there and back again

Howdy. We recently returned form a trip, by car, to Atlanta and back, stopping at New Orleans for the night both going and returning. We visited our friends Mark and Kay in Atlanta, and saw lots of other friends besides. You'd think we'd have lots of pictures. You'd be wrong.



However, we do have this one, taken a few days before we left. Note the extra hipster points from wearing little Chuck Taylor shoes.


Apparently we are rather fixated on Juliet. The only sign of where we are (Cafe du Monde, in New Orleans), is that Juliet is holding part of a beignet, and there's a fleur-de-lis on the milk carton. Juliet liked the street musicians in New Orleans.



When we got to Atlanta, we had a lot of fun time talking, eating, drinking, shopping, and playing croquet with our friends, including CZ, Jim, Rob, and Wally who were also visiting. Juliet seemed to like everyone there, but most of all Lady, the friendly dog. I should have gotten a picture of Lady licking her face, a frequent event which caused Juliet to both scrunch up her face and giggle. I didn't, but I do have this shot of them sharing some rug time together.



Back home, we took some random shots of her and I. She tends to enjoy being in front of the camera, especially when the little screen is turned around so she can see what it sees.



Almost as much as she enjoys making noise. If given musical instruments, she will use them, which is better than just letting her bang on random things. Here you can also see her standing on a long white plastic-covered piece of paper, intended to be raw materials for a book cover, used by us as canvas for her artistic masterpieces made from washable marker.



In other news, she is now able to more or less say "ball", "star", and "owl" whenever she sees one. She can sometimes more or less say "dog" and "cat". She knows a lot more nouns than this, and will point to them when asked ('where's your chin?', 'where's your ear', etc.). She also can remember various tunes, and hums them to herself hours or days after the last time she heard them. Not much luck yet in getting her to pick up after herself, change her clothes, or do the laundry. We appreciate what we have.