Last week, Juniper turned ten months old and is hurtling toward toddlerhood with dizzying swiftness. Two more teeth (numbers 7 and 8!) are poking through on her bottom jaw. Once those two teeth arrive, there will be no more gumminess to her smile and another little part of her babyness will be gone. Her mobility is also increasing by leaps and bounds each day. It seems like just yesterday when it took her a full ten minutes and an extraordinary amount of effort and grunting and whining to flip from her back to her tummy. Now she can sit, kneel, crawl, pull to standing, and transition between any one of these states in the blink of an eye. One minute she is emptying out a drawer in the kitchen, the next minute she is wedging her big belly underneath a dining room chair. Turn your back for a second and she is helping herself to snackies from the dog's food bowl. She has even crawled up a full flight of carpeted steps, chasing after an uninterested kitty cat (with my father very close behind).
We took Juni to the pumpkin patch to adopt a few pumpkins for the upcoming holiday season. She crawled around hugging and squeezing and licking every pumpkin she could get her hands on. I found my pumpkin almost immediately; it spoke to me. Charlie took forever, agonizing over various pumpkin traits. Juni changed her mind several times with each new specimen becoming her instant favorite. My Mom chose the largest pumpkin in the patch (best value!). My brother chose a lopsided yellowish pumpkin with green splotches. To each his own (pumpkin).
The farm also had various animals for us cityfolk to gawk at in our fancy shoes with our Nikon cameras. Ooooooh, look! Goats eating corn! Wow! That cow is mooooing... Heyyy! A turkey! No, a rooster! Juni adores any animal, so this was a happy bonus.
We also got to pick cotton, which, uncomfortable socioeconomic overtones notwithstanding, was fascinating. There is something delightfully alien about a nondescript scraggly bush with big puffs of cottony balls exploding from its branches. We also took a contrived little hayride. Juni spent the whole ten minutes of the ride trying to gnaw on the hay bales.
It was a beautiful Fall day with my Baby Girl, my hubs, my brother, and my Moms - best way to spend the day.