13 months

Yesterday, Gabriella turned 13 months old.  Each day more and more personality seems to be exploding from her petite little frame. 

I have said it before and I will say it again - G is one sassy little girl.  Oh those faces...family, friend or stranger, she flashes her faces to everyone.  In a seconds, she can go from death stare, to sassy scrunch face, to cheesy grin to wild eyed and crazy looking.  

Gabriella cracks herself up all the time.  Two months ago the only way we could get her to laugh was by tickling her.  Now she laughs much more easily.  She fake laughs all the time too which is almost as funny as her true laugh.

She is a fan of the bath, chocolate, music/dancing, her babies, her Georges, walking while holding hands and balls.  She loves going to Gymboree and between her class and open gyms we can normally get there 3 times a week. 

She dislikes having her face wiped, being restrained, and meat.  She also dislikes it when we take something away from her.

She is warming up to playcare at the gym and Christine’s and will actually play at both places.  When she is comfortable somewhere (and Michael and I are close enough to look up and see), she is a social butterfly flitting from person to person and making friends.  I had to take her to school with me a couple of weeks ago and she loved being the center of attention.  In class, she walked up and down the rows, checking everyone out, and adding her two cents in to our conversations.  She loves jabbering away in her own little language which is still full of “ducati” and “dugati”...her newest verbal accomplishment is “all done.”

She finally gives kisses to people, but sparingly.  Yesterday, she kissed Michael, then me and then her wipes...yeah...she knows how to make her parents feel special.

She takes 1-2 naps a day.  Always one in the morning and she skips the afternoon nap 2-3 times a week now.  We may transition to one nap a day, but the few days I have tried just means less time to get things done.  

Her favorite time to sleep is at night when she eagerly goes to bed at 7pm and sleeps until 6:30am (and every ONCE IN A WHILE 7am).   

She is a picky eater.  She likes “white food” (bread, waffles, pasta, mac & cheese, cheerios, puffs, etc...).  She will generally only eat pureed food if we alternate bites of fruits/veggies with bites of chocolate pudding.  I think the texture of cut fresh fruit/veggies bothers her because she just rubs it between her fingers and refuses to eat it.  Thankfully, we found these fried strawberries at Trader Joes which she will devour along with peach yogurt bites.    

The other day while I was in the kitchen, I looked over and saw that she had stacked 3 blocks on top of each other, which caught me by surprise because we don’t really practice stacking blocks a lot.  

She has also started walking backwards...mostly into corners when we are chasing her around.  Chase is her favorite game right now.  

When she wants to, she will point to her head, my nose, eyes, lips and teeth when asked.  She also responds “Ah- Ah- Ah” when we ask her what Trumpety Humpety says because he sneezes (ah-ah-ah-choo!) at the end of the book.  

Every day seems to hold a new surprise, but I am loving how interactive she is right now.  It is so fun to watch her mimic things and study objects so intently.  It will be fun to take her to the beach at this age (we’re just not looking forward to the plane ride...5 hours could be a REALLY LONG time...).