Avery: 13 Months Old...

Our little peanut is now 13 months old and into everything!

She is walking everywhere and prefers it to crawling.  She is still working on her balance and falls often, but she can walk across rooms and turn around easily.  It's so cute to see her walking around with those big frankenstein-like steps.  She loves to carry things when she walks and usually has at least one thing in her hand as she walks around the house.

She loves stairs and specifically loves to step up and back down.  She could do this for hours and she did last weekend at the reunion.  She's funny because she'll get close to an edge and reach up to grab onto our hand to step down and then back up.  She is constantly trying to climb up our stairs and usually makes a bee line for them whenever she can.

She is working hard to say words and will often try to repeat us.  She seems to have her own little language and babbles like crazy.  She is saying mama and dada and several other things that sound like "words", but we can't be sure (dat, tuck, siss).  She is good at communicating with us and will point and grunt at things she wants.

Avery is still a great eater.  She never seems to turn down food and really loves eating out of her snack trap.  We're still working on whole milk with her.  We can usually only get her to take one drink and then she refuses it.  We've tried chocolate, strawberry, milk warmed up, milk cold, only offering it at meals (meaning no water) and of course various types of sippy cups.  The girl just seems to not like milk.  We'll continue to try it...we're not giving up!  Avery is still nursing in the morning and at night and this week we dropped her middle of the day feeding. 

This week we moved Avery into her "big girl" carseat.  She still fit fine in her infant carseat and we actually hadn't planned to move her for a while.  The carseat we wanted ended up going on sale so went ahead and decided to get it and move her into it.  The girls had to switch sides of the car (Avery's is too big to be backwards facing on the driver's side).  The poor girl has to be backwards until she is 2!

Size wise, Avery is still about the same.  She is wearing size 3 diapers.  She can wear 6 - 12 and 12 - 18 month tops, but just 6 - 12 month bottoms right now.  Her 12 - 18 month shorts are still huge on her.  She does wear 12 month and 12 - 18 month pj's and size 3 shoes (which she doesn't ever wear...that's just what would fit her).  When we went in for her shot appointment last week at the doctor, I asked them to weigh her since we assume the sickness skewed her weight the week before.  She weighed in at 18.5 lbs and had gained a little weight since her appointment the week prior.

Avery is still taking 2 naps a day.  She typically goes to bed around 7 pm (unless she's exhausted and occasionally is in bed by 6:30ish) and gets up around 6:30 am.  We usually let her talk and play in her bed for a while in the morning in an effort to get more sleep!  She is a paci girl, just like big sis was.  We are slowly starting to limit it to her bed (with the exception of desperate times....church, car trips, etc.)

Happy 13 month birthday, sweet Avery!