13 months

Dear Sweet Bean of Love,

You are 13 months old! I was telling someone how old you were the other day and I couldn't wrap my brain around the fact that you are more than a year old already. You have had quite the month! It's been a little crazy. You kicked off the month by going spectacularly off your schedule and have only just gotten back on track. I am certainly breathing a sigh of relief that you are back on track. I don't like seeing you out of sorts.

It all started when we gave you cow's milk for the first time the day after your birthday. You seemed to really like it and drank it up well, but the next day you were horribly sick and couldn't keep anything down! You'd never been sick before and it was very upsetting to us to see you vomiting. Poor baby! You were pretty miserable for a few days after, not eating much and nursing a lot more.

I've been saying for ages that I'm happy to breastfeed as long as you want, but that hopefully you'd be ready to be done by about 18 months. I'm not going to lie, I started to feel a bit like you were never going to be done! It was hard for me to feel like I'd lost ground when you added nursing sessions back. I also saw cow's milk as a natural transition. After your first try you started refusing it and that made me panic about not having something to replace breast milk with. Yikes! By the end of the month you actually finally dropped to nursing just after waking up and again before bed. What a relief! I'm happy with that schedule for a while. You still won't have milk, but you are getting plenty of dairy with yogurt and cheese.

You are really taking off walking now. You are so steady standing still that it amazes us. You have also figured out how to climb on the couch and it is your favorite place. You took a few days to figure out being safe on the couch, but now you can scramble up and down like a champ. We really need to get you some shoes so you can try your walking when we're out and about. It also might get you to keep your socks on. You love to take them off and show off your bare toes.

You are so funny! You are really learning so much about playing and interacting. You still love to play peek-a-boo. You play it in the bath and even on Skype with Grandma and Grandpa. It's pretty adorable.  You are also playing with your toys more and differently. It's neat to watch you try different things and figure out how things work. Your daddy and I might be biased, but we think you are very smart!

Oh how we love you my little baby!
Mommy