The FeDibblety family

Spencer has been making some pretty cool sounds for awhile now, but for some reason he was particularly talkative Tuesday evening, and I was lucky enough to catch a bit on video. He seems to be very interested in bilabial and linguolabial trills and fricatives.

For those non-phoneticians, bilabial means “with both lips”, and linguolabial means “with tongue and lips”. The difference between trills and fricatives can be subtle. Trills usually involve a repeated flapping. A common trill is the [r] in the Spanish word perro “dog”, as opposed to pero “but”. The latter is just a single flap. In contrast, fricatives tend to have constant friction. Sometimes some of these sounds are commonly referred to as “raspberries”, or “blowing a raspberry”. I personally have always thought blowing a raspberry necessitated one making these sounds on someone else, in particular the tummy. Does anyone else agree with me on that one, or am I all alone?

Spencer seems to be enjoying trying out all of these variations.

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Spencer turned 6 months old last Friday, which meant he was due for his 6-month checkup, which we did today. He was his usual playful self. He didn’t want to lie on his back, and he only cried a little when he got his vaccinations. He continues to be pretty big for his age as well.

Spencer’s 6 months stats:

category	value	percentile
weight	18 lbs, 10 oz	69
height	28.25 inches	94
head circumference	17.5 inches	70
BMI	16.4

Yesterday I was playing bongos with Spencer on my lap when all the sudden he started standing up, leaning on the bongos for support. I tried it again this morning to show Clare and he did it again. This afternoon I finally captured it on video. He is pretty impressive. The most impressive is that he was standing up for about 5 minutes. I only included the most interesting parts in the video though.

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On Sunday, we followed pretty much the same pattern as Saturday. Clare made crepes for breakfast. After we were all cleaned up, we headed out to Mt. Evans, which is only a 45 minute trip, instead of the 90 minute trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. On the way there we stopped for another basket lunch at a nice little spot by a creek. Then we hiked around Echo Lake a bit, and finally drove up to Mt. Evans. Unfortunately it was getting pretty cloudy by the time we got up there, but it was still pretty neat.

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On Saturday we took Melanie, Christine, and Ian to Rocky Mountain National Park. It was actually the first time that we had gone as well. We have contemplated it several times, but decided against it, because it is about a 90-120 minute drive. Having visitors inspired us to make the trip though, and it was quite fun. We first stopped in Estes Park at the visitors center to get some maps. Then we had some lunch in the park on Riverside Drive. It will forever be remembered as the saltiest lunch ever. Friday night I had dumped the remaining ice and salt from making ice cream into the cooler to keep the food cold for our lunch. I put everything in plastic containers, but some of the icy, salty, water got into some of the containers. The garbanzo bean salad was the worst, and Clare ate a bunch before she realized what I had done with the salt. The cherries also got salty, which we decided actually tasted pretty good. Fortunately some of the pasta salad was still good, as was the cheese and hummus.

After lunch we wet to Bear Lake Meadows, and did some hiking. We hiked about 1 mile to Alberta Falls, which was very beautiful, though a bit more crowded than we had expected. We then hiked back to Glacier Gorge and took the shuttle bus back to the Bear Lake parking lot. On our way home we stopped at the Southern Sun brewpub in Boulder, where the beers were all tasty, and the sweet potato chips were endless, because when the waiter asked how they were, we mentioned that the guacamole that came with them was barely mashed at all, and they had yet to give us any silverware with which we could have mashed it ourselves. I think we ended up with 3 or 4 baskets of chips. As usual, Spencer was very happy while hiking, and we all had a very nice day.
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