Almost 13 months old

You are just one day shy of your 13th month birthday. We celebrated your 1st birthday twice, once with the Chu side and once with the Brockway side. It was so fun to see you eat your cake and open your presents. You did not hesitate to stick a finger in your cake and start eating.

You are walking well now, and you are so fast. You love to explore the house, open cabinets and drawers and pull everything out. You love to watch the tv shows on nick jr. Your favorite is Yo Gabba Gabba. You love the characters and the songs and you also seem to be growing a liking for Barney the purple dinosaur. The life size creatures really intrigue you.

You love to hug and kiss the dogs, and in the last couple months you have really enjoyed hugging your mom and dad. While you hug and kiss, you say "mmmmm....". It is so cute.

We took you to see the animals at the San Antonio Zoo and SeaWorld. It was sooo hot, but you did well. You got to see monkeys, elephants, seals, and dolphins. Your absolute favorite show, however, was the dance show put on by people dressed up as Shamu and friends. Like I said before, you love life size creatures.

You talk a lot now. It is mostly jibber jabber, but you understand a lot of words.

Roar! Roar!!

Leela, I can't believe you are already 10 1/2 months old! You are growing up so fast. It feels like it was just yesterday you were born. I cannot even describe how much joy you bring to my heart. I do not want to forget this precious time, so I'm going to start logging all of your precious moments here.

You have been working hard on standing up on your own. I see the concentration in your eyes as you tell the little muscles in your legs to hold you up. You can stand up quite well now, and when you do, I watch you like a hawk because I don't want to miss that first step! Today, I was going through with you all the sounds that different animals make. Your favorite is the horse. You laugh every time I neigh. It is so cute. The highlight today was when you copied my lion's roar. You cracked me up!!! I roared twice, but half-way through my second roar I began to yawn (yes, mommy is quite tired these days!), and you copied both my roars and my yawn!! I wish I had it on video. You are so smart and observant, and you pick up on things so quickly. You amaze me every day!!

I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.