Thirteen Months

Thirteen has always been my lucky number.  If you've known me long enough you've probably heard how I was born on the 13th and was the 13th child/grandchild from one set of great-grandparents and was born at 11:13 and I could go on and on.... I would have to say that this 13th month of Charlotte's has been one of my favorites!  She is growing in leaps and bounds in so many directions these days that sometimes it's hard to keep up.  I'm not sure how long I will continue to do these monthly posts but I wanted to document (for my memory) exactly what C was up to at 13 months. 

Charlotte you are talking all the time now!  You have gotten to the point where you know that sometimes you can say something and we can understand you.  This is great when you say a word clearly or have said something enough times that we understand what you're saying.  When it's not good is when you say something new and get frustrated because you know what you mean and we have no idea.  You have learned some new words this month.  They include: Nay Nay (what a horse says), Nay Nay (for no), buh (book), bay-ba (baby), PaPa (once or twice), shhhhhh (when we shush you when we're out), bru (brush). 

This month has been big in your interaction with us.  We have been signing a few signs to you for months now and this month, all of a sudden, they clicked and you started signing them back! You now sign for milk when you want it and you sign for more pretty indescrimately to tell us either that you want more food or you just want to eat in general.  You also sign for all done!  We had a funny signing experience last Saturday when Daddy got you up from your afternoon nap and forgot to get your milk out of the fridge until you crawled over to the fridge, pulled up on it, and started signing milk as you reached up trying to get the door of the fridge open! We were so impressed!  We have been trying to teach other signs also like 'thank you', 'please', 'eat', and 'potty'.  On Saturday night at dinner you went potty and then looked at me and signed potty!  You haven't done it again and so I'm not sure if it was an accident or not but we were all sooo impressed!

You are doing some more tricks this month too like throwing your arms in the air for 'Touchdown' or when we ask you 'How big is Charlotte?'  You can also find your fingers, hands, toes, and feet when we ask you about them.  But interestingly enough you think that anything on your face (nose, mouth, eyes, ears...) are on the top of your head! When we ask you where any of those things are you immediately point to the top of your head.  We're not sure where that comes from, but I guess you'll figure it out soon enough.  You can point most of those things out on our faces but you don't get their exact placement on your face. 

Feeding you is still a typical challenge.  We've learned to only put small portions of things on your plate because otherwise you'll get tired of that particular food and then brush all the food off your tray to get it out of your way.  We haven't really tried much with a spoon but last Saturday night Memma gave you one to play with and later we noticed you holding it correctly in your right hand, picking up pieces of bread from the table, putting them on the spoon and then putting the spoon in your mouth to eat them! We were so impressed!  The next morning you proceeded to feed yourself a lot of your grits with your spoon.  Of course, you got really dirty doing it but that's all part of the learning process, right?!?!

This month you've also discovered Elmo.  After you loved on Caroline's Elmo doll at her birthday party I started letting you watch Sesame Street after breakfast.  Whenever you hear the 'Elmo's World' song you immediately come back into the den if you were somewhere else or you drop what you're doing to point to the tv and dance.  It's so cute! You love pointing Elmo out in your Sesame Street books too!

Speaking of dancing, you are a good one! Pretty much any time you hear music you shake your little body side to side.  You have started pressing the button on your Wonderpets Flyboat continuously until the music plays so that you can dance.  Once the music stops you go back to pressing the button until it cycles back to the music.  We hope that you got your cousin Mary, cousin Lauren, and cousin Abby's dance talent as opposed to your Mommy and Daddy's! :)

You still aren't really walking a lot, but I think you're close to taking off.  You walk back and forth between me and Daddy really well and you love doing it -- you giggle at yourself and clap at yourself when you do it and immediately want to turn around and walk back -- but you haven't really been interested in taking off on your own until the last few days.  Last weekend I noticed you get to the end of the couch and then take a few steps off by yourself not really to anything in particular but then you stopped almost like you thought about it too much and realized what you were doing and sat down and crawled away.  You also took a few steps away from the cabinets in the kitchen but then fell and hit your head.  I'm afraid that my scare you away from trying for a little while longer.  It makes it much easier for me to not have you walking yet because you can't get away from me quite as fast so it's fine with  me!  My guess is that within the next month you'll realize that you can do it and that it's fun and that will be just the beginning.

This month we've also gone to the pool...a lot...and you LOVE it. As soon as we walk in you start bouncing up and down in my arms and pointing to the pool with a big grin on your face.  That makes me so happy because I have such fond memories of swimming growing up and I want you to have the same.  Daddy and I love taking you out and watching you.  We're going to get you in a few swim lessons over the next few weeks just to get you more comfortable with the water so that when you're a little older you can become a swimming fish quickly!

Charlotte, your Daddy and I love you so very much.  We love watching you learn and try new things every day.  Your smiles and laughter make us so happy!  I hope that you'll always know how much we love you and how much we are cherishing this time with you when you're little.  You'll be grown entirely too quickly for my liking and so I am trying to savor this time when you're just ours.  We love you baby girl!

love, Mommy