13 months

I can't believe my baby is 13 months old today. Time has just flown by since she was born. It's hard to put into words what she's like these days. She's very much developing into her own little person who knows just what she wants. She's also very vocal about letting you know when you're not doing what she wants. She's quite clingy, always wanting to be carried. When you put her down after she's reached for the floor, she'll immediately start to pull up on your pants. I always thought that meant that she wanted to be picked up again, but DH said that she sometimes just wants your help to walk somewhere. When I'm playing with her on her floor mat, she'll throw herself forwards onto my lap if I make even the slightest move that might indicate I'm going to get up and go somewhere else. K loves going to the park, and I think the slide is her new favourite, though the swings and teeter-totter are also good fun. She started off squeezing her eyes shut, holding her arms out and wearing this big open-mouthed grin when going down the slide alone a couple weeks ago, but now has much better balance and will keep her eyes wide open all the way down. She's so good at scootching her bum forward bit by bit at the top of the slide until gravity can take over and pull her down. K's a little obsessed with the Ra.dio Fly.er pushtoy wagon that my brother and SIL lent us. She doesn't love pushing it around as much as she loves climbing in and out of the wagon itself. She also likes it when we push her around in it, especially if we go fast or make vroom vroom noises while running around. Other toys she seems to like these days are some books with foam puzzle shapes in the pages that her Grandma got her, her sorting shapes (she can't sort them yet, but taking them out of and putting them back in the box are great fun), and her bath toys. I think she managed to stack a cup on top of another one once (she tends to push them off again when trying to stack cups simply because she's trying so hard to get it to stay put, and hasn't figured out how to carefully lift her hand off the top cup). She's managed to get a stacking ring on the post once or twice, and has been able to put the cube into her sorting bus a couple times. The only sign we've (ok, my Mom did it) taught her is "more", and she's signing it once in a while too. Figuring out what she wants more of can be a little difficult, but seeing her sign it is very cute. I should probably try some more signing with her since she picked that one up so easily. K's still eating like a champ. She's down to 50/50 BM/milk in her bottles, which she gets 5oz of 3 times a day. She's eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, and has two snacks as well. Her great love changes every once in a while. Meat is a pretty consistent favourite, and fish (basa) went down lickety split last week. She really likes rice, and enjoys most veggies. Purees are a bit out of favour these days (including her usual breakfast hot cereal), though she loves spinach and potato enough to tolerate having to be fed to eat it. Asparagus was a big hit, and she adores strawberries, blueberries and grapes. K's got her first 5 teeth in now, and I think the 6th is about to pop through. I wonder how long it will be before she gets more on the bottom. I hope she doesn't inherit my desperate need for orthodontics. I don't understand why my teeth were so bad when both my parents have pretty good teeth without braces. She won't let me use our little rubber chew-brush for her teeth any more, but will at least let me clean them with a soft cloth. I can't believe we got so lucky with our little girl. She's babbling up a storm and seems to speak in unintelligable sentences at times. It's going to be so fun to see her vocabulary expand and to be able to have a real conversation with her. She's also still sleeping pretty well, going from 8pm to anywhere from 6:45-7:30am most nights now. She'll occasionally wake in the middle of the night and need soothing, but that's rare. Our 2 hour awake stretch the other night that needed CIO is a really really rare occurrence. I'm excited to see what the future holds for K!