Belated 13 Month Birthday

Better late than never...

Sweet Pea celebrated her 13 month birthday a week ago on Thursday in grand fashion...no therapies! A day at daycare and a fun evening at home with a birthday call from Crazy Aunt R to top it all off. Here are the highlights of what she is doing at 13 mths.

Eating: Starting to eat a wider variety of foods including rice, tofu and noodles. We had to pull out the dairy because spit ups increased and changed from milky to more stomach acid. We hope to reintroduce dairy in smaller quantities soon, but are focusing on other foods first. Favorite food was probably any of the dairy that she had for the 2 weeks she was allowed it...cream cheese, cottage cheese and yogurt were all too good to her. She refused to eat anything else and I think that is where we got into trouble. We indulged her because she was eating! That two week period got her over the 18 lb mark too! She is drinking all formula currently even though we still have frozen breast milk in the freezer. Nothing is simple so we don't want to use the frozen milk while we are introducing other foods in case it has something in it that doesn't agree with her. It's hard enough determining if something doesn't agree with her when it's just what we give her directly! She still has a bottle or straw cup in the morning after her prevacid, then 2 during the day, a bedtime bottle/straw cup and a twilight bottle. Her twilight has recently increased to almost 8 oz so we are excited about that. It is still too much formula so we are trying to get her to take more solids and that is why we are trying so hard to get more variety. The poor girl must be bored with the same 5 foods!

Accomplishments: She learned to get into sitting the evening before her 13 month birthday so that gets to be counted! Sweet Pea also has started to swat at balls in an attempt to roll them to people. Waving is still her favorite trick. She is great at saying "more" even though it looks more like clapping. She is finger feeding a little more. So far it's just some star shaped pasta and still the puffs, but she is getting better at it and we try to give her the chance at least once a day. She is combat crawling more and more. Still doesn't go more than a few feet, but she is getting better and faster all the time. Sweet Pea is also putting more weight on her legs/feet and will bounce a little when we stand her up. She will even stand up when she holds onto our fingers when she is in a 90/90 seated position (knees and hips at 90 degrees). She blows raspberries on her own arm and gives wet slobbery kisses when we ask for them. Ok, so the kisses are just leans in to our cheeks with open mouth while we make the kissing sound, but it's cute none the less.

Vocalizations: Currently her favorite sound is what Daddy has termed her "whale calls". If we took her whale watching she would probably attract all the whales in the area. It's an inhaling sound that really does sound like a whale. Sweet Pea is making a number of sounds but only consistently does da da da.

Weight: 18lbs

Favorite Toy: paper

Favorite Song: Itsy Bitsy Spider

Sweet Pea-isms: Still enjoys biting my chin, but I'm not letting her do it nearly as much. She has become a little shy or she at least pretends to be shy. She buries her head into our chest and then looks up with the cutest smile.

Sleep: No change from last month. Still goes to bed by 7pm and doesn't wake us up until 6am.

She is a busy girl and we are lucky parents!