal of the first year of her life, from her chronically sleep deprived parents perspective.

There have been a few of you, however, who have protested that this is not the correct course of action. That you actually enjoy reading these posts and following our rather insular lives in this quaint little backwater. Well, I say, put your comments where your mouths are: if you want the blog to continue, click the little comments link at the bottom right of this entry (next to the pencil graphic for the remedial amongst you) and send a message saying that the blog must go on, otherwise it will be far too easy for me to just pack it up and get on with something constructive...

It is your choice.

Frangiapanis

2006-03-16T13:22:00.000+13:00

We made it back from 2 weeks in Oz and it was, to quote some old duffer, the best of times and the worst of times.

The best? Dad's 70th birthday lunch, relaxing on the beach at Avoca and catching up with old friends (thanks for the wheels, Pete).

The worst? Juno and Jess being savaged by sea lice (bluebottle larvae) in the nipper's pool at south avoca, the sleeplessness that this -and the moving around- ocassioned and the cost of living in Sydney. $10/kilo for organic apples? You'd think the little buggers didn't grow on trees...

Anyway, we made it safely back to Wellington (just). Left a balmy Sydney, prob 25odd degrees, and flew into one of Wellington's southerly gales. Only time I have ever even thought about praying on an aircraft. Paramedics got on board after we had finished taxi-ing to resuscitate some poor woman who had obviously not landed here before.

It got better the next morning when (this is the first week of March remember, and while technically summer is over, you still hold out hope) I had to get up and light the freakin fire - that's right: back to a crisp 11 degrees. Yeah, real good to be home, eh?

How german is it?

2006-02-05T17:00:00.000+13:00

A bit of a lapse between posts: Juno has had rubella, and although we had a few rough nights here in Mormonvale, it was exactly as that other notable kraut, Fred suggested: she has come through it bigger, stronger and tougher. Well, as tough as a 10 month old girl gets...

Click for larger image

At least she is in shape for the trip across the Tasman. We want her to be in tip-top condition for her granddad's 70th birthday celebrations. If her behaviour here is anything to go by, her trip to Oz will involve demolishing domestic order, rendering all those around her simultaneously besotted and hideously sleep deprived and generally wreaking her special brand of adorable havoc. God, I just hope that she likes the beach...

Juno & Tweety

2006-01-10T19:00:00.000+13:00

Juno turned 9 months old today and what a start to 2006 we have all had. First up, Juno's first tooth burst through last week. Now she is even more efficient in her demolition of peaches, nectarines and other stonefruit. And, she is not the only one in the house chomping her way through the pantry.

A couple of days after New Year's, Wellington was buffeted by some reasonable gales -well, for Wellington they were probably quite run-of-the-mill. As usual, there were quite a few trees blown over and the odd roof lifted: what Wellingtonians pretty much regard as business as usual here in the roaring forties. Anyway, Jess and Heather had taken Juno down to the Hutt river for a walk and when they alighted from the car they were set upon by a song thrush fledgeling: it literally ran up to them cheeping, demanding to be fed.

Jess bought it home and, after talking to the SPCA who had their hands full with birds blown out of nests all over the region, we were told how to feed and care for it until it was able to fly. So, over the next week we fed it (organic puppy biscuits soaked in water) and let it out in the living room to practice flying. A couple of days ago, seeing it was now feeding itself, Jess let it out on the back deck and watched it fly off into the bush behind the house.

Later that afternoon there were suspicious cheeping sounds emanating from the back deck and, sure enough the thrush was back. Now it happily wanders into the kitchen, quietly going about its business as part of the menagerie up here in the Hutt hills.

Merry Christmas

2005-12-27T16:42:00.000+13:00

Our first christmas together has probably established a pattern that will run until for many years to come: wake at some godawful hour; shout, bark and thrash around until mum and dad have given up the (pathetically unrealistic to begin with) hope of ever going back to sleep; have something to eat and then, once the whanau arrive, roll around on the floor in wrapping paper shrieking with delight as Holly and Isla whip everyone into a frenzy... Not, all in all, a bad way to spend the day.

