13 Months.

Adventure is the name of the game every day at our house. Ben is changing so much every single day - he jabbers a lot in his own little language. He doesn't say "cat" any more and instead says "baby" over and over (but it comes out "bahhhhh beeeeeeeeee"). He knows where his toes are, he loves chase, he'll push around his cars & trucks, harass the cat, love Sadie to pieces and gives great big hugs and big wet kisses. If I hand him a teddy bear and say "can you give bear a hug?" he'll smoosh the bear to his chest and just hug as tight as he can.

He walks. A lot. He's getting better and better every day and spends more and more of his time toddling along rather than crawling. His top left front tooth finally poked through yesterday and the top right one is starting to break the surface a little. Not sure when we'll see the bottom right tooth (the bottom left front tooth was the first to come out).

He's picking up some signs more. He'll say "please" usually after prompting. He signals milk for milk, water or food. He waves "bye bye" when he wants to go for a nap. I'm trying to teach him "help" but mostly he looks at me like I've grown a second head when I do it. :)

I think he's starting to drop one of his naps. The last few days he's been widening the awake window between naps and the afternoon nap is getting shorter. Me thinks we're in for a rough adjustment period while teething and trying to change nap schedules at the same time.

He loves to talk on the phone and thinks it's the best game ever when he chats with his nana and grandad in Florida. He's a big ham for the camera and will usually greet anyone taking his picture with a great big smile.

Meal times are also a big adventure. I never know what he'll stuff himself silly on and what he'll think goes better on the floor than in his mouth. He's recently discovered that he can lift the high chair cover away from the side of the chair and stuff food down there. So he does. And that's fun to clean up. :)

I used to leave the TV on PBS almost all day, just for background noise. I've been noticing recently that he'll stop and stare for long periods of time so now the TV is either turned off or set to a music station. I don't mind if he watches TV every now and then but I don't want to get in the habit of using it as a babysitter or getting to the point where he'd rather sit and watch TV than play.

That's about it for the Ben update. He still loves his Little Gym class (though I am way bummed - we started a new semester at Little Gym and we got a new instructor - I loved our old one a lot and so did Ben) and I signed him up for a baby music class (it actually started yesterday but we had other plans so had to miss the first class).