Two! It’s been half a year since my last Juno update — these past six months have been SO busy. Juno turned 2 at the beginning of December so she’s actually 25 months already. I cannot believe it. It’s true what they say … the days are long but the years are short. I feel like two years has flown by. If you want to catch up on any of my prior Juno updates, here you go. Or, if you’re just here to see some cute pictures of a sweet two year old from the past 6 months then scroll all the way down…
A lot has happened since Juno’s 18 month update. I went back to teaching full time in August and Juno started “school” then as well. She is at daycare three days a week and with her Yaya the other two days. It was a big adjustment at first for both of us after having a year off together, but now that we are both more in the swing of things it’s all going well for the most part. Juno loves her teachers and her friends at school so much. We are so blessed that her first experience at school has been a positive one and that her teachers were so kind and caring in her young toddlers class. After winter break, Juno will move to the big toddler class and have two new teachers, but the good thing is she spent a lot of time throughout December in this class and lots of her friends are already in this class. She’s going to do so well! Her days with Yaya are her favorite and she looks forward to her Yaya (and Papa) time all week. We feel so lucky to have grandparents fifteen minutes away who love our baby girl so much!
Juno has started talking up a storm and is saying lots of three or four or more word sentences and phrases now. I can make out what she is saying almost all of the time, but she’s still working on the articulation of many of her words and she gets SO frustrated when I can’t figure out what she is saying or can’t figure out what she wants. This girl still knows how to throw a solid tantrum. Hmmmm, I wonder where she gets that from? Ha! Some of Juno’s favorite phrases right now are: “thank you mommy (or daddy, yaya, kk, whoever!)”, “I love you mommy”, “Mommy help!”, “Excuse me mommy (or daddy, etc.)”, “No no no Remi”, “LEAVE IT Remi!” and “Hiiiiii KK” (Her Aunt KK is her favorite person to ‘call’ and she spends a lot of time every day pretending to be on the phone with her KK. Yesterday morning she said, “Mommy I want to hold the baby giraffe!” A full on sentence clear as day. What?! She also loves to say each member of our family multiple times a day — “Mommy, Daddy, Remi, Yaya, Papa, Pais (my parent’s dog, Paisley), KK, Uncle Cam, Raleigh, LeeLee (Ellie), Grandma, Grandpa, Jeffey, Kate, Micah”. Needless to say, Juno is loved by SO many and she loves her family SO much.
Right now Juno is such a great helper. I think her favorite thing to do is to help us with whatever — the laundry, the dishes (either washing them in the sink or putting the dishes away), throwing trash away, making our coffee, dumping her pee into the toilet from her little potty, whatever! Ask her to do something and she is so eager to help! She’s been helping us cook and bake and I have a feeling she’s going to love helping us in the kitchen for a long time to come. She also LOVES her baby dolls so much right now. She has two that she particularly loves (one was my baby doll when I was little and one her Auntie KK got her when she turned one) and we have been spending all of our winter break taking care of them. Twins are exhausting ya’ll. Kudos to all the twin momma’s out there. Let me tell you —- Juno and I have spent countless hours doing the following on repeat: one baby wakes up, change that baby’s diaper, put that baby on the potty to try to go pee or poop, put a fresh diaper on, put baby in her high chair, cook her [pretend] eggs, feed her the pretend eggs, give her water, change her diaper again, put jammies on, rock baby, read books, put to bed and then guess what?! As SOON as that baby is asleep, the other baby wakes up and we have to do all of these things with baby #2. And then we put that on repeat until she finally decides we can do something different. Phew, it’s hard work! She also loves to color, draw, paint, play with play dough, build with her kinetic sand, and do anything that is hands-on. She’s going to be an artist who loves to do crafts for sure. After finishing any masterpiece, she immediately makes us hang it on the fridge, which of course we are so happy to do. Her daddy thinks she’s going to grow up to be a musician — she loves to play the piano with him and she started singing along to songs and clapping and is always trying to snap her fingers too. Brandon says that she has really good beat and rhythm - haha! She also likes to play her harmonicas, her maracas and her tambourine. She often yells at me to “Sing mommy!” and sing I do. Up On the Housetop, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Black Sheep Black Sheep, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star are what she requests the most. Another favorite is reading books — we got so many new books for Christmas that she has quickly fallen in love with and she loves reading so much. She points to letters she knows and often thinks she is reading the books. Her new favorites right now include, Made For Me, If Animals Kissed Goodnight, Santa Mouse, The Itsy Bitsy Reindeer, The Polar Express [she calls it the choo choo train book] (we’ve been reading a lot of Christmas books clearly), and any of the Never Touch A (spider, monster, etc.) books.