At this time of year it is customary to look back on the months before they slip away from memory completely and -as is the habit of bloggers & lazy journos- to compile completely self-indulgent lists of the years best, or most memorable moments. So, in the interests of cliche, and my rapidly deteriorating memory, here is the year as Juno Ruby Ryan saw it - almost in her own words.

Favourite moment?: Definitely wasn't being delivered in Hutt Valley hospital. I listened for months to you two banging on about a home birth in a nice warm pool, and what happens?
So I would probably go with finally being able to crawl over and give Max's ear the chewing that it deserves - for months now that hound has been taunting me, well now the tables have turned and, I can tell you, that puppy is mine.
Favourite record of the year?: Fat Freddy's Drop - no question. I just love pumping my chubby little arms and legs to those tunes. A close second would have to be your falsetto rendition of Home on the Range: real special, dad.
Your chump of the year award?: Well, there were so many contenders... But it would have to go to the kid in Pack N'Save who saw me (in the front pack, hanging there like a bonsai tandem skydiver) in that ridiculous white bear suit and pulled on his mothers hand to get her attention and then said: 'Mummy, look at the little doggy.' The kid must have been at least 3 or 4 - talk about special needs, do I look like a doggy?
Any other message for the readers?: Yeah. I love all the gifts that you people have been sending me. I've got a wardrobe that Audrey Hepburn would be jealous of. I really appreciate the fact that you overlook the drooling and the odd ahem accident, and just accept me for who I am. And, really -in the grand scheme of things- pulling dad's chest hair out and vomiting down mum's cleavage are really pretty minor indiscretions, aren't they?

@ 8 months

2005-12-11T20:22:00.000+13:00

After a couple of weeks of assembling the basics, trying different combinations and refining the various discrete moves into a single, glorious process, Juno Ruby Ryan is on the move; yep, crawling all over the place.

Max, as you can see, is now getting some real up close and personal attention from Juno on a regular basis. Where once he was free to get up and make good his escape, now he is followed by the sound of an almost obsessive 8 month old, hands slapping the wooden floor and issuing these excited little pants as she hunts him down like the dog he is... No wonder he has just given up and assumed the position.

Of course, it is not just Max that is being followed around the house. Once she is on the floor, you will shortly hear the slapping and the panting, interrupted ocassionally as she takes a little breather, determinedly covering large swathes of the floor in dribble as she moves relentlessly from room to room, or with the weather a little balmier, the vast open spaces of the front lawn.

Saturday arvo

2005-11-27T16:29:00.000+13:00

How else should you spend a saturday afternoon? Sitting on the lounge, the sun streaming (intermittently) onto your shoulders, a good book in one hand and your daughter tucked under the other. While some years away from reading herself, Juno certainly enjoys participating in the act of reading: pawing at the pages, giving little yawps of delight when you finally do turn a page, staring with a sort of endless fascination at the intricacies of the cover and the endpapers, sniffing at the unmistakable odour of the paperback and generally inveigling herself thoroughly into the process...

So far, she has exhibited far more interest in novels than in non-fiction, shows herself to be particularly partial to pseudo-literary potboilers (including the ultimate critical statement, shredding several pages in either excitement or disdain - it is too early to tell which), and she will also, from time to time, dip into The Listener.

Of course, I am determined not to ~~read too much~~ make too much of this interest, given that she has roughly another decade to grow into her brilliance...

Dinner time

2005-11-07T20:42:00.000+13:00

...just loves her tucker

The long haul

2005-10-30T16:38:00.000+13:00

Since we have got back from Sydney, Juno's sleeping patterns have been a little (ahem) erratic. You just get the feeling from looking at her, from watching the way she interacts with other people and the world at large, that she is just tremendously interested in it all - and not that keen on missing out on any of it. So, she doesn't show that much promise as a lazy duvee monster (alas).

She is not quite crawling yet, more in the gearing up for it stage. Plenty of work up on the knees or the toes and lunging (which, more often than not, has the amusing effect of propelling her backwards). Her mobility has reached the point where it is not possible to leave her unattended for ~~a quick trip to the pub anymore~~ too long as she has a talent for wriggling into trouble...

