13 months old!

Dear Daniel,

I am watching you right now as you crawl around the living room playing with your toys. You look super cute today, especially after your second ever hair cut that you got last night! :o) You were excited to be able to get your hair cut by dad right before mommy cut his hair, too! Both of your heads of hair grow SO fast! Goodness! It's hard to keep up with you boys! :o)

I can hardly believe that you are over a year old sometimes! Where has the time gone?! I really need to start working on your scrapbook some more, considering I think I am still back on the pictures from when you were four months old! :o( Will I ever catch up?! Not too sure about that!

You are still not walking, although you are VERY ready for it, so I'm hoping that this next week while we are in Hawaii with Pappy, Maw-Maw, Nanny, Aunt Amanda, Vienna, Aunt Lelia, and Uncle Wayne, that you will take those first steps on your own because you'll have quite the support group. :o) I have been trying to get you to walk even a few steps towards me, and you did once but I wouldn't call them full steps because they were more so moving your feet real fast and falling into my arms. Lol. You still love cruising around, and also have enjoyed your 'walker-toy' that you got for your birthday. You will sometimes hold onto that with one hand and just push it around everywhere. You also love your toy box that we have in the living room now... You are just figuring out that just because the toys are in there, you can still get them out to play with so I am watching you just about fall into the toy box right now trying to reach the toy you really want. You are too cute, Daniel!

New things you have accomplished this month??? Let me think! You have your fire truck that you got for your birthday and about a week ago you FINALLY figured out how to get onto it by yourself (it has a little seat with a back to it, so you had to figure out how to lift your leg over the seat and sit down)! You were SO excited! You will do it again and again, and are getting better at getting off it, also - not just falling onto your head each time. You don't know how to scoot yourself forward while you are sitting on it yet, but you definitely know how to go backwards! You can cruise! Another thing I noticed a few weeks ago for the first time is that you are now doing the pretend stage of 'making food' and 'eating'! You are so cute! Your 'laugh-and-learn table' has pretend food on it and a rattle spoon, so you will mix and mix and then 'taste' your creation and always say "yumm or yubby!" You even share it with Mommy and Daddy! :o) You also LOVE Saturday and Sunday mornings when you 'help' Daddy make breakfast! You will help stir the pancake mix and then we will give you a wooden spoon and a spatula and you will stir in your own bowl and flip your own pretend pancakes. I think you want to be a chef!

Oh, yes! Another favorite thing for you to do now is sit up on the couch with us big people! I think you feel like such a big boy when we put you up there. You will sit there and watch TV with us for a little while and then go back and forth across the couch laughing. You know how to get down off furniture now without just falling or diving head-first off, although I think you sometimes forget or just think it's more fun to dive. :o) You are also a pro at climbing stairs, and once we remind you of how to go down, you do great at that, too! We aren't around stairs a whole lot, so you haven't had too much practice with that.

The last thing I've noticed a lot is that you are really wanting to climb lately! I think once you figured out how to get onto your fire truck seat, you have figured out that if you lift up your legs and climb onto something it is a very cool thing! A few weeks ago you knocked over a box in the living room, pushed it by our end table, climbed up onto the box, fell off a few times before you realized that you needed to see where you were sitting on top of the box) and then tried to climb up on the end table, but I didn't let you - sorry. :o) I know you'll be climbing everywhere eventually, I just didn't want it to start quite that soon!

We leave for Hawaii in three days! I'm so hoping you enjoy your first big trip somewhere! AND, I'm especially hoping that you surprise us all by how good you are going to be for us! That would be a great thing, Daniel! :o)

We love you SO much!!! Thanks for being such an amazing son!

Love,
Mommy