Thirteen Months

Stella is thirteen months old now. As I tell Mr. Frisby, that means only five more months until she gets to go to nursery at church. I'm super excited for that day. So, what's new with Stella? Well, she still isn't walking. And, at this point, I don't think she will. She has no need for it now that she's figured out how to get around by pushing the chairs and her high chair throughout the kitchen. She seems perfectly content to get around by holding onto things and then filling in the gaps with crawling. Never mind that I'm not perfectly content with chairs crashing into the back of my legs while I'm trying to make dinner. She has been able to stand up in the middle of the room without holding onto anything a few times, though, and I can see the wheels turning in her head when she gets to a point that there's nothing to hold onto. She's thinking about it and that's a start.

Her first molar broke through a few days ago, so we're excited for her dining possibilities to expand further. She loves to eat and many of the words she recognizes have to do with food: milk, cheese, yogurt, fishy (as in, fish graham crackers), snack, breakfast, lunch, dinner. I think her current favorite food is cheese. If I say cheese or get out a cheese stick for her, she goes crazy. She has also grown to love her milk, to the point that she doesn't even want water anymore. Just milk. She's weaned from her bottle, too, so she drinks it all from her straw cup. And, is pretty adorable doing it.

Mealtimes have become very exciting these days. Stella has learned that food can be played with. And thrown. And that's usually more fun than eating it. This is especially exciting for Scout who has learned to hang around the highchair at mealtimes and to thoroughly check the highchair for crumbs after we pull Stella out.

I realized the other day that she's really starting to understand what we say more. She was getting into something, so I said, "let's go in your room and play with your puzzle". I took her hands and she walked right into her room and bent down to pull her puzzle out from where it is tucked away under her bookshelf. Her being able to understand us is pretty exciting, but I think at first I just expected that all of a sudden she could understand everything. Obviously this is not the case and I'm starting to get a grasp on that. She's also getting expert at selective listening. She looks right at me and listens when she wants to and other times, I may as well not even be there speaking to her.

She gives us hugs and we LOVE it. It took me a little while to realize that's what she was doing. Usually, it's when she's playing. She'll just look up from her toys and crawl over and onto my lap and wrap her little arms around my neck and then she's back down and back to her toys. At first, I thought it was because she wanted something or she was getting tired or something of that nature. But, after awhile, I realized she was just coming over to give me a hug. So great!

Stella is also figuring out what to do with some of her toys and it's fun to watch her figure out how things work. Take her Fisher Price stacking rings for example. She's always been able to pull the rings off.

But, now she's figured out how to put them on. Not in the right order necessarily, but she puts them on nonetheless.

Her hair continues to be a little out of control. It's to the point that it's really too long to do just a ponytail on top of her head, so we switched to pigtails. And we love them.

She's a creative little girl and has found a way around the fact that I don't give her a paci unless she's going to sleep.

She's also learning to play with Scout. This picture is of her trying to hand Scout her toy while she's sitting in her kennel. It's really cute. It kind of seems like Scout doesn't like to play with her because she doesn't play according to Scout's standards, but Scout knows that she wants to, so she just humors her. It will be fun to watch those two interact more as Stella gets older.

A video to illustrate their playtime:

She continues to be a happy, busy little girl who keeps me on my toes at all times. We love watching her figure things out and develop her own personality and we're excited to see how she enjoys the upcoming holidays.