13 Months

Now that Annalise is thirteen months, she has lots of tricks up her sleeve. By voice command, she blows kisses (if she is in the mood) kisses on the lips (if she is in the mood) walks to Daddy (if she is in the mood) and performs none of the aforementioned antics if she is not in the mood. To let you know she is not in the mood, or if she is declining anything you are offering her, she glues her chin to her chest and with a very grumpy face, screws her eyebrows together, frowns enormously, and shakes her head no. The grumpy head-shaking often continues long after you have moved on and given up what you were asking her in the first places but apparently she wants to make very sure you're clear on the answer. She says "uh-oh" when she falls, claps the "right" way now, toddles instead of crawls, loves to turn off and on the light switches, beats you with her favorite books when she wants you to read them to her, says "Da!Da!Da!" for more food, says "mmm" when she likes what she's eating, and hugs you over and over if you are feeding her something she really likes. She loves holding her own string cheese and granola bars, refuses to sit in shopping carts entirely (squirming and screaming for the duration of store visits to get on the ground and DESTROY ALL), empties every cabinet or drawer or hamper she can find (at our house or others'), loves to watch videos of herself, makes silly faces for the camera so she can see them on the viewfinder afterwards, and continues to amaze me with how much she understands. The other day she was about to stand up in the fireplace and I exclaimed, "No, you'll hurt your head!" She looked at me with wide eyes and touched her head with concern. She points to mommy's nose and mouth on command and is very big on pointing in general.

Additionally, her little friend Anna learned that when Annalise loudly whispers "Ha! Ha!" it means she is asking for a drink and has implemented it into her own "vocabulary". To hear the two of them asking for drinks in their own special language is enough to do me in from the cuteness.

This thirteen-month-old couldn't be sweeter.