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Dear June: 5 Month Old Baby

By Dawn Sailors In Dear June

Dear Juniper,

Yesterday you turned 5 months old, and you really are the sweetest little thing. We get comments constantly on how mild-mannered you are. You’ve become more interested in seeing what’s going on, and occasionally will get on a roll with your babbling, but for the most part, you’re quiet and content. I have yet to wake up to you crying at night. Seriously… in five months, no night-time crying ever. When you wake up hungry, which is usually once a night, around 5:30 am, you make soft little noises until I come pick you up. You’re so quiet that your dad never even hears you. Lately you’ve had a few 12 hour sleeps, where you’ll stretch that 5:30 wake up call closer to 7:00am. I appreciate it.

You are getting bigger and heavier now. I know this because you like to be held and cuddled constantly. We’re working on teaching you that it’s ok if we set you down for a few minutes, because your daycare providers don’t find the desire for constant cuddles quite as charming as we do, haha. Speaking of daycare, it’s still a little bit of a headache, but getting better soon I hope. The provider we had lined up before you were born hasn’t worked out, so you’ve spent the past several weeks being shuffled around, sometimes between as many as four different places a week. I hate that a lot. We’re lucky you don’t get very worked up about anything, because we’d never have been able to have you on anything resembling a normal schedule for the past few months. Luckily for us, your easy-going temperament means that you just grin at whoever happens to have you for the day and go with the flow, and we’ve also been very blessed to have some wonderful people in our lives who can help us out from week to week in that area.

We’ve gotten you into a dedicated spot two days a week, and your uncle, Cody, will be taking care of you the other two to three days that I’m at work, going forward. He’s living with us for the moment, and both you and your sister (especially your sister) are loving that. We haven’t quite fallen into the new daycare schedule 100% yet, but hopefully starting next week it will all work out for everyone involved. At least until March when your full-time daycare spot opens up and all this stress will finally be behind us.

Anyway, back to you. You suddenly sprouted two little teeth this past month. It surprised us, because you weren’t abnormally fussy at all. There were a couple of nights you woke up twice instead of once, but other than that, no changes. You just suddenly had teeth. First the bottom left about two weeks ago, then the bottom right just this week. Grandma says your daddy got his teeth very early too, so I guess you get that from him.

Your hair is still fairly dark (to my delight– I’m hoping to have at least one girl who resembles me!) and is starting to fill back in a little. It never fell out quite as badly as Vera’s did, but you still have a lot less than you were born with. Your eyes are still dark gray, but I think maybe starting to turn brown. We’ll see.

You’re still mostly on 100% breast milk, but we’ve slowly started introducing some rice cereal and vegetables. When you seem especially hungry at night, you get to eat food, and so far you’re loving it.

You can roll from your stomach to your back when you want to now. Sometimes you refuse to, and sometimes you do it as soon as I set you down. You haven’t quite mastered rolling the other way though, and instead you like to contort yourself into uncomfortable looking positions to be able to see around the room if you’re lying on the floor, with your head and shoulders twisted all around.

You think your sister is hilarious and smile whenever she gives you attention. I used her to get a smile out of you for your picture this month. She can be a little rough sometimes, but the bigger you get, the better that gets too. She can’t wait for you to be big enough to play with her. She constantly gives you kisses and hugs, over and over and over again, as soon as she wakes up in the morning she wants to wake you up too, and she refuses to leave you in a room alone if she can help it, because she doesn’t want you to “be scared”. She loves you so much.

We all love you so much. Can’t wait to see what next months brings!
Love, Mom