6 months! HOW has half a YEAR gone by? While I wish we could slow down time, this stage might be my favorite yet. Juno is smiling, laughing, playing, talking and is just so full of life and pure joy. She is so much fun right now!
Juno had her 6 month check up on Friday and all is well with our girl. She’s growing as she should be and staying steady in her 5th percentile for her weight at 13.3 pounds! She’s more than doubled her weight since birth. She is exactly two feet tall and in the 12th percentile for height. She is still wearing size two diapers and is now wearing 3 month and 3-6 month clothes. While she’s getting big, shes actually still a peanut and our doc said she still needs at least one feeding in the night so my hopes of weaning her night feedings and maybe actually getting a full nights sleep are now on the back burner for a few more months. This mama hasn’t slept through the night since probably early October (let’s be honest, the Lord starts to prepare you for the lack of sleep that’s coming your way in the last trimester of pregnancy) so what’s another few months? I know I am not alone in this — my sister didn’t sleep through the night until 19 months with my niece (bless her heart) — and I know MANY other moms can relate to getting no sleep. What’s sleep? Who needs it anyway?! [Sleep update below!]
Juno is looking more and more like her daddy to me and her hair is starting to grow back in. We still can’t tell what color it is but it sure is fuzzy and cute. We can’t wait to see if she’ll be a brunette or blondy or a red head. She still has a little blonde spot on the right side of her head and is still is rocking a big bald spot on the back of her head - just the cutest. Her eyes are the biggest and blue-est eyes you will ever see and her eyelashes are so incredibly long. She has the tiniest feet and even the 0-3 month shoes we have in her closet are way too big on her still. She’s so beautiful and we wouldn’t change a thing about her.
This month our June Bug started rolling over from her back to her tummy so she can now expertly roll in both directions. She loves, loves, loves laying on the floor or on her play mat while kicking and rolling around. She has found her toes and loves to suck and chew on them. Anything she puts in her hands goes immediately to her mouth. We think her first tooth is going to make its appearance any day now because the drool is out of control right now. Juno has started making all sorts of new sounds this month. Her favorite is making a raspberry sound with her lips and she laughs and laughs when we do it back to her.
In the past month Juno has started eating solids — she loves oatmeal and rice cereal — and we just gave her some peas for the first time once she officially turned 6 month olds. Our sweet pea absolutely peas — they are a hit. She is loving sweet potatoes too! We will continue exploring veggies and fruits, try peanut butter and other nuts, add in some meats and start some baby led weaning too as the months go on. Juno likes to sit in her high chair at the table with us and joins in our conversations about our days. I’m loving this whole dinner-time thing as a family! Junos tummy has been much better still and we hope to be able to start weaning her from her reflux medicine within the next few months as she starts to eat more and more solids. We will hold off giving her any dairy for the time being but may eventually introduce a little bit of soy into her diet and see how she does. Hopefully she’ll outgrow her allergic colitis at some point!
This month I finished up teaching my sweet bunch of first graders for the end of the school year and the start to summer has been full of baby snuggles, lots of relaxing and hanging around the house. Juno turned six months old while on her very first camping trip in Estes Park. Juno was a happy camper and did so well! We tried to stick to her normal routine as much as possible while we were away and overall she did great. Mom and dad learned a thing or two like how we should have packed basically our whole house because baby’s need SO much stuff (we will be bringing a bottle warmer and a baby monitor next time — ha!) and also that Colorado mountains are still so cold in early June so next year we might do our first trip later in June but now we feel ready and prepared for our next trip in a couple of weeks!
Since summer has started Juno has developed a little bit of separation anxiety. She likes her mama to be the ONLY one to hold her - she lets dad hold her too when mom isn’t around and she lets Yaya and Auntie KK hold her too, but that’s about it!. Our June goal is to work on this because this mama needs a break every now and again. Starting this week we are getting into more of a working routine again so she’ll be spending two or three days a week with my mom again while I do all the photography business things. It’ll be good to have Juno with Yaya again on a regular basis!
While on the topic of my photography business and since the paperwork has finally gone through, I’m excited to announce that I will be taking a parenting leave this coming school year and will have a year off from teaching. Not only will I get to have more time with Juno and have a more flexible schedule, but my hope is to be able to do much more photography now! In the past I have had to turn away a lot of potential clients because I simply couldn’t teach full time and do photography basically full time as well. But now I won’t have to turn people down and I can spend the year seeing how much photography I can actually do. I’m excited for this new challenge and journey and couldn’t be more happy to get to have more time with my girl!
I know I already mentioned sleep above but in Junos 5 month post last month I mentioned how her sleep took a turn for the worst. I had to actually put her bassinet back in our room because she wanted to be awake or nursing practically the whole night. The longer I was back at work after maternity leave, the worse her sleep got. She had fully reverse cycled plus I had started some bad habits because let’s be honest when you have to be up at 5 a.m. and have to be able to function enough to teach 1st graders all day, you will do anything to get a couple of hours of sleep. Our hope was as soon as summer started to break some of these bad habits, do some official sleep training and get Juno back to being in her own room for the whole night. We ran this by her pediatrician on Friday who gave us the go ahead on sleep training with the exception of making sure Juno still gets at least one night feeding in the middle of the night. So that’s our plan for now! Wish us luck!
[Update: Since writing that, we’ve now done three nights of sleep training. She’s doing great! She’s stayed in her crib all three nights for 11-12 hours. The first night she cried for less than hour total (we were expecting it to be much worse than that), the second night she cried for 4 minutes total (she only cried when we initially laid her down for bed and then didn’t make a peep the rest of the night, and last night she cried for 19 minutes total all night! I’ve been nursing Juno around 10 before I get in bed and then I set my alarm and have been going in around 2:30 to do her middle of the night feeding. Such great progress from where we were even a week ago … we are feeling so hopeful, full of energy and grateful!]
We are looking forward to summer days in the shade, splashing in the pool and enjoying a few more camping trips in the next month! We love Juno more and more everyday, if that’s even possible. She is our whole world.
I included a handful of phone snapshots this month too while camping and swimming and eating. Juno is getting so close to sitting up on her own so when that happens I’m going to take a few more 6 month photos and will add them here later on!
Until next month …