A 5-year old in a 1-year old body

As Summer reaches 13 months of age, she continues to amaze us, but we are growing into our amazement of her. She is just beyond words and we both are very aware of it.

Speaking

She will repeat any word back to you. You say tree; she says tree. It's incredible. You give her a letter D, she holds it and says D and she remembers.

She knows all the kids names at day care and pretty much everyone we're close to, although she continues to refer to herself as Baby (OK by me!).

She also will put as many as THREE words together. For example, from the back of the car, she'll yell to Ramis, "Heeeyyy, Dada, Elmo!" telling Ramis to look at the Elmo she's holding. Or, she'll yell, "Daisy, Good girl!, Come!" in the bath tub to get Daisy to watch her take a bath. I'm not kidding-- our daughter is a dynamo.

She has a keen eye for things that she knows how to say. So, she'll see a person a ways away with a hat on and scream "HAT!!" or you'll be sitting reading a book to her and she'll say, "Eye." and poke you in the eye while you're reading. Airplanes so far in the distance get a "Bye, bye" from Summer.

The other funny thing she does is she knows now to say thank you when giving and taking (sounds more like "Genki"). From anywhere, if you hear her say Genki, you know she's trying to get you to take something away from her that she no longer wants. For example, I gave her a book to look at and she no longer wanted it, so she says Genki and we take it away. So polite! No throwing things around necessary anymore.

Walking

Summer continues to want to walk, but loves having the assistance. She can walk about 100 feet straight with someone holding a single hand.

Daddy taught her to push the stroller from the basket on the back. So, she pushes and walks with the stroller around the park. It's so funny because it looks like she's doing serious manual labor.

General Development

She loves to play put on things that she finds around the house. She will try to put Ramis's socks on her feet or her own shoes that she sees laying around. She tries to put on my headbands and is fairly successful at it, as well as her own hair clips and hats. It's so funny!

Summer keeps us very busy with her ever-changing eating preferences. She was/is always a superfan of nursing (if breastfeeding had a fan club, she would be the president), but eating actual food was a hit or miss. One week, she only wants pureed food; the next week, she wants to bite and chew on everything. One week, she loves chicken; the next, she wants nothing to do with it. She has no problem going throughout the day without food, which makes fun and exciting nighttimes for us. So, instead of digging our own grave in that department, we read and follow her eating cues. Plain yogurt is the only thing we can ever always get her to eat and thank goodness for that. Because she doesn't drink milk (we're working on this), she has to make up for lots of missed calories. We spend a large portion of our day feeding her because of this. She's a great self feeder, but only so much food gets in her belly because she's such a busy little girl. She's got things to do!

Napping is still at twice a day and ranges from 2.5 to 4 hours a day, and at night between 10-12 hours. However, her nighttime wakings are not consistent, kind of like her eating habits. Sometimes she still wakes every 2 hours, but other nights you'll wonder why you hear not a peep until 7am.

She is an extrovert. She is innately social and looks forward to meeting, touching, and talking to new people. She shows no signs of anxiety towards others unless she senses that we are a bit anxious. She is great at reading cues in that sense. Also, she is amazing with other kids. I told Ramis recently that it would have been a huge disservice to Summer to not have her in a child-care environment. She feeds off of other kids. She plays with them, talks to them, and interacts with them like no other 1 year old I've seen.

We look forward to soaking up the Summer sunshine all summer long.