Allie turned 13 months old on Sunday. The above photo was taken day-of. That day, she met my childhood friend Sandy for the first time (since Sandy moved to Texas for work)! Sandy and her boyfriend were very impressed with what a “good baby” Allie is…and she really is. She rarely cries, rarely fusses, and expresses her needs by pointing and babbling. (She’s babbling a LOT.) She’s happy in crowds and happy on her own. We don’t even know when she’s up from her nap without checking the monitor, because she doesn’t cry then, either. I keep a close eye on the babycam and try to catch her immediately upon her waking and give her 15 minutes to hang out on her own and poop. She plays in her crib, hums, practices her babbling, rolls around on and with her fuzzy blanket, walks around and peers over the railing, pulls off a sock and drops it out of the crib to watch it fall. Sandy was especially impressed by how well she eats her chopped foods, and WHAT she happily eats. “What’s that?”
“Quinoa and brown rice with edamame, spinach, bell peppers, carrots, peas, and green beans.”
“What’s she eating now?”
“Chopped papaya.”
“What, did she run out of broccoli?”
“Yeah, yesterday.”
“I was just kidding. She eats broccoli?”
They were also impressed with her durum wheat semolina pasta in organic tomato soup with steamed tilapia and veggies (i.e., lunch). Oh, and her snack of sprouted whole grain wheat bread with artichoke hummus and Colby cheese. Allie now eats and enjoys avocado. Yay! So that’s everything she’s tried, as avocado was our sole “failed” food early on.

As for her physical stuff, she’s running, walking backwards, spinning in circles, and squat-walking (taking staggering steps forward while maintaining a plie’). She’s still forbidden to touch the Christmas tree and the boxes underneath, so she’s come up with new ways to make contact now. Aside from placing her toy on the boxes, she’ll now back up into the tree and boxes, never turning around. When she feels the tree or boxes, she’ll sit down on a box, still never turning around to look. “I’m not doing it on purpose if I don’t see where I am,” she seems to claim. Sometimes she backs up into it leaning forward, so that her butt sticks out and she’ll booty-bump the tree and ornaments repeatedly, still never looking back. “No, don’t touch it with your butt, either,” I’d say, and she’d straighten up and run off.

She also started kissing in the last month or so. She does it at will without being prompted, which makes the sign of affection that much cuter. She makes the kissy sound when she gives an air-kiss, but she’ll often run up to me to plant a silent open-mouthed kiss on my cheek, knee, or turn when I’m holding her and place a wet one on my cheek and then smile playfully at me. Most often, though, she kisses her favorite stuffed animals. Those are noisy smacks.

It’s also now apparent that she pays attention. I’d been rubbing an antiseptic lotion from a little bottle onto the dry patches on her ankles for months. Now she’d ask for the bottle (“bah!” while pointing), and then she’ll shake it up like I do, touch her fingers to the tip of the bottle cap (cuz I don’t hand it to her uncapped), touch those fingers to her knees and ankles and rub the areas, and then turn the bottle upside down and touch the tip to her ankles, like she’s pouring the lotion onto the right spots. Today during her bath, she took the washcloth and rubbed it on her feet, and then also scrubbed Mr. W’s knee with the washcloth, like she’d seen it done on her body parts. And then she dipped the washcloth in the water, took it out, and squeezed (some of) the water out.

Her words are still mostly the “B” stuff, though. “Bow-wow,” “ball,” “bir(d),” and the like. What she says most often, though, is “hi.” She added a fake laugh, a “heh heh heh,” into her spoken repertoire. It basically means, “I find that amusing.” She uses it when she sees a photo of a dog, gets a new toy that she’s examining, generally when she likes what she sees and wants to acknowledge that.

Naps are easy on us. She still has a very long latency period, usually 20-40 minutes before she falls asleep. But we basically leave her in her crib and exit her room and that’s it. She’ll take the time she needs to play on her own and soothe herself into her nap. Once down, she sleeps pretty well, being a lot less noise-sensitive than she’d been when she was younger, for at least an hour. At bedtime, she still nurses but not very long, usually less than 10 minutes a side. Then she’ll flip over onto her stomach on the Boppy and try to crawl to the armrest, babbling. At this point I pick her up, carry her to her crib, lay her down on her fuzzy bear while she giggles and smiles up at me, turn off her light, and leave. She plays for 30 minutes or so until she decides she’s now going to go to sleep, then she lays down, closes her eyes, and is asleep. She only sleeps about 10.5 hours overnight, though, waking up on her own around 6:30 every morning. I’m just happy she’s not waking at 5:15a anymore like she’d been doing for almost 2 months.

Mr. W finds it hilarious that she empties her toys out of her containers now and places the containers on her head, then giggles and tries to walk around blind.

My parents bought her a training potty for Christmas (my mom thinks I should’ve potty-trained her already), and this is what Allie did with the potty when she opened the gift:

Mostly, she’s a little clown and loves to make people laugh. This is her “mock shock” face, used when something drops or she walks into something and wants to express, “Ooh, did you see that?!”

She realized on Christmas Day, when we had my parents and grandma over, that when she stops, arches her back and sticks out her belly, we laugh. That made her stick out her belly more and more so that she’d grunt and strain trying to stay upright. We’d laugh harder. So then she started just exaggerating and faking the strain, grunting away, for our reactions. I think my mom has a video of it, but here are some stills.

Quite the little ham, isn’t she?

Oh, yes. In brushing her teeth tonight, I decided to do an additional count and inspection. Upper teeth, all 8 are out. The full bottom surface of her left upper molar is out, the incisor is out most of the way. Half of her right upper molar is out and the tip of her upper right incisor is out. Bottom teeth, nothing new is out, just the central 4. So that makes 12 teeth this month.

As if we need another sign of her quick growing up, I noticed that she often sleeps with her legs straight now. She doesn’t do the infant knees-tucked-up dissected-frog position anymore. I’d be okay if she slows down a TEENY bit now, but Mr. W can’t wait until she loses her morning nap and can have actual conversations with him.