Emily @ 13 months

I'm just going to try to bring anyone who is interested up to speed on what Emily is up to at the ripe old age of 13 months. She is keeping me busy with her curiosity. She will put anything in her mouth at least once. Her absolute favorite thing is our dogs' food. She acts like it's candy. She has learned the word no but she can't bring herself to resist temptation when it comes to dog food. Luckily she has started to hold her tongue out for you to take things out of her mouth. I guess she wants to be spared of our fingers digging around in there. She also loves playing with her toy piano and drum. She absolutely loves music and will dance by rocking or swaying to the beat to anything that has a beat. Lately she has been swaying in slow motion. Which is hilarious. She also loves playing in the bath,playing peek a boo (she'll hide her face and then when it reappears I say peek a boo),spinning around and hopping on her butt (she's mighty tricky),looking and talking to herself in the mirror, and cuddling her stuffed animals and her Elmo doll (she'll pat their backs while hugging them).Emily also enjoys playing in the nursery at church and loves everyone she meets. She'll go to anyone and you'd think she's known the person forever. One slightly amusing story is when we went to visit Josh's grandma in August. We were all sitting in the living room chatting when his cousin (who she had only seen once when she was 3 months old) came in the door. Emily looked up at her and reached for her. It was like she was saying excuse me, aren't you going to hold me? Lately I've noticed that she has figured out how to use most of her toys (i.e. she can turn pretty much all of them on and knows how they work, she also knows how to get off of her rocking zebra etc.). Which is fun because I love seeing her brain at work.She has also started putting objects inside of other objects (such as small toys inside of a bucket she has) and then taking them back out and starting the process all over again. She has also started to let me read to her (she used to just grab the book out of my hands). While outside she likes to swing and play with the grass.She just recently got a little slide that has a landing at the top that she likes to jump on. She's not too sure of the actual slide yet. She's a very cautious little girl and so it scares her a little. I think her cautiousness is the reason she isn't walking independently yet. She can if you hold her by one hand and walk with her but as soon as you let go she plops down. She'll climb brick steps with ease but for some reason thinks walking by herself is the scariest thing ever. I know she'll get it one of these days but I'm getting a little anxious. At least she's been cruising more lately and has been acting like she'd rather walk to something than crawl to it. She has also been practicing standing from a sitting position without holding on to something. She's done it once successfully. It's so cute to watch. Overall she's a laid back kid and I think she's going to do everything at her own pace. Anyway, in other news she is getting her 8th tooth and loves to have her teeth brushed. She says "num num" (I think her version of yum yum) when she sees it. She usually says this when she really likes something (such as ice cream sandwiches and Reese's pb cups). She can also say up, ma ma or mommy, da da or daddy(almost everytime the phone rings she assumes it's Josh calling and so she'll point at it and say "da da"), doggie,baby, and bye bye (while waving). Speaking of pointing and saying da da, the other day she was on her slide when she saw our neighbor. He, like her daddy, has a shaved head and so when she saw him she pointed at him and said da da a couple of times. It was quite amusing and I'm just glad he didnt' hear her. She will also clap if you say clap and will give you something if you say thank you. Well, I guess that's enough rambling for one night.