13 Months!

I had planned to stop doing monthly updates once Beanie turned one year old, and only do milestones as and when they occur.

I have however been wanting to write about all the new things she is up to and noticed the date - she is 13 months today -- so I figured lets do a 13 month post!

Beanie's biggest accomplishment the past month has been walking. She is now really comfortable with it and can walk steadily in her shoes and carry stuff around. In fact, I am still not used to it so it surprises me when I hear her turn a corner and see her walking not crawling! Of course, if she needs to get any place super  fast she reverts to crawling, but she definitely loves standing and walking....

...which brings to to her next new thing....

....having diaper changes and clothes changed while standing (AND walking).

Yes, you read that right!

I have become an expert at changing her diaper while she stands, or walks with me trailing behind her on my knees!!!! I think I deserve a medal for that!

Normally, she would lay down for dirty ones (thank god!), but she came from daycare on Wed with a bad diaper rash* (first one ever!) and its been a nightmare changing and cleaning her when she refuses to lay down at all.

She loves playing with clothes, especially those in laundry basket. Taking them out, putting them back in. Or taking stuff out the closet and putting it on the chair, then back in the closet. It could be anything. For example, I have baby food in a basket on the floor in the kitchen and she can be occupied for 5-10 min (an eternity in toddler time) taking it all out and putting it back in.

Recently, she likes carrying things around. Heavy things! Keeps me on my toes, for sure!

She also like to stick magnets on the fridge. I have a ton of magnets from places I have traveled. Most are out of reach but a few large plastic ones I let her play with while I am in the kitchen and she loves it. I am looking for alphabets in plastic so it will be more educational.

She is signing "milk", "all done", "more" and "eat", although she uses the same sign for "eat" and "more" :-)

She is still clearly saying "right there" and "dat" and "dada", "mama" etc, but also saying in baby speak "all done", "get down", "cracker: and "good girl" (I guess I say that a lot!).

She has learned to nod her head yes, which is so cute. But on closely noticing I realized that she nods yes to any questions starting with "Beanie, do you want to.......?" I guess she has figured out that nodding yes invariably gets her a favorable response, eg, she gets to eat, or play, or move into another room. Makes sense to me!!!!

Sometimes I have fun with her and say "Beanie, do you want to travel to space?" or some other silly question, and she grins and enthusiastically nods yes!

Too darn cute!!!

We have started with table foods -yay!!!   Well not quite table, but she is finally eating cut-up stuff, like Ger.ber carrots, apples, peaches, green beans. Its a start! She also ate toast the other day.  And while I don't like to give her too much of that store bought stuff (its not organic) its okay just to get her used to texture and chewing. I am still giving her baby food since I bought a  ton of it so she gets that too, but no more is being purchased. I am looking forward to planning her meals with normal foods.  She was on whole milk and even started yogurt last week, but got this bad diaper rash out of the blue, so not sure of it was the yogurt which we stopped, or the milk.

Sleep wise we are making progress at a snail like pace. She seems to have weaned herself off her first night bottle which used to be between 11-12:30am. She still wakes up but goes back to sleep after whimpering a bit. She then wakes around 4-5am, when she gets a bottle, and usually goes back to sleep until 7am when I wake her up.  Of course, there are many days when she will wake sooner, or wake several times at night but go back to sleep, so its not like I am getting a full nights rest, but its an improvement.

We are continuing to co-sleep. She prefers the soft cozy bed to her crib, and she likes snuggling up to me. She sleeps better. Sometimes she will surprise me by sleeping in the crib for half the night but its not very often.

Today when we were coming back from my parents' place, my Dad held Beanie's hand and she walked down the driveway to the car. I was so emotional.....my baby is growing up so fast!!

There are so many minutes in  day when I just want to freeze time -- to savor the moment - her laugh, her smile, cute words or actions. Like today, I was talking to my Dad and mentioned washing her hair and she raised her hand to her head and and imitated washing hair :-)

She is getting a bit more social. Today we went shopping and my Mom was at C.old Wat.er Cr.eek and I was sitting with Beanie feeding her Mum Mums. Several ladies stopped by to smile at her cuteness and comment and she actually sort of smiled back, which is a huge improvement because normally she bursts into tears when strangers approach us.

Talking about shopping, we went to B.aby G.ap since they were having a sale and I had rewards dollars burning a hole in my pocket. We made out like bandits, basically I bought 16 items, and the most expensive item cost me $1.57!!!!  That is even cheaper than the consignment store we went to last month! I still have rewards dollars and even got a $25 Gap cash to spend in May!!!

Gosh, did not intend this to be such a long post!  Thanks for reading along.

Happpy 13 month birthday, sweet girl!  I love you beyond words!

*On a different note --- Last week, I told the daycare folks to put diaper cream on Beanie every dirty diaper change since her food is changing and it can cause diaper rash. They insisted they did, but I was shocked when on Wed I drop of a healthy baby in the morning and pick her up with a horrible rash 6 hours later! They insisted it came up really fast since she had 4 BMs in an hour. Hmmm...I find that hard to believe, especially if they had been putting the cream as I had instructed each time! I know that I have picked her up once when I noticed that she was beginning to get one and was able to nip it in time at home. On Friday, I kept her home so we could aggressively treat it, since on Thursday we had a horrible time with her screaming while I was trying to change and clean her. It was hellish!  Its much better now, but I hope the daycare takes good care of it when she goes back on Monday. Its never happened before and she has been going there since Sept. You can bet I will be all over them!