13 Months!

Here it is, another belated monthly post!  Hopefully some of you are still following, and if not, well at least Kiera can have this for her baby book!  : )

Kiera is developing quite the little personality these days.  It is very clear when she likes something, dislikes it, is excited, frustrated, tired, etc!  Here is what she is up to at 13 months:

- Wearing mostly 12-18 month and some 18-24 month clothing.  Still wearing a size 3 diaper but recently started soaking through her diapers overnight sometimes so we will either try size 4 or get some overnight diapers.

- She is loving peekaboo these days.  Either hiding behind her hands or her shirt and saying 'boo'.

- She has all 4 new molars (2 top and 2 bottom) and 2 of her canines (the top 2)!

- She has real shoes now.  Since she has been walking for quite awhile, we finally got her a couple of real pairs of shoes (rather than the soft soled ones) so she can walk around outside, etc.  She is loving them!

- She also got her first golf set and is enjoying learning how to hit the ball.

- We officially stopped breastfeeding completely around 12 1/2 months!  Kiera switched to the whole milk pretty seamlessly.  The worst one for her to give up was the morning feeding, where she shed a few tears (and I almost did, knowing I could technically provide the milk to her), but we are very excited to be on cow's milk now!  She is also 100% drinking out of cups, but she has been doing that for awhile.

- She continues to be somewhat picky with her food now.  She will try most anything but clearly eats what she likes and isn't afraid to just not eat much of anything if she doesn't care for it.  Favorites right now are mac&cheese, bread, cheese, ham, fruit, cooked carrots and peas, and puffs.

- We had a minor bump in the road with Kiera's lovely sleeping patterns.  For some reason Kiera was not ok with just being put in her crib awake for a about a week.  We weren't used to this, so at first we were going to her right away, but learned that just made her cry harder when we would leave so we had one real cry it out night.  My limit was 30 minutes and she fell asleep in 29.  It was SO hard! Thankfully after that things seemed to get better/back to normal.  She's still sleeping ~8pm-7:30am with two 1.5 hour naps around 10 and 3.

- Kiera loves music and dancing!  One of her favorite moves is snapping while she dances, but since she can't really snap she makes the motion with her hands and the noise with her mouth.  So cute.  : )  She went to see Tim McGraw this month!  We couldn't make it to the show since it was so late so we just went to the backstage performance before the show (a perk of Joel's job!).  She loves him already!

- When she sees something she really likes she exclaims "oooohhhhhh!"...... one of our favorite things!

- She still LOVES reading books.  She's loving Mr Brown can Moo right now.  She will bring it to you and say boom boom boom, one of the sounds Mr Brown makes in the book.

- She started shaking her head yes which is great!  If we ask her if she is hungry/wants to eat/wants milk/wants to call grandma and grandpa/wants to take a bath/wants up, etc she shakes her head yes when  we get it right which is very helpful.

- She is saying SO many words!  If you ask her to say any word, she will generally at least give it a shot.

- She is loving babies and really loving Elmo these days.  She calls any person who is not an adult a baby even if they are 12.  And the Elmo obsession is out of control!  She carries around hand me down DVDs constantly (that she hasn't even watched yet).  Honestly I don't even know how she knew who Elmo was other than being on her diapers.  She has watched Sesame Street about 3 times ever, but she is completely obsessed so we took her to see Sesame Street Live recently and she loved it! We got her an Elmo doll (or two) so she can carry them around now instead of DVD cases.

- She helps get herself dressed now and if you say it's time to get dressed she knows just where to go (to her dresser).

- She knows we always call Joel on my phone so whenever he's not home and she sees it she picks it up and says 'dada'.  She does the same with our nanny's phone, says 'Dan' (her husband's name) and our Macbook where she says "Bob" or "Mitts" since we always Facetime my parents on it.  Smart little lady!

Look who's ONE! Happy First Birthday Kiera!

Even though I have been totally MIA, we are still here!  I'm going to write the monthly postings as of the date they should have been written rather than what we're actually up to now!  Yikes, maybe someday we will be more timely... maybe.

It is truly unbelievable that we are celebrating Kiera's first birthday!  What an amazing year it's been!  Happy Birthday baby girl!  I planned to write Kiera a fabulous message for the one year post but let's face it, I'm already 3 weeks late, so I'll save that for her baby book!

 Here's what we're up to at one year:

- At the one year check up she was 20lb 13oz (25-50%), 28.5" (25%) and head 18" (50%).  She is definitely thinning out with running all over the place.  She still has a couple lovable rolls on her legs but they are disappearing!

- She is a little talker!  She says so many words I can't even list them all!  It amazes me when I ask her to say a new word, she will often say it and even start using it!  Most frequently heard these days: Elmo (we have some hand me down dvds she likes to carry around but I don't know how she is so obsessed with this guy when she doesn't even watch Sesame Street yet), book, ball, bama (banana), mo (while doing the sign for more), go, bup (up), down, done (with the sign) bye bye, bow (she loves her hair bows!), baby (although she thinks all kids are babies right now, or calls them that anyway) and of course all of her animal noises and mama and dada.

- She is still SO social. She is the life of the party everywhere we go, restaurants, stores, walking down the street, anywhere!  She waves and talks to anyone who will look her way, or not even look her way!  Even the shoe guy at Nordstrom can teach her new words and make her smile.  : ) She is so expressive and has started experimenting with different facial expressions, including dirty looks, especially if someone does something she doesn't like, like accidentally bumps into her.

- Still two naps a day, averaging 1.5 hours each but sometimes an extra long morning nap with a shorter afternoon nap.

- She like to dance, although hopefully doesn't get her moves from her mama.  : )  She likes to shake her fists when she dances and attempt to snap while making the motion with her hands while making the clicking noise with her mouth.

- She is wearing 12-18 month clothes with a couple of 6-12 month pants till hanging in there and some 18-24 month items.  I'm buying mostly 18-24 month items now as between her growing and our extremely hot dryer slowly shrinking the clothes it's probably best.

- She is slowing a little on her eating habits.  She used to eat anything put on her plate by the handful, but has started being a little more picky and eating less.  We are letting her try just about anything we eat, but she eats lots of fruit, veggies, quesadillas, pasta, muffins, and deli meat/cheese.

- She likes to identify her body parts including eyes, nose, hair, ears, belly button, hands and feet.

- She took her first dip in the pool and played on the beach and LOVED it!  She was fearless of the water and loved playing in the waves, despite them knocking her over a few times.

- We are almost fully weaned from the breastfeeding.  While it has been great for us, we are down to two feedings a day (morning feeding and evening feeding and evening feeding is almost gone).  She is drinking frozen pumped milk at the rest of her feedings for now, soon onto the cow's milk!  (She is drinking cow's milk now, but since my post is belated we will refer to where we were a couple weeks ago.)

- She has started following directions!  It started when I asked her to go in the other room and bring me her pink sweater one day, not AT ALL thinking she would really do it, but she did!  I was so surprised and proud!  She loves it when we ask her to bring us a certain animal from her toy box, such a smart little girl!

- She has all of her molars coming in at once!  They have all broken the surface, but they have a ways to go.  She is a little more drooly but otherwise we haven't noticed many effects.  She did wake up screaming in the night one night and was very hard to calm which I can only attribute to her teeth but otherwise seems to be handling it quite well.

- Her birthday party was a blast!  We had a pink and green theme with animals, cupcakes for the guests and a giant one for Kiera!  She had so much fun opening the gifts, playing with everyone and tasting her first cupcake.

More pics to add!