Orelia at Thirteen Months

 Orelia is now thirteen months old and busy busy busy in everything she does.

She crawls almost faster than I can walk, and gets great pleasure in scurrying off in an attempt to get me to chase her.  She wants everyone to chase her - me, John, Harper, and all her little friends.

She is doing some solo standing and walking around using her wooden push cart.  (Actually since I'm writing this post a couple weeks after she turned thirteen months, she has taken some solo steps at this point too.)

She is getting good at mimicking when the mood strikes her, and sometimes repeats sounds and words pretty accurately (quack and hop, recently).

She's started pointing at the things that interest her and has started signing again after a brief interlude where she had stopped (because I got lazy and stopped).  The day I started signing again she started right back up, and learned a new sign ("milk") that day.  Today she signed "more" when I stopped tickling her - I guess she wanted to laugh some more!

Her most used words are still "mama" and "dada," but she says "ball" and "dog" regularly too.

She understands a lot, though, and is getting good at following simple directions like "get a book," "come here," "throw me the ball," and "give that to me."

She loves handing toys to people and also loves feeding Mom and Dad her food.  She's a good sharer when she wants to be.

Orelia is a lot to handle at thirteen months but completely hilarious and lots of fun.