Johnny at 13 and 14 Months

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Johnny,

I missed your 13 month post. It's ok, we did lots of fun things together instead! You have grown up a lot over the past two weeks or so and that will be fun to include in this post!

I think you are on the verge of giving up your morning nap. As a third child your morning nap has always been slightly sporadic and flexible anyways, but lately it seems as if you need it less and less. You will still go down for the nap, but if we wait long enough you will make it one long afternoon nap, or if we are out and about, then you are satisfied with a little 15-30 minute cat nap in the car if you can manage. You still love your afternoon nap and still sleep about 12 hours at night with the occasional extra early morning that gratefully can include cuddles and downtime after a bottle. Part of all of this probably goes with the growth spurt you are probably in the middle of as you are eating a ton of food and drinking as much milk as we can give you. You haven't been a huge fan of juice though, so we have to stick with milk for now! You are in between table food and purees and we give you a mix of both every day. You love cheerios and ritz crackers though and will gladly munch on those in your high chair as long as we are giving them to you. You will sign more for more food if you aren't too hungry (in that case you will just cry) and you wave your arms frantically when you are finished. I wouldn't count it as the "all done" sign, but it works! Other than those grain foods, you don't have anything specific that you love, you kind of rotate through different foods you will eat as far as table foods go. It will be interesting to see where your tastes lead you. Today you were enjoying feta cheese which we were very surprised by.

Part of that growth spurt has meant some major progress on wearing your glasses. For the past few days you have been happily tolerating them for a couple hours at a time! That is huge progress for you to go from not wearing them without us pinning you down to wearing them for long durations of time! You look very handsome in them by the way! We are working on "normal" crawling with you. You can scootch very fast pulling your legs and rear behind you with your arms in a sitting up position, but we want you to build those brain pathways between the left and right brain by doing actual crawling. We practice that a lot. You are also trying to pull up frequently and will pull up to your knees with ease. You also love to wave at people and will sign thank you sometimes. You love to play peek a boo and to read books if the pages aren't too long, you like to help turn the page so your attention on each page is very short. We know you love music though and like to see you bounce to all the different musical toys you and your sisters play with.

We were having some fussy spells with you not wanting to sit in your car seat, you would fold yourself over and cry every time we put you in there. You are less fussy now, so I hope it was just a stage. Something that isn't a stage however is your "mama's boy" tendencies. You love you some mama and cling to me like nobody's business. It's nice to have so much love coming my way, but it's hard when I have legitimate things that I need (or want) to do and you fuss in Daddy's arms. I know he will get his time with you one day when you are fishing, hunting, or working on cars together, so I don't worry too much. Plus, you are so easy to hold and hug that it's not a huge deal!

We have enjoyed you so much these past few months as you learn and grow. I love seeing you do your own thing and figure out how to make things work for you. You make me proud and happy every day.

We love you!
Mommy and Daddy