Bush tucker

2005-10-09T15:07:00.000+13:00

Back from Oz and Juno has been feted by all and sundry. Six months old today and she has just started on solids. Just before we left she was starting to evince an almost sharklike interest in any morsels that were within striking distance, so we decided to se how she would go with some real tucker.

I was keen to start her off on something substantial, something that reflected her (recently experienced) Aussie heritage ... something she could really get her gums into, like a pie floater or a Chiko Roll, but Jess was having none of that. So we served up a bowl of organic rice cereal and warm breast milk (yum).

She was into it like a shot. Scoffed it down. Well, the stuff that didn't end up all over her face, Jess's lap and the table...

Chomping

2005-09-25T20:10:00.000+12:00

Tonight at dinner Juno, who was sitting on my lap, started chomping and making schmucking noises as we ate. Sure enough, every time I brought a forkful of food up to my mouth, she would lunge forward excitedly - obviously very keen to start on some solids.

She is also now the proud owner of a NZ passport and, on wednesday, will make her first trip (of many, I am sure) to Australia. When we return I will post some photos of her frolicking at Bondi...

Father's Day

2005-09-04T20:32:00.000+12:00

...and what a proud Dad I am; about a week and a half ago, young Juno Ruby reached a tremendously significant developmental milestone - she started blowing raspberries. Now, whenever the mood descends upon her, which for some inexplicable reason is often when we are sitting in traffic, she will start trumpeting away.

The other milestone that she reached about the same time is that she began to roll on to her stomach unaided. Again, this was/is a source of pride, all the more astonishing to me for it being so disproportionate to the act itself. Stop press: baby rolls onto tummy!

I know, but when you watch it for the first time, the effort that it takes her -after countless attempts- and then, suddenly, she makes it. And straightaway she lifts her head and looks up at you and grins and you are gone...your heart feels like it is crushing your lungs, like there just isn't enough room in your chest. What more could a dad want for father's day?

A Hutt Valley Girl

2005-08-21T20:19:00.000+12:00

I love my hoodie.

The jinx

2005-08-21T19:56:00.000+12:00

OK: I guess I had it coming - since the post three weeks ago, the little treasure hasn't slept for anything like 8 hours. Jess, bless her heart, has been pleading with me to post to this effect in the (vain) hope that it will lift the curse... So perhaps by acknowledging that this was some sort of weird, one-off type of thing, the mocker will be lifted and we can all get some sleep.

As we are heading off to the homeland at the end of next month, the little vegemite will need a passport. So we need to take a photo: how tough can that be? She is only 17 weeks old and we already have close to 2,000 images of her - what will one more matter? Of course, that 'one more' has to be a straight ahead shot against a light -but not white- background with her eyes open and a 'neutral expression'.

You can see how it turned out. And this, believe me, is the pick of the bunch. Thank god for digital cameras, 'cause if I was paying to get this amount of film developed, I would need to be working nights in a chop-shop to pay for all the damn stuff...

Juno's Aussie grandparents were out here last weekend, at least I assume it was them. Can't be too sure because they spent all of their time talking to Juno. Jess and I only got a look in when the golden one fell asleep. Margam seems to be developing something like an obsessive compulsive disorder: as soon as she sees a cute outfit, she whips out the plastic and snaffles it. Juno's wardrobe will shortly require another wing be added to house. I'm just becoming very afraid about the pattern that is being established...

Thigh me kangaroo down, sport

2005-07-31T19:10:00.000+12:00

7.15 kilograms! at fifteen weeks: pretty bloody good going, I reckon. You just have to look at those thighs to see that she is putting away the tucker...

Also, after what seems like an eternity, Juno has been logging the odd 8-8.5 hour sleep for the first session at night. Hallelujah! Now, if Jess can only relax enough to sleep when Juno is alseep we will be totally sweet.

Shot some amazing footage of Juno laughing the other night -I only have a dial-up connection, so at this stage uploading the file is out of the question. While dressing Juno after her bath, Jess sneezed and Juno went into a semi-hysterical fit of giggling. Jess kept making sneezing noises and Juno just laughed more and more: it was astonishing, watching her get more and more worked up. Good to see that she is a fan of slapstick and hammy acting, though.

