Happy birthday, Junebug!

Juno's three!!!!!

I can't believe it. It seems like just yesterday that she was born. She is such a joy to our family and we love her so much!!
Juno is quite a little tomboy--her favorite things right now are balls (and "play ball", or soccer), tools, and cars/trucks/trains. She is a good little handyman. She helped Grandpa K fix our front door a few weeks ago (handing him tools and actually using a screwdriver!) Later that day, someone came over and said "Hey, your door closes now!" I replied, "Yep, we fixed it today," and Juno got very mad. She said "Hey, Mama! Papa! ME! Tools!" She didn't want me taking credit for her hard work, I guess.
She still has a pretty severe speech delay, but she has made so much progress in just the last month. She's like a different kid! Her vocabulary is still probably around 50 words, but she went from only saying one word at a time to using two word phrases most of the time and THREE or even four word phrases often! That is huge, huge progress! She's also talking a lot more spontaneously. Even with all her progress, she will be starting preschool tomorrow specifically for her speech. Her classroom is a mixed classroom, where half the kids are like Juno (with delays in various areas and IEPS) and the other half are just normal enrolled children from the community. There is a full time special ed teacher and a full time regular ed teacher plus an aide and the class size is capped at 12, so she will get plenty of one on one time and attention. She'll also meet with the speech pathologist every week to work on her articulation. Sidenote, I would just encourage anyone who has any concerns about their child's development to take them to Early Intervention for a FREE assessment! There's a reason it's called "Early" Intervention--most delays are so much easier to fix and treat when caught young!
Juno is definitely our goofiest kid. She goes out of her way to really make people laugh and be silly. Anyone who's ever met her has probably seen her "baba" dance, where she sticks her little bum out, shakes it around, and sings "Baba, baba!" It's so funny now but won't be funny when she's a teenager, so I should nip that in the bud.
Overall, she's happy, healthy, adorable, loving, kind, sassy (very sassy), funny, and we love her so much!