Life at 13 months!

It's raining and thundering in Tucson!  I LOVE afternoons like this because they are so rare.  It also means that Elijah naps longer because his bedroom is so dark.  I figured I'd take this time to catch up because we now have a 13 month old and we're slowly taking (more like talking about) steps to get ready for baby #2.

I didn't want to spend the money to have professional pictures of Elijah at one year because I figure we'll be taking family pictures once Baby E is here in December.  So, I went with the next best thing to a professional photographer....UNCLE ROSS!!!  Doesn't sound that great, huh?  But, really, he is.  You can look at some of his work here.  I usually find inspiration from Pinterest, then send a picture to Ross and say "Do you think you can do this?".  And so, he does.  He took this picture for us, which has now become quite a popular way to announce pregnancies.  I think, or I like to think, we were a little ahead of the game when we took this in 2011.

He also took a few one year pics of Elijah for us:

So fun, and lots of thanks for doing this for us, for FREE! 

Elijah officially turned 13 months this past Monday, so I decided to put him to work. : ) kinda... up until this point, I kinda just let him do whatever, but now I feel like he can grasp how to do more, so we've been working on a few key things.

We still haven't conquered the dreaded sippy cup.  He LOVES milk and water, but he makes the most disgusted face when drinking them out of a sippy cup.  He then proceeds to throw a tantrum, which I ignore and eventually put his drink back in the fridge.  The problem is, when it's 100 degrees out, I don't want him to get dehydrated.  So, eventually..an hour or so later, I pour his milk back into a bottle, which he happily consumes within minutes.   AGHHHH, hoping Dr. Honebrink has some suggestions for this.  He has also broken all but ONE of the rings on his bottles from tossing them on the floor.  Now I know, a 13 month old can easily learn to hand things to people when asked.  So, after a few times of practicing "give your bottle to Mama", he will now hand things over.  He gets a HUGE grin on his face when I say "thank you".  This has also helped in other situations where he becomes completely infatuated with an object when we're out shopping.  Now, all I have to do is say "give it to Mommy" and "thank you" and there's no screaming!  Who knew?  : )

This skill has also helped in having him empty the dishwasher!  Never too early to start helping around the house, right?  : )  Of course, I take out all the knives and breakables first, then he hands things to me one by one.  It takes awhile just to empty the bottom part of the dishwasher, but it's so worth it!

Handing a spoon to Mommy!

It also never occurred to me, until the other day, when he spilled 100 cookie cutters all over the floor, that he is very capable of putting all 100 cookie cutters back into the container.  So, one by one we sat until the job was done.  The cookie cutters are now put up high, out of reach of little hands!

I also introduced him to two new activities for those fine motor skills: dropping clothespins into a milk carton and coloring! 

Crayons!

Other than that, he continues to be quite an eater, eating anything and everything we give him.  My guess is that he weighs about 25lbs.  He has his one year appointment in about 2 weeks, so we'll see where he's at then. 

He's our little sweetheart, who continues to give kisses that just melt my heart; and is usually quite happy and content with whatever we're doing.  We just love him so!