Lauren 13 month update

In the time since her 12 month update, I've noticed a big leap in everyone's perception. She's now treated as a little girl, not "baby". At Trader Joe's, they give her a red balloon, not just that, but they ask her first if she would like one, and she says "yes" and her eyes light up. "Yes" is one of her words. About 2 weeks ago, she seemingly woke up one day and started agreeing and disagreeing with everything . At first, disagreeing, ("No, no, no!") and then agreeing ("Oh yeah!" or "Yessssss"). You could ask her "Do you want more food?" and get the response "No", followed by an open mouth. When you fed her anyway, she'd say "Oh yeah" and mutter "this is good" or "tastes good". That was last week. Now she seems to be better about yes/no usage.

This month, she started spending 3 hours a week with R., her babysitter. That is going really well! R. comes over and watches her and immediately, Lauren puts her arms out for a hug. Lauren gave R. a tour of some things around the house, starting with the complete sentence "This is Jake" and showed her the "ball", "baby", etc. She likes to sit and read stories to herself and she will point out the color yellow, the baby, and sometimes animals that remind her of Jake or Bert. I was reading her a touch and feel book, when she went across the room and got a plain board book and handed it to me and said "touch". I started to make a game, "touch the color green" and she shook her head and said "no, no, no, touch. Just touch!" so I petted the pages of the book and said "Oooh, smooth!" and she was happy.

Developmentally, she's now able to remember where something is if you hide it, so putting something out of her sight is not enough, she will triumphantly retrieve it later. She likes to play with her shoes and tries to chew on the laces. Most of her teeth have come in so she's not teething any more and FINALLY she stopped chewing her books (you can tell which ones came into the house this month, because they are the only ones that don't look like a puppy's gotten to them!) The fang-looking teeth are halfway in, so I think she's up to 12 or 14 teeth or something. It gets harder for me to get her to keep still so I can catch a glimpse in there.

She's still got a case of the sillies and likes to be tickled, but now she also tickles us. Daddy is her favorite attack target. She likes to pull his hair and sit down really hard on his side, laughing maniacally. ("Ow, Lauren! That was Daddy's kidney!") But she can be sweet and she loves to share things with us. If she has a particularly sweet strawberry, she'll take a bite, throw her head back and laugh and smile, and then offer us a bite. If we take the bite, she's so delighted that she sometimes claps, dropping the food. When I feed her, i have to remember to wait until she finishes each "course" because whatever new food i bring out, she's always so excited about it that she makes a sweeping gesture with her hand to knock the old food out of the way. Of course, it goes all over the floor and this delights Jake.

And she is WALKING much more now! And preferring to be on 2 feet (see previous post) and delighted with the reaction she's getting from people who only last week saw her crawling or on my hip.