13 Months

At 13 months...

• She is almost walking. She walks holding onto furniture, mom and dad's hands, and her miniature wagon, which she can push. She squats on her own, though she usually doesn't realize she is doing it.
• She stills drinks from straw sippy cups. We have a few soft spout sippys that she will drink from, but it's confusing for her to have to tip those but not the straws... if we had more straw sippys, I'd only use those. I may just put the spout ones away... 
• Learning to use utensils. I know this will be a long journey! But she does sometimes scoop food onto her spoon and then sometimes that food even makes it into her mouth! Ha!
• Loves to swing! She's loved this since she was a newborn. Back then it was in her Fisher-Price lamb swing. Now it's in her Little Tykes swing outside or the baby swing at the park. She's content there for a good hour, but she's lucky if mom lasts 10 minutes.
• Loves her wagon! We go on wagon rides often. And if I need to do something outside, I can let her roam free in her wagon with a couple of toys, and she's happy for a good while.
• Taking just one nap. It's been about an hour and a half, though she sometimes reads till two hours. I'm hoping this gets stretched!
• Speaking of taking just one nap, we are currently working on having alone-entertain-myself-time. I am still figuring out how to best encourage this, but it's a work in progress. I'm also coming up with great toddler activities to entertain her and buy me some time to, say, cook dinner!
• Discipline... we just recently had to start disciplining her. She's definitely started to show defiance. She'll do something, I'll say no and redirect her, she'll do it again, I'll redirect her once more, and then she'll look at me and smile as she does whatever I told her not to do. Lovely. I remember looking at her as a newborn, thinking, This child is perfect. How could there be sin in her? Uh-huh. Sinner! ;) I've been listening to some Building Blocks talks (a mom's ministry at church) and reading Shepherding A Child's Heart, preparing myself for this task of discipline. From what I gather, the key is persistence and consistency.

Lilleigh's words:

• dada
• momma
• mammy: for Sammy
• Noah: Not kidding... she said this and kept repeating it the other night when we were reading the story of, well, Noah...
• woof woof: This is a dog's bark, and she does this whenever she hears another dog bark - so she makes the connection that the sound is a dog and then makes a dog sound - and whenever she sees a dog in a picture - so she recognizes what a dog is and knows it's sound ...love that!
• all done: I can't even describe what this actually sounds like, but it means all done. She doesn't always say it though because she signs it. Good enough. :)
• hi and bye or buh-bye: Both very enthusiastic! She gives a wave with them usually also.