Okay, where are we at? Dear gods, she’s thirteen months old.

Owlet has, in the past month, totally gotten into:

feeding others (crackers I can stomach, especially is they’re not soggy, but she feeds me raisins and I have to pretend I like them because she won’t take no for an answer)

blowing kisses

saying and waving bye-bye

lying down on blankets, taking about seven point two seconds of rest before she’s up and running again

pushing things along the floor or through the air, going “vrrrrr, vrrrr” (like blocks, the laundry basket, and books. And a Little People black sheep, as well. That cracked me up. I decided it was a steampunk cyborg sheep.)

taking people’s hands and cupping them to her cheek, then cradling her head in them (so, so sweet)

finally, cuddles! She climbs up and puts her arms around your neck, then leans her head against your shoulder, and it’s just so wonderful. Sometimes she even pats our shoulder or arm while she does it.

New skills include:

Opening our lever door handles (Jana, [from my online mums group, see below] whose son demonstrated this new skill just about the same time, said that it feels like that moment when the velociraptors in Jurassic Park figure it out)

Swinging open the gate barricade we prop across the hall with ease (it’s not like it’s hinged and latched like our other ones, but it is wedged pretty firmly)

Climbing stairs like whoa, if we let her

Practicing the sliding-off-beds-and-chesterfields move

Big events this past month:

We met Jana, an online friend from BC, when she came to visit family in Montreal with her husband and son, who was born a couple of weeks before Owlet (we met via that online mums group, were everyone’s babies were due in July 2011). I packed the kids up and bought picnic lunch stuff, and we met at Lafontaine Park where we picnicked and played and talked. It was awesome. There was swinging (complete with chortles from them both), playing in the sand, dropping sticks and leaves down sewers, and eating of leaves. I am eternally grateful for this group; I have met so many wonderful women.

Owlet had her first experiment with crayons. She likes to see the lines she makes, but she isn’t entirely clear on which end or side to use. Lesson learned: Hand her one crayon at a time, and hide the others behind your back so she can’t see the box. And be ready to grab them if she starts lifting them toward her mouth.

New foods… I can’t remember any more. She eats everything. She’s had tastes of peanut butter and we haven’t seen any problems, so I assume she’s okay with it. Daily schedule-wise, she’s up around 6:30, naps from 9:30-11:00ish, naps from 2:00-3:30ish, and sleeps from about 7:30 to 6:30 the next morning.

She has two huge swollen lumps where her one-year-old molars are coming in her upper jaw. No wonder she gets grouchy.

Her twelve-month doctor appointment was terrific. She weighed 11.92 kg (26 lbs), and measured 78 cm. She’s still around the 97th percentile. The doctor is delighted with her and told me to keep on doing whatever I’m doing. She’s doing very well mobility-wise (she told me she expects one-year-olds to be cruising along furniture) and language-wise (again, she expects about three words at this age, so while I feel that Owlet is behind where she should be because Sparky set a crazy standard, she’s actually ahead of the average). She and Sparky walked in holding hands and slowly strolled down the row of clinic receptionists while smiling, as if they were showing off how adorable they were. The coos from the receptionists and nurses were hilarious.

A couple of weeks ago she was standing in front of me eating a cracker. She looked at me and made her grabby-hand “I want food/more/milk please” sign. But she already had a cracker, so I was curious as to what she wanted. When I didn’t clue in, she made a little frustrated huff sound, reached the cracker out and banged my chest, then made her little grabby-hand sign again. “Oh, you want some milk with your cracker?” I said. “Mah, mah,” she said, all excited. So I picked her up and put her on my lap, and she sat there and nursed for a minute, then popped off, had a bite of cracker, then had some more milk, and so forth. I was very amused.

We can’t leave anything on a placemat within her reach, because she pulls the placemat over and helps herself to what’s on the plate or in the glass. A couple of weeks ago I turned around to find her holding HRH’s coffee cup nonchalantly, with a huge coffee stain down her chest and across her lap. (The coffee was cool, fortunately.) She is fascinated by cups of tea and coffee. This morning she was talking to my Davids Tea mug with the silhouettes of birds on it, and kept peeking inside. It was cool enough that I told her she could sip it if she liked. She dipped a finger in to touch the surface instead, and sucked the tea off.

She loves telephones, but she doesn’t quite get the idea. She knows she can hear the person talking so she reaches for it when I use it. She gets a huge grin when I put the receiver to her ear, but then she puts it in front of her to look at the receiver, kisses it with her big open-mouthed “mwah!”, and then presses as many buttons as possible with her thumbs before someone rescues it.

She tried to grab the broom repeatedly from HRH when he swept up after dinner, so I found Sparky’s tiny broom for her to use. She loves it. Although after she swept a couple of times that night, she turned it around and started using it like a lightsaber against a chair. Perhaps we shouldn’t have taught her to play Jedi with Sparky in the backyard with the extra lightsaber toy…

I love watching Owlet and Sparky play together. The older she gets, the more he seems to love her and actively want to play with her, which is delightful. Their favourite games seem to be “hide under the blanket and try to find me,” “pile on top of Sparky,” and “push Owlet around in a laundry basket while she chortles.” She loves coming with me to drop him and collect him at school; there are dogs to look at, and cats that sit on the street corners, and all! those! people! to wave at and say “Bye-bye” to. There are problems, of course, namely that with her newfound ability to unwedge the hall barrier and open doors, she wants to be in Sparky’s room with him when he’s playing on his own with non Owlet-friendly toys like Lego. But in general, they genuinely like one another, and I am so grateful for that.

(For comparison purposes: Here is Sparky’s thirteen-month post.)