Mom is traveling on a business trip for the rest of the week, so she needs to entrust Dad with responsibility for taking care of the baby. Dad plans to teach her to play with knives and matches, and we’ll probably get matching tattoos. That’s okay — Mom knows that comes with the territory.
One area where Mom doesn’t have much confidence, though, is in Dad’s ability to dress the baby fashionably. There’s a coordinated outfit laid out for every day she’s away.
Fashion first
Juliette crossed the 13-month threshold this week. She’s just about ready to take her first steps — she is able to stand up and balance without support now, and she can even manage a few steps provided there is someone to catch her. She hasn’t quite worked out that the top and the bottom half of her body need to work at the same speed, so she goes charging headlong towards someone before realizing her feet aren’t keeping up, only to fall flat on her face.
Guess who’s 13 months old?!
Life is moving quickly right now. It’s taken a little while to get back into the swing of things after coming back from the US at Christmas, and everything seems to be happening at once. Life at work is busy for Mom and Dad, and Juliette’s new house arrived on the back of a truck from Germany last week, so what precious few minutes everyone has are usually spent visiting contractors or inspecting work on site. If Juliette grows up to become an engineer or architect, it won’t be any secret where she first cultivated her interest.
But we’re not so busy that we couldn’t find time to celebrate Juliette’s birthday (again!) with her friends here. We had a great party with lots of friends to play with, and surprisingly the entire affair was pretty calm. Dad has braced himself for much more chaos, and was pleased to discover that all of his friends have managed to raise little angels.
Time to blow out the candles!
Someone likes the birthday cake!
The gorgeous Taline, about to grab 40 winks
Lieke and Louis
Sometimes it’s best to sit back and just take everything in.
Vuthy and Taline
Reading a book together
Lucie and Xavier seem to be having fun.
Taline takes her turn on the rocking cow
Now it’s Xavier’s turn on the rocking cow.
A surprisingly calm gathering considering the number of youngsters involved. That’s because all of our friends have great kids. 🙂
Remi and Isabelle
That’s a very big present from Isabelle, Alex and Remi! I sure hope it’s battery-operated and makes lots of noise!
Juliette is enjoying her Christmas present from Auntie Liher and Uncle Jerome. She’s spent ages taking all the animals out, then putting them back in, then taking them out again.
But her favorite part is the music — she starts dancing every time she gets it to play!
Mom and Dad have been very diligent about keeping Juliette away from any kind of screen in her early developmental years — no TV, no iPad, no iPhone — in the belief that babies are better-developed when they interact with the real world around them. As a result, Juliette didn’t really show much interest even when Mom and Dad were watching TV in the evening — she would play happily in her playpen.
Two weeks in the States, surrounded by iPhones, iPads and TV? Look what happens… She’s had her first hit off the TV crack-pipe. Now we’re fighting for the remote.
Channel surfing
Entranced by the ‘boob tube’