Technically Cate won’t be 13 months old until tomorrow, but I’m twiddling my thumbs waiting for a contractor to come measure my kitchen counters, so I thought I’d type this up early.

So, my girl’s milestones this month:
* Sleeping. This whole process of putting her to bed when she’s still awake and letting her fall asleep on her own has gone remarkably smoothly. And last night when I laid her down in the crib, she stayed there – all previous nights, she’d immediately sit up to scream at me until I left the room. So it’s getting better and better.

* She is a standing-up-on-her-own maniac. Whenever we play, she is always trying to stand up without pulling herself up on anything. And she succeeds most of the time. However, she still hasn’t shown much interest in walking. Technically, she has taken a step a couple of times, but it was more like she was shifting her weight around than trying to move from point A to point B. Honestly, I think she’s gotten so comfortable with crawling, and she’s such a little speed demon with it, that she’s probably going to skip walking altogether and go straight to running.

She does, however, walk on her knees. Like, sitting up and kneeling on the floor. I really need to get a video of this, because it’s so funny to watch. I don’t really understand why she does it, because it’s not the most efficient mode of transportation. And the weird sort of stiffness of the movement makes her look like a baby zombie when she does it. Maybe it’s her transition phase between crawling and walking? Who knows.

* Talking! Besides kitty (which we got last month), she now says “dada” and “daddy” at appropriate times. Occasionally I get a “mama,” but it’s pretty hit or miss. And last night while we were watching the Signing Time DVD that Cat loaned us, she said both “dog” and “bird” when they said it on the DVD. Which, ok, the point was for her to learn the sign language for it, but if she wants to say the word instead, that’s cool too! I don’t know if she knows what it means, or if she was just repeating a sound that she heard on TV, but either way, that’s pretty cool.

Btw, she said “dahg,” not “doag,” so obviously we’ve avoided the southern accent so far. Although I’m sure that’ll change when we move to North Carolina.

* Baby Girl has got some serious personality quirks, which are starting to show themselves. Last month when Liz’s baby Catie was here, she tried to hug and kiss Cate, and Cate got really upset. I thought it was a fluke – you know, maybe she was tired or hungry and that was the one thing that pushed her over the edge. But no, apparently she really doesn’t like other kids to touch her. Her little daycare “boyfriend” Mason apparently tried to hug her, and now Cate is just done with him. She gets mad anytime he come near her (poor little guy). There’s also an older girl at her daycare – I think she’s 7 or 8? – and she’s tried to pick Cate up a couple of times, and that totally freaked her out. She seems to like Scarlett (who’s 2 1/2), because Scarlett just wants to play next to her, and doesn’t get all up in her face. So what do you know, apparently we’re living with a little two-foot-tall Howard Hughes. The idea of daycare was that it was supposed to help improve her social skills, not make her freak out at the touch of other children. I’m starting to worry about how she’s going to get along with e-baby next week, but whatever, she’ll get over it.

Another quirk: I cannot figure out this child’s taste buds. She’ll eat pretty much anything if it comes off of my fork, but put her in the high chair and use a baby spoon, and who knows? Maybe she’ll go along with it, and maybe she won’t. She won’t eat cheese. Cheese! Who doesn’t like cheese? She just pokes at it and makes a face. Sometimes if I break off a piece and pop it in her mouth, she’ll eat it, but most of the time she spits it out. But she adores broccoli-cheese soup. I don’t get it, but there you go.

There were some other weirdo traits that I was going to mention, but of course I’ve forgotten them all now. For the most part, she’s a total blast, and I think most of the quirks are just her way of establishing her personality and, you know, being a toddler. So it’s fine, I just laugh it off and try to imagine her reaction when she reads about this stuff on my website when she’s (a lot) older.