We had Juno’s 2 year well check a few weeks ago and sweet girl is healthy and doing well. She’s come SUCH a long way when it comes to going to the doctor and I think a big part of that is how many appointments she’s had lately. I think she’s been to the doctors 8 or 9 times since mid-October and has another appointment tomorrow. She’s becoming a pro. More on that in a moment, but Juno is 22 pounds on the dot and is in the 3rd but almost 4th percentile for weight. She’s hanging onto her growth curve for weight, but just barely, so we are trying to make sure she gets lots of healthy fats everyday. Doctors orders! She is 32 1/2 inches tall and is in the 45th percentile for height — she has been growing like a weed lately! We’ve had to put away all of her 18 months pants and she is officially in 2T clothes because of her height; although many of them don’t fit around the waist yet ... she’ll get there eventually. She would be in size three diapers still, but we just got rid of all of her diapers because this girl is potty trained (or mostly potty trained)! Hooray! Speaking of going potty, we are still figuring out and dealing with Juno’s tummy troubles and trying to figure out what is causing and how to handle her chronic constipation. Things got really bad in October again so we finally saw a pediatric GI doctor at Children’s Hospital in November and we have a follow up appointment with the same doctor tomorrow. The good news is that all of her blood work and labs have come back normal so far. We then spent a long weekend doing a complete colon clean-out which was miserable but so necessary and then we followed up with an abdominal x-ray to make sure that her colon had been cleared and that she didn’t have any other blockages. Since then we have been on maintenance medication daily. She was doing really well for a couple of weeks after the initial clean out, but now she is back to being pretty backed up again and nothing we do is seeming to help. She has been complaining that her “tummy hurts” and she gets so bloated when she hasn’t gone if a few days. It breaks our hearts, but hopefully we are on the path to figuring out how to best help her. She is completely dairy free and has been pretty much her whole life. We may look at going gluten free as well if it comes to it. We will see what happens at her next appointment — we are hoping for more answers and guidance as we feel like our lives fully revolve around poop (or the lack of poop) right now and it’s not very fun. Right before her major clean-out Juno came down with croup, which was the first time she has ever really been sick in her life, and we ended up in urgent care for that. Luckily, she had a pretty mild case and one dose of steroids helped a lot. Then, at her two year check up her pediatrician found a heart murmur so she sent us off to see a pediatric cardiologist adding yet another doctor’s visit to Juno’s schedule. Poor thing couldn’t seem to catch a break this fall! We just saw the cardiologist about two weeks ago, who was beyond amazing, and after a normal EKG and about thirty minutes of listening to Juno’s heart, he declared that her heart is perfect and healthy and that she has an innocent murmur which she may have her whole life or it may go away on it’s own. Thank goodness! Juno did so well at this appointment and the doctor declared, “a two year old should NOT be this good at the doctor”. See what I mean about how far she has come when it comes to going to the doctor? Little lady used to scream bloody murder every time we went for the ENTIRE time we were there and cling to me to the point where I would have nail marks on my arms. Now, she’s TOO good at the doctor! She doesn’t even cry getting shots or blood taken anymore. We play doctor a LOT which has also been really helpful. Hopefully the New Year lends us less trips to the doctor than this fall did. Fingers crossed. Juno also went to the dentist for the first time a couple of months ago and she did great there as well! She wasn’t a fan of having her teeth polished, but the dentist was amazing and got it done. She has all of her teeth except for her four 2 year old molars. She got to pick out a book, a sticker and a rubber duck afterwards which made everything better! She still carries around the duck and says “dentist” “dentist”.
Update on Tues. 1/5 - We had a follow up appointment with the pediatric GI today and the good news is that there are no blockages, Juno isn’t currently backed up and there is no blood in her stool. Hooray! Her colon has some shrinking and healing to do, but we are on the right track. We will remain dairy free for a while and we are going to try a new daily medication to make sure she doesn’t get backed up again. On the other hand, she’s lost a little bit of weight (it could be because she isn’t impacted with poo anymore), but she’s now in the 2nd percentile for weight (21 lbs) and the zero percentile for height to weight (BMI). Because of this we are doing some additional testing and getting her thyroid checked as well. Hopefully this means only more trip to the doctor for some blood work and then we can take a much-needed break from the doctor for a while! Fingers crossed!
