13 Months...

Yep, our baby is now 13 months old.  I completely missed the 12 month update.  That one year mark is certainly one of the big milestones of childhood.  But don't worry I'll catch you up.  It has been a busy month and I haven't been feeling great so I apologize for the silence.  My parents were here for a couple weeks before her first birthday so it was fun to hangout with Cece and Grandpa for so long.

12 Month Stats
Weight- 16lbs 8oz (still below the growth chart...go figure.  Some day we will hit the bottom line)
Height- 28.75in (25% percentile)

Eat- Phoebe has been eating a lot better this past month.  It just takes lots of time and lots of patience. She is eating more finger foods, but still has a very limited palate: cheese, peanut butter sandwiches, strawberries, banana (sometimes), grilled cheese, crackers, frozen peas (sometimes), and freeze-dried fruit.  She probably eats 50% finger foods and 50% pureed baby foods still.  It must be a texture thing because I can mix in Spaghetti-Os, mashed up sweet potatoes, and rice etc. into the baby food, but she won't eat those things alone.  She also has a weird habit where she has to have her own small food container and lid to play with while she eats.  Basically this keeps her distracted and occupied while I shovel food in her mouth.  Really, she won't open her mouth unless her hands are occupied.  It is most definitely a behavioral attempt at control and I won't lie- its working.  She is totally playing me on this one.

I feel like meal times are quite monotonous.  Every morning she eats oatmeal with fruit mixed into it, yogurt, and cheerios.  Then she has a little morning snack- normally some sort of cheese or peanut butter crackers.  For lunch cheese, a bit of a grilled cheese or peanut butter sandwich, and some sort of veggie baby food, crackers, freeze dried fruit (whatever she will eat).  She might even get some strawberries if we have them and she's lucky.  And then her afternoon snack and dinner look about the same.  Hopefully she will start eating some more variety soon- like all those veggies I put on her tray that currently get tossed onto the floor...  What are other toddler friendly food?  Any suggestions?

So our big milestone this past month was transitioning away from the bottle.  Phoebe did not learn how to drink correctly from a sippy cup until she was 11 1/2 months old.  The speech therapist recommended a different couple cup options for us to try because we had gone through all Caylee's old cups and whatever cups we had gotten from baby showers with no success.  The Born Free training cup was finally our winner.  Before this cup she would only drink from soft spouted cups by biting the spout.  She would not use her lips to suck.  (And only water- she would never drink milk out of a sippy cup)

I think the long "nipple-like" spout helped

So anyhow when we went for our 12 month ped visit the doctor said "no more bottles; stop cold turkey".  She said no water in her sippy cups either- only milk.  She said Phoebe won't drink much milk for a couple days but that she would get the hang of it after a few days.  Well, we stopped the bottle completely and it took about 2 weeks for her to start drinking milk out of the sippy cup.  The doctor said she should be drinking between 12-18oz of milk daily.  We MAYBE got in 1/2oz during that first week.  I kept calling the doctor because I was nervous about her drinking so little (remember she's not getting any water either...)  But Phoebe didn't seem to mind.  Taking away the bottle was not hard; she really didn't miss it at all and had no trouble falling asleep at night without it.  I was worried that she would start waking up hungry in the middle of the night, but she never did.  And finally after about 2 weeks she cracked and started drinking her milk- probably between 12-16oz/day.

She still only drinks milk out of that Born Free cup, but she can now properly drink water out of various kinds of cups.

Sleep-  Phoebe goes to bed at 7:30pm and wakes up between 7 and 7:30am.  She naps for an hour in the morning around 10am ish and then an hour to an hour and a half in the afternoon around 2:30.  I wish she would sleep longer sometimes, but I guess so does everyone.

Phoebe has never been one to sleep anywhere.  She pretty much sleeps in her bed or in the car seat.  Anywhere else there is too much going on for her to fall asleep.  But when Mom and Dad were here we went out for brunch after church one Sunday and yes, she fell asleep in the highchair.  I was SO surprised.

Play-  Well we of course have many new toys now from her birthday.  Her favorites are a little toy wagon that she crawls into and likes to be pulled around in, and an interactive Fisher Price house.  And she LOVES her books.  She could sit and look at books for hours (okay, maybe minutes, but lots more minutes than she will sit doing any other singular thing)  She really likes Violet, a Leap Frog Dog Aunt Carol gave her last Christmas.  And a little shopping cart we are borrowing from Caylee.  She walks behind that cart a lot!  She just needs a lot of help because she can't turn it yet, so she inevitably runs into lots of obstacles and fusses until you come help clear her path.

So yes, she is cruising well now!  And bending her knees to lower herself to the ground!  I'm so proud of her.  She loves grabbing your fingers to walk (and walking behind her shopping cart).  Her balance still isn't great, but she will get it.  I had said from the beginning I thought she would walk around 14 months, but I think I'm going to be wrong.  I think it will probably be closer to 15 or 16 months, but we will see.  She has gotten quite good at climbing stairs- although I still like to be right behind her.  She really never ventures up the stairs by herself at our house.  But she has followed some older friends up the stairs at their houses- and the good news is she didn't fall because I assure you I was not around.

Knox is so tolerant

Loving playing with Grandpa's computer.  Phoebe has made our computer do things
we didn't even know they were capable of.  Unfortunately we've never been able to
reproduce any of her key strokes

Random thoughts-  We do still love our cloth diapers, but as she has gotten older she has also started peeing more at night.  She started soaking through her diapers and so for awhile we were double stuffing her diapers but finally we switched back over to disposables at night, until I broke down and ordered some hemp inserts.  Hemp is much more absorbent than cotton and a lot less bulky.  We have 2 Joey Bunz hemp inserts and they are wonderful!  I wash the diapers every 3 or 4 days so we do two nights with the hemp inserts and 1-2 nights in a disposable.

Her hair gets more and more curly every month and I love it!  This Atlanta humidity suits her well.

She is a Daddy's girl through and through!  She loves that man!  She will crawl and reach and cry for him about 100 times more than she will for me.  She cries when he leaves and gets so excited whenever daddy comes home (again if I have left she could care less when I return home)

She loves playing with Daddy's hats

Phoebe still does not have very many words.  Well to be exact, she has one word- "daddy".  But she definitely understands what we are saying and follows directions well.  It has been really fun to see her start interacting more with us by following directions.

So I must admit we never did a lot to "baby-proof" our house when Phoebe started crawling.  But we did put those little plug protectors in the outlets.  I'll be darned if this child can't get those things out in 2 seconds flat.  Honestly, they were a bit of a waste.  She would probably spend less time playing at the outlets if there wasn't anything for her to pull out...

Again I'm so sorry its been FOREVER since I've posted, but I'm back in the game and promise they will be more regular now.  Keep checking back for pictures from her 1st birthday party, updates on her hearing loss, and other exciting Bowen family news!