A 14-month-old Mimi update

Amelia is at her Grammy and Papa's, and this quiet house has inspired me to catch up on my blogging. She spent the night with them so Cliff and I could go out on NYE. What did we do? The exact same thing we did last year. We switched the restaurant to PF Chang's and the movie we saw was "Up in the Air." It was so good, and we really enjoyed getting a night to go out on a date.

I decided not to do a 13 month update because I didn't have much new news to report since her 12 month one. She turned 14 months old on the 29th and I have been trying to decide if I would keep doing monthly updates since she is a year old, and I decided I'll just pop them in periodically when I have something new to share. She was growing and changing so quickly from month to month her first year, and she still is, but the developments have slowed down a tad. Also, I really hate trying to count up how many months old she is now. I would rather just say she's one when people ask. Is that bad? It's so funny to me when I hear someone say their kid is 22 months old. I have to do the math in my head. Why not just say, almost two? Anyway...

At 14 months, Amelia:

• is talking up a storm! She's been a chatterbox for a while now, but she is adding to her vocabulary pretty quickly. The words she says the most are da-da, ma-ma, baby, bye-bye, ball, book, dog (except she still says 'ga'), hey, papa, pa paw, cup-cup (she always says it twice. it's so funny), ba (ok, not a word, but she means bottle), and most recently cheese. I'm sure there are more, but these are the main ones we hear her say. Her first sentence was "Hey baby!" ha! Here's a quick clip I got of her saying cheese the other night. She said it much more clearly when I wasn't filming, and she really wanted to grab the camera, but you can hear her sweet little voice.
  
  


• has become a picky eater. She has been such a good eater from the start, but lately she has wanted to be on an all carb diet (much like her mama, oops). She loves bread, crackers, cookies, pasta, etc. Who can blame her, really? But I am trying my hardest to get her to eat more protein and veggies. I can sneak them in with her pasta, but she is too smart for me when I try to get her to eat meat. Hopefully this is just a stage, and she will start eating a more rounded diet again soon.
• has finally started really getting into everything. We were pretty fortunate that she didn't venture out of whatever room I am in, or get into stuff she isn't supposed to for the longest time, but she has discovered that there are some pretty fun things to be found in drawers and cabinets. We finally got around to childproofing, and it has devastated her not to be able to drag stuff out!
• can climb down off the couch by herself, but still can't quite climb up onto it. This is very frustrating for her.
• loves to play with her baby dolls and push them in her stroller.
• loves all books, but her favorite one is Five Little Ladybugs.

• still takes her paci at naptime and bedtime, and is down to one bottle a day, at night before bed. I kinda dropped the ball on taking it away because she was congested for several days and didn't feel like eating anything. I think she might just give it up on her own.
• is obsessed with eating goldfish crackers.
• still loves music and likes to sing and dance. Jay-Z and Alicia Keyes' "Empire State of Mind" is her absolute favorite song.
• loves nothing more than being growled at and chased! You will be her instant bff if you growl at her and say "I'm gonna get you!" She always squeals and tries to run away. Peek-a-boo and patty cake (pat a cake?) are also favorites.
• loves to play outside, but unfortunately we haven't been able to do that much lately.

We were busy girls during our Christmas break. We spent lots of time hanging out and playing at home, but we did some traveling too. Here are a couple of pics of her playdate with Madelyn the other day.

Yesterday we went to Hattiesburg to go wedding dress shopping with Aunt Mare. I had to snap these of her playing peek-a-boo with Grammy outside the bridal shop. I'm sure there are lots of photographic things wrong with all the sun, shadows, etc., but you get the idea that she was having a ball in that leopard print dress!

I do miss when she was an itty bitty baby, but toddler-hood is pretty fun too. She is such a fun little person now!