Mommyhood is hard sometimes

I've felt challenged lately with soothing Juniper at times. It is hard for me to adjust to how different she is already from the first month of her life. When she was a newborn (defined as the first 30 days of life) she slept and ate more easily, and we could generally soothe her more quickly. Now it sometimes takes longer to make her happy (to stop crying, that is), and it breaks my heart to hear her cry. Also, she is a lighter sleeper now during the day. I am very grateful that she continues to sleep well during the night.

Most of the times when she's been crying, we have figured out that what she wanted was to sleep and she was overtired and so it took longer to help her get to sleep. She cries the most when it is her nightly bedtime. What works best at helping her fall asleep has been to swaddle her, hold her in cradle position while bouncing/swaying/walking, and playing white noise and specifically the radio static through our living room speakers (our bedroom stereo's radio static is not up to her standards when she's in that hard-to-soothe mood). Though there isn't any one solution that always works and that is the challenging part for me. It is a guessing game and she is often a mystery to us.

Here is a photo of her while Bob was holding her today when he got home from work. Most of the day today she was happy, it was just when she got close to bedtime that it became challenging. We love her so much and she is so cute!