Grandma Heather

2005-07-24T17:06:00.000+12:00

Heather came down to Wellington to celebrate her sixtieth birthday with her daughters and granddaughters and so, on saturday, we dressed Juno in her party frock and trucked off to Nikau for a sumptuous brunch. We all had a wonderful afternoon and Heather got to spend most of the weekend bonding with her newest granddaughter.

This was the first time that we had frocked Juno up and, as you can see from the photo, she was looking quietly adorable. The bib does, I admit, detract from the overall impression of a smartly-dressed 14 week old baby, but there is no way she can go anywhere without it: do you have any idea how much babies drool and vomit? Within minutes of dressing her, she can be covered in a substance suspiciously like cottage cheese, or just sodden with saliva - it's like living with Homer Simpson.

What is probably not so obvious from the photo is how big she is getting. In those first couple of weeks after she came home, she would fall asleep on my chest and the top of her head would snuggle into the recess under my collarbone and her feet would sit a little bit higher than my belly. Now, if she did fall asleep on my chest, I think I might have some difficulty continuing to breathe...

The Unbearable Cuteness of Being

2005-06-30T20:01:00.000+12:00

All rugged up in her winter bear suit: and so she should be. We made the trip up to Brian's on the weekend (in the Wairarapa)and spent a couple of frigid days huddled round the fire. On the way home, as we crested the Rimutakas, snow was falling on the bonnet of the car.

People has pulled over to the side of the road and were out of their cars, cavorting about, throwing slush balls and generally behaving in an unseemly fashion... In any event, it was our first big road trip as a family and was an unqualified success. Juno slept for pretty much the entire trip there and back, she charmed her granddad, and we got out of Wellington for the weekend.

It would seem the possibilities from here are endless. This week, the 'Rapa, next - Fiji? Acapulco? Anywhere you can wear shorts and remain (conscious) in the ocean for longer than 5 minutes sounds pretty bloody good at the moment.

@10 weeks

2005-06-19T15:09:00.000+12:00

Finally, after what must be three weeks, I have managed to organise myself sufficiently to post something. And yes, after 10 weeks of life with Juno, Jess and I are starting to get the hang of this. Either that, or Juno has decided to take pity on us...

Whichever it is, we are (all 3 of us) pretty frickin' happy about it. Juno has logged a couple of 5-5.5 hr sleeps for the first session over the last week and -on the odd ocassion- followed them up with a 3.5 or a 4: that's like a full nights sleep. OK, with an intermission. But still pretty bloody good.

And, as you can see, she has something of a winning smile about her. In fact, when she is awake, that is pretty much her default expression at the moment. Grinning, gurgling and laughing - it is almost unbearable.

6 weeks

2005-05-22T19:43:00.000+12:00

Well, we have hit the magic 6 week mark, as in "Once they hit 6 weeks they...{insert one of the following} sleep 8 hours, only cry ocassionally, make their own bed," and, I have to say, I believe we have been misled. Sure, she is interacting a lot more, gurgling and smiling in a scarily ingratiating fashion -don't worry Juno, no matter how much you howl through the night, we won't send you back- but any sense of us being on easy street and cruising towards adolesence is way off track...

Not that I had put too much faith in it. But when everyone else's baby was an absolute darling by 6 weeks, it does make you wonder about the rose tint of retrospection and perhaps also an absurd element of competitiveness: example, of course Juno is a little angel, look at her gene pool. Frankly, I couldn't care if I don't get another unbroken sleep for the next 10 years, as long as she is healthy, happy and only dates guys I approve of {aside} Is it just the sleeplessness or am I entering a full-blown delusional state?.

Jess and I keep learning however, or at least we keep bumbling forward, not entirely sure that what we are doing is 100% textbook, but -I keep reassuring her- who the hell wrote this stupid book anyway? Feed on demand or not? Don't pick them up straight away when they cry? Jeez, she is six weeks old: give her the benefit of the doubt: if she is crying, I figure she probably does want something to happen, and to happen pretty bloody fast. It's not as if they are born with any reserves of patience or saintly forebearance...