13-month letter

Dear Mateo,
Little guy, you are 13 months old! You've had quite a month since turning a year old. Here are some things we want to remember about you at this age:

Mobility:
What's that whirlwind spinning around our house? That's you! You zoom from one interesting thing to another, distributing toys and books wherever you go. You love to empty our bookshelves and make little mountains of books that you then slip and slide around on. You also love to unload the various toy stashes that we've distributed around the house.

Recently, you've showed some interest in putting things into other things. For example, you dragged an empty laundry basket into the kitchen and filled it with some toys and other things you found lying around. We have two drawers in the kitchen that are just for you, so it's a hotbed of fun things to play with.

You are learning how to do some more complicated things, like stacking blocks and sorting shapes. You can stack blocks when you want to and yesterday you made a tower of four blocks! Mostly, you stack just two or three. You have a hard time getting them to stay stacked, because your fine motor control hasn't caught up with your intentions quite yet. And, because it is just so much fun to knock them over and throw them around the room!

You are just starting to learn to get the right shape into the right part of your shape sorter. Often, you seem to know where the shape should go and sometimes you can even get it to go in. You have a stacking wooden train set with lots of pieces and yesterday you got quite a few of them to actually attach to the train.

Words:
Of all the aspects of your life, words are most interesting to you right now. For the last week or two, you have been learning a new term practically every day. As I was telling Grammy this morning, many things you say sound exactly the same to someone who's not around you very much, but context plus sign language usually makes your intentions clear. We've listed words you say/sign before, but here's a quick list just for posterity. Some you say a lot and some have escaped your lips only once or twice: milk, juice, shoes, tree, cheese, poop, mama, uh oh, fish (learned yesterday, big favorite today), dog (most favorite thing ever, ever, ever), kitty, whoo whoo (train sound), down, hot, cheep cheep, hi, and all done. It would be hard to overstate just how much you love dogs these days. You are a dog boy, through and through. In fact, you seem to love animals in general.

Sleep:
At the risk of causing a sleep catastrophe, I will say that sleep is going very well. You take two naps a day, usually, at 9 am and then around 3 pm. Most of the time, you nurse off to sleep. Cuddling you off to sleep is one of my favorite parts of the day. I never thought we would still be nursing at this point, but I love it and you seem to love it, too. Mommy and I think we'll just let you decide when you want to stop. You've tapered off quite a bit in terms of number of nursing sessions, though. You're down to once in the early morning, twice during the day before naps, and once before bed. And once at night. Sometimes twice. We're shooting for no feedings at night but that looks like it may be a long process!

At night, we do your bedtime routine and then you either nurse to sleep or Mommy puts you to bed. Mommy has the magic bedtime touch and you go down almost always without a peep. After all our sleep struggles in the beginning of your life, we don't take this for granted and marvel at it nearly every night.

Eating:
At your own pace, you're becoming a more adventurous eater. You still love the old stand-bys (yogurt, cream cheese and cheddar cheese) but are more willing to branch out than ever. You love dried mango and most kinds of soup. Being a kid, you love anything with carbs in it - bread, crackers, animal cookies, etc. You also show some signs of liking kiwi and papaya. Vegetables are more scary for you, but you do like zucchini and sometimes broccoli. You loooove apples, either in slices or in applesauce. And you enjoy sweet treats on occasion. You went nuts for some peppermint ice cream at your great-grandmommy's house not too long ago.

Cuddling:
Although most of the time we can't slow you down, you've started to cuddle a little bit more. You and Mommy have time together in the early mornings (thank you, Mommy, for the extra sleep!) and you spend a lot of it cuddling together in the comfy chair in your room. You sit happily on our laps to look at books and to watch Baby Signing Time (our sign language teacher of choice - a great, great video series).

And, you get more and more cuddly as you get more and more tired. We had a very active playdate a few weeks ago with a two-year-old friend and he wore you out! When we got home, I was checking the voicemail before putting you to bed...and suddenly realized you had fallen asleep on my shoulder. Since you usually avoid sleep at all costs, it was quite a moment.

Mateo, Mommy and I comment all the time on what a sweet little boy you are. You get so excited about discovering the world around you. And you show us all your feelings exactly the way you feel them. We love you and all your toddler exuberance.

Big kisses and lots of dogs,
Mama and Mommy

PS: I'm posting this without photos because our camera is on the fritz. More photos coming soon, hopefully!