Holy moly — 10 months old —- how HOW is our baby going to be ONE year old is just TWO months? Time is flying by and my heart can barely handle it. This month has been another great month. Juno has continued to turn a corner and is just the happiest, smiliest, most content little thing you ever did see. She is SUCH a good player and as long as she is down on the ground surrounded by toys and things to pull herself up on then she is one independent, happy girl. She is really coming into her own and has the biggest personality - she is constantly making us laugh. This past month Juno went to the zoo for the second time — she loved watching the giraffes and other animals— and to her first pumpkin patch. We also went camping with Brandon’s family and it was so much fun getting to camp one last time this season. We had the best time going out on the lake, playing with Juno’s cousin Micah, spending time with Grandma and Grandpa, watching for moose, and trying mom’s ice cream for the first time.
Juno is still a major momma’s girl and still has some pretty extreme separation anxiety, but if she can see me in her line of sight then all is well in her big world. Sweet thing has a really hard time whenever I leave her with anyone besides her Yaya (thank goodness she is good for her or I don’t know what I would do!) She will scream and scream the e.n.t.i.r.e time I am gone if she is with anyone else (except Brandon, of course) and it just breaks my heart and makes it that much harder for me to be gone. Our hope is this will continue to get better and better. She has started letting others hold her or play with her as long as she can see me so that is a GOOD thing! We will keep working on it.
Juno is officially crawling on all fours. Last month she became mobile and was army crawling on her belly all around and this month she is on her knees and doesn’t even scoot around on her tummy anymore at all. She is fast and speedy and knows where she wants to be going. She also pulls herself up to standing on anything and everything she can and she is walking with the help of a walker that she pushes all around. She is so dang proud of herself too. Watch out world, June Bug is ready for ya!
This month started off a bit rough when Juno got stung by a wasp in between her eyes AND was hit hard with the 9 month sleep regression, but we have ended the month on such a good note! Baby girl was tagging along on a photo shoot with me when we stumbled upon a wasp nest. Both Juno and another young lady that we were photographing got stung. We hadn’t even taken one picture yet, but Juno was a trooper and only screamed for maybe 20-30 seconds and then was a happy baby for the entire rest of the session despite the ever increasing swelling on her nose and under her eyes. We just so happened to be photographing my dermatologist’s family so thank the LORD we were with her or I probably would have rescheduled the shoot and rushed her to urgent care (I’m not even kidding — I was certain the major swelling meant she was having an allergic reaction — ha ha!). However, this sweet lady has the kindest heart of anyone you will ever meet, and throughout her entire family portrait session she continually checked on Juno AND reassured this worried mama that Juno’s reaction was still normal. After the session, we headed home to give Juno some Benadryl and she was fine! She was pretty swollen and red for a few days and looked like she got beaten up with two very red and puffy eyes, but overall she did so well and I won’t complain about the good sleep we all got thanks to the Benadryl for a couple of nights!
Speaking of sleep, as soon as Juno learned to pull herself up to standing, sleep went right out the window. Every one to two hours throughout the night, Juno would wake up and instead of rolling over and falling back to sleep like she had gotten so good at, she would pull herself up to standing in her crib but then not know how to sit back down. She would scream until one of us would go and help her sit back down. We tried letting her cry it out to see if she would figure it out on her own, but after watching her fall straight on her back a couple of times, we realized we couldn’t just let her scream until she learned how to sit back down on her own. So for a couple of weeks, every hour or two one of us would get up and lay her back down. Goodness. It was almost as tiring as having a newborn again when I was triple feeding around the clock (not really, but it sure did feel that way after getting used to some good long stretches). Now within the last week or so we are getting back in the swing of things sleep-wise. After a LOT of practice during the day trying to teach the bug how to sit down once she was standing, she can now do it on her own and will do it during the night too most of the time. I don’t want to jinx it, but she’s been going anywhere between 5-7 hour stretches the last handful of nights with usually only one (sometimes two) nursing sessions in the night. I’ve stopped giving her a dream feed before I go to bed so that I can just go to bed early, and so far it’s been working great. She normally still wakes about the same time each night and I get a couple more hours of sleep.
Juno weighs just under 16 pounds and boy does she all of the sudden feel like she is getting big to me! She is definitely starting to fill out a bit and just feels heavier! Go baby go! It could be because she’s starting to eat a more solids. We have started feeding therapy at Children’s Hospital and she is definitely starting to be more interested in food. We’ve been adding a lot of new foods to her diet recently like raspberries, strawberries, kiwi and wheat and we are starting her on some fiber and probiotics to see if it helps her tummy. Juno is officially wearing size 3 diapers and is wearing size 6 month clothes on average. She still fits into her clothes that are 3-6 months while she is swimming in most of the 9 month clothes we have.
June Bug has the biggest blue eyes with the longest eyelashes, the absolute biggest smile of any baby any where and we just adore every single little thing about her — her double chin, the way her hair sticks up, her little dimple on her left cheek, her tiny toes and fingers, the way she kisses us with a big open mouth and sucks on my chin when she hasn’t seen me all day, the way she touches my face while nursing, goodness, we just love how she melts our hearts all day long with her many faces, BIG personality and the best laugh ever. Brandon asked me when we should celebrate her FIRST birthday. I am NOT ready for that yet … how can she be almost one?! For now we are looking forward to Juno’s first Halloween, first Fall, first Thanksgiving … AND then we will think about her FIRST birthday. Happy 10 months, Baby Girl!