13 Months

Jesse has changed so much over the past month. He is more and more our little boy and less and less our little baby. Here's what he's been up to over the past month:

• Eating three good meals per day, a small snack in the late afternoon, and nursing three times. After dropping two nursing sessions over the past month, he has had an increased appetite for solids and began to eat good dinners. He loves his cow's milk, especially at dinnertime, and is probably drinking about 8 oz. per day. He has continued to show interest in eating veggies (mostly peas, green beans, yellow squash and zucchini). Some new foods are clementines, strawberries, ground beef, salmon, pizza and lasagna. He loves almost any fruit (with the exceptions of blueberries and applesauce), puts away beans like crazy, and also really continues to love cheese, yogurt and turkey (but the turkey must be smoked, not roasted).
• Some new words are duck, bath, water, two and beans.
• He has a new-found obsession with the garbage truck. It stops under his bedroom window every morning between 7:30 and 8:00 to load all the trash from our building. We usually hear it beeping as it pulls up to the trash room, and so I take Jesse and stand him up in the window so that he can watch the man dump all the trash into the truck. Then we wave bye-bye to it. He loves it! The past two days I have asked Jesse if he wants to see the garbage truck and he gasps and gets this really excited look on his face and starts looking for it.
• He has gotten pretty bad about throwing food off of his tray. He looks up immediately to see what kind of reaction he is going to get. When I scold him he just smiles, but sometimes he gets pretty upset when James gets onto him. Keeping less food on his tray usually helps the problem.
• He is so close to walking. He stands alone all the time--not on purpose, but because he gets distracted by a toy in his hand and doesn't even realize he's doing it. Just this week he has consistently been taking steps between pieces of furniture. I think he just needs a little more confidence/motivation. Right now the knee walking seems to be serving him just fine (he is able to keep toys in his hands, yet doesn't have to worry about falling).
• He is more and more snuggly these days and always snuggles up to me when I sing to him before his naps and at bedtime. Also, over the past few days, I find him randomly laying on the floor on his belly, or with his head resting on the couch, as if he's just taking a short little break.
• His favorite toys are my phone and keys. He will literally play with the keys for hours, taking them with him wherever he goes.

Approximate daily routine at one year:

6:30 Wakes up and nurses

8:30 Eats breakfast

9:00 Morning nap

11:30 Lunch

1:30 Nurses/Afternoon Nap

4:00 Snack

5:30 Dinner

6:30 or 7 Nurses/Bedtime

Taking a break from his exhausting life: