13 months...

Friday, July 24th, Laela turned 13 months. Happy Birthday baby girl! Several things have happened within the last month. One big one...she is showing so much more interest in walking. She pulls up on me all day long and wants me to walk with her. She still needs to hold one of our hands because she is so cautious! On Friday, we went outside for a stroll down the sidewalk (yes...the width of our house twice, but in baby steps that is a LONG way!). She picked up the newspaper and carried it in one hand while I held her other hand. It was awesome! If we could only teach Laela and Allie to fetch the newspaper........She also likes to push her stroller around the house.This day Laela was pointing at the stroller and pointing at the... (In her language, that meant "Take me outside!"We are still working on food intake. She is getting a little more adventurous. Just yesterday, she ate an entire chicken nugget! Ro insists the reason she liked it was because it was the shape of a crown (From Burger King). I have tried them before, but she did not seem interested. I don't want her to eat chicken nuggets at every meal, but I do want her to eat more "human" food. Laela downed one nugget, a few french fries, 8 oz of milk, and a large jar of pears. Not too bad! Oh...after walking around the mall, we decided that we all needed to share a blizzard. YUM! Within the last month I have been showing her sign language for "all done." Here is her version. Not too bad!

Another thing that she seems to take a lot of interest in lately...books! Not so much when we sit down and read them to her, but when she has control (oh wait...I wonder where she got that from!) :) Anyway, she will grab a book and start "reading". If there is a dog in it, she will find it and point to it. Another funny thing about books is that she can not stand to have them turned upside down. If you give it to her that way, she will fix it almost immediately. Look at her reading a book in this chair. Laela looks so big and grownup.

Laela is really working on her words! Yesterday, I was changing her diaper after a nap. The lawn guys were outside and she kept looking around to see what the noise was all about. I told her the lawn guys were outside mowing the lawn and she said "MOW." I said "YES." :) I love it when she repeats words and uses them in context. For instance, when we are sitting at a red light, she says "GO". Then I spend 30 seconds explaining to her that I can not go because the light is red. I tell her "green means go" and she says "go, go, go!"

PS - Laela stayed with a babysitter for the first time on Thursday night. She did awesome! Laela was very excited to see Ms. Aileen (One of her teachers from school last year). I was worried she would not remember her, but she did great! She ate dinner, played, and went to bed when she was supposed to. No trouble! Oh...and we had our first date night since Laela was born. What was funny was that Ro and I are so used to rushing through dinner when we are with baby that we wound up rushing through our date dinner without even realizing it!