Dear Emmett – 13 Months,

Posted on August 27 by Jillian416 • 0 Comments

You are 13 months old! Can you believe that? 13 whole months and we are well on our way into your second year!

We’ve been busy since your last birthday! You are more active than ever, and you keep becoming more and more fun. You are exploring and getting into everything and it makes for some pretty exciting play times.

You’re a lucky little boy! Your daddy and I decided to take our dining room, make it baby safe and turn it into your playroom. We cleared out all of our stuff that was in there (we were mainly using it for storage), bought a baby fence and got some foam flooring (from your paternal grandparents) and now it is a toddler’s paradise. You have all sorts of toys in there now too, legos, fisher-price people, wooden blocks, shape sorters, a little table and chairs (from your maternal grandparents), crayons and paper, etc. We need to get some bins to keep the toys in, because as of now things are kind of strewn all over the place but you love being in there as long as we’re in there with you. I’m happy that we could make you so happy!

You are also firmly in the walking stage, and actually you are nearly running. Shortly after your first birthday you began slowly walking more than crawling. You’d stand yourself up, take a few steps and then plop down. As the month progressed, you became more and more of a pro and now you hardly ever crawl. The only time is if you’ve fallen and are trying to chase us, you will often chase after us in a speedy little crawl.

We bought you your first pair of shoes. I wanted to make sure we got you shoes that had soft soles with some rubber on the bottom because your feet aren’t fully formed and I didn’t want hard rubber soles inhibiting that. The most notorious for those types of bottoms is the PediPed brand, but we needed something kind of quick and ended up finding a cute pair at Babies R Us, in their Koala Kids line. They’re adorable, and the first time I put them on you was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time. They don’t bother you too much now, but you still take them off almost every morning on the car ride to day care. Silly boy!

I’m so excited to say that you have mastered the signs we’ve taught you thus far. We taught you milk, water, more and all done and you can do them all and use them frequently. You were doing milk really early on, you’d know it was time to nurse and you’d start to clench your little fist, which is your version of milk. However, you’ve slowly but surely began using it whenever you are actually wanting milk, not just when I ask you. You also know that when you’re thirsty and don’t want milk, that you can ask for water. When we are all sitting down to dinner and you’ve finished everything that you want on your tray, you will make the sign for more and we will give it to you. It is really awesome! You’re slowly beginning to gain the ability to communicate with us and it is just so fun.

You continue to make your different sounds but more and more they are beginning to actually sound like the words we speak. When I ask you if you’re all done, you will wave your hands (the sign for all done) and make a sound that sounds like “alld.” I wouldn’t say it is a formal word yet, more of a mimic of what I said but you are definitely getting closer.

You and food get along great! You love eating and for the most part continue to eat anything we give you. You do go in spurts where you’ll only eat soft foods, but I believe that’s because you’re growing some of your back teeth (poor guy).

Right now, I’d say your favorite toy is a toss up between your fisher-price farm (that your aunt, uncle and cousin got you) and your legos. With the farm house, you love opening and closing the doors and hearing the animal sounds they make. You also love moo’ing yourself, I’ll show you the cow and go “Mooooooo” and you’ll mimic me. It’s adorable! When you’re done playing with the farm, you like to leave the doors open and if I close them you open them back up. Such a cutie! In regards to the legos, anytime that your dad or I build something, you love to grab it and take it apart. You’ve also begun trying to get them to stick together, you’ll bang bang bang and then sometimes they’ll stick and sometimes they won’t. When they do, you get the BIGGEST smile on your face.

You love cuddling up with your big brown monkey blanket, it pretty much goes everywhere with us. You’re also really into cuddling up this stuffed monkey that plays music that I got as a gift from some of my staff in Rochester. I love it when you lay your head down on his belly and curl up, it is the sweetest thing.