Oh goodness, where to begin in the sleep department? In Juno’s 18 month update I hesitantly shared that we finally had a sleeper, but guess what? I spoke too soon, which is why I was hesitant to even share that bit of good news in the first place. This summer Juno was sleeping great! She was consistently sleeping 8-10 hours every night and napping for 2-3 hours every day. It was DREAMY. I was finally starting to feel like a normal person again. But then I went back to work and Juno started daycare and her good sleep completely went out the window. We’ve maybe had three or four nights since August that she’s slept “through the night” up until two weeks ago. By winter break, I was an anxious, exhausted mess. If there is one thing I know about me it’s that sleep can make it or break it for me mentally and physically so my goal for winter break was to try to get back on track with good sleep habits. We are two weeks into re-sleep-training and so far she’s been doing SO much better. She either has one or two quick wake in the night (I’ll be up for 30 minutes or less usually) or NO wake ups! Getting her to sleep is a different story, but at least once she is asleep she has been sleeping pretty well and LOADS better than what we were getting in the fall. Hallelujah. She has been sleeping about 8-9 hours a night this past week and thinking about where she was two weeks ago that is AMAZING. She’s also been napping better during the days and I’ve been able to rest or get some things done which has been really nice. Now we are just praying that this will continue this week and beyond when we both go back to school! Praying, praying, praying. We are so proud of how far she’s come in just a week or two!
We also started potty training over winter break. We figured she’s at the age where it’s easiest to potty train and we both had two weeks off so why not? She was also about 85% potty trained already. Ever since this summer, Juno has been peeing and occasionally pooping on the potty at home and at Yaya’s house so she’s been ready to get rid of diapers for a while now. So far she’s doing great and dare I say that she may be fully potty trained?! She is obsessed with her big girl underwear and loves to go on the potty. She gets very proud of herself when she does. She’s had a few accidents over the first couple of days, but overall she will tell us when she has to go or will go if we tell her it’s time to use the toilet and she’s been staying dry during naps and night too! She hasn’t had an accident in over a week! We will see how it goes once she’s back in school this week. We officially have a big girl on our hands. I am so proud of her, but also want my baby back! Where did my baby go? Another update — Juno went back to school yesterday and she didn’t have any accidents at school either! She peed on the potty all day while there —- wooohoooo!
Some of Juno’s favorite things right now:
Eating - she is the best eater you will ever see (her favorite foods right now are corn, peas, turkey, sausage, noodles, eggs, pears, grapes, peaches … if it doesn’t have dairy and it isn’t an avocado then she probably likes it — we are still holding off on avocados for the time being before we try them again)
Playdough & Kinetic Sand
Painting
Riding her bike outside
Going to the park
Yaya’s house
Remington
Reading Books
“Trash Truck” (the Netflix kid’s show)
Big girl underwear
Exercising — froggy jumps, bear crawls, crab walks, running
Helping with the dishes, cooking and cleaning
Cooking in her play kitchen
Taking care of her babies
Playing outside (especially in the snow!)
Some of Juno’s least favorite things right now:
Bedtime
Pooping
Not getting her way
Brushing her teeth (she used to love brushing her teeth, now it’s hit or miss)
New settings and social situations (sweet pea still takes a while to warm up and feel comfortable around new people or places)
Getting to watch Juno grow another year was definitely the very best thing about 2020 by far. Even amidst the pandemic we wouldn’t change a thing because we got to spend each day with a healthy, spunky, sweet, sassy, hilarious baby girl — oops, I mean big girl — who teaches us so much about life, love and what is really important. And the best thing about having a one year old during a world-wide pandemic was that she didn’t know any different. We may not have gone out to as many places as we usually would have and we went to far less story times, zoo days, museum outings and restaurants than we did during her first trip around the sun and we didn’t travel anywhere at all this whole year, but she doesn’t know that and she thought all this time together was simply the best. We love her more and more everyday and she continually melts our hearts with her big bear hugs, the way she grabs our faces to give us kisses and how she says “I love you, mommy” or “I love you, daddy”. Our year has been made. Can’t wait to see what Juno’s twos hold for her. We are so proud of you and love you more than you will ever know, June Bug.
