The gene game

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

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

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...