14 months

its been an amazing month for our little daxy!  he's worked on learning many new things and is exploring everything around him!  he's quick, he's funny, and he's happy!

he's perfected crawling and really knows how to get places in a quick fashion.  90% of the time now he'll take straight off in a regular crawl and get there entirely in that mode.  its only about 10% of the time that he creeps back down into that old belly drag, and it's usually when he's got something in his hand that he's trying to take some where.  it's awesome to see him crawling with full intent.  he knows exactly where he's going and he's on a mission.

one of daxton's latest tricks is climbing up stairs.  we do it in a controlled environment in our game room where there are only two stairs with a baby gate at the top of them.  mommy sits right behind with her hands two inches from daxton's bottom to ensure he does not go "a tumbling down".  if i was not there he would just raise up into a stand, turn to look back and smile at me, and then just go flopping right down the stairs.  usually i let him do a controlled glide back down and he thinks its pretty funny.  hopefully it will be a very long time before he wants to go up the 20 stairs in the foyer.

the largest miracle that has occurred this month has been the interest in the sippy cup.  just tonight he saw us pouring water from a water bottle and decided he wanted to play with it.  within minutes he was putting it up to his mouth like he wanted to drink from it.  will filled a sippy cup with water and dax spent about 30 minutes playing with the sippy cup and taking little sips from it.  hopefully we're trending into sippy cup land and leaving bottles in the dust.

daxton has 7 fully emerged teeth now.  we love seeing his little grin and he flashes it all the time.  he thinks we're pretty funny apparently.  he loves for daddy to brush his teeth and he sticks his tongue out to try to lick the fruity tooth paste off the brush.  he's tried doing some biting and gave me a bruise on my wrist, but i think i yelped so loud that he won't try it again. 

daxton is still working on trying new foods.  lately he's started enjoying basmati rice and likes it mixed with applesauce, green bean puree, or even bananas.  he loves cinnamon on his baked sweet potatoes and banana oatmeal.  he's tried pickles for the second time and really liked a cornichon!  we just gave him a taste on new years eve and he started chomping away!  he still loves his little cherry tomatoes and had 8 of them for lunch today.  he prefers them over most foods he's been offered, so we go through quite a few of those each week.

daxton still uses all of the words he's come up with, but this month he's brought out "thank you", "welcome", "get it", "choo choo", "did it", and "good girl".  he loves to talk right after he's woken up in the morning, or after a good long nap.  you never know what he's going to talk about, but he wakes up a chatter box and just babbles away.  his eyes light up when he sees the dogs and he screams "doggie"!  we're trying to be very intentional with telling him everything we're/he's doing to help him build his vocabulary, and it's pretty adorable when he gives or takes something from you and says "dank you"!

daxton has some new tricks like moving things from one place to another, putting things into and taking them out of baskets and bags, rolling and throwing balls with dad, trying to put on his own socks by laying them on the top of his feet, and rocking in his jumperoo from one leg to another like he's riding a rocking horse.  i told daddy he'd need to sign up for gymnastics as soon as he was age appropriate.  he still loves to work on opening and closing anything he can find and we have to keep putting more and more baby zip tie contraptions on closet doors, cabinets, the bathroom doors, bedside table drawers, and anything else he can lay his hands on.  he also still loves examining things like papers, tags, plastic bags, tissues, baby wipes, and different kinds of fabrics.  however, his all time favorite past time in my office is still taking books off of the bookshelf, flipping through them, laying down with them, throwing them into his pack and play, and occasionally attempting to rip out their pages.

daxton's sneaky move of the month happened just yesterday.  daxton plays freely in my office while i work all day.  he rotates between jumperoo, pack and play, crawling around the room, playing with toys, looking out the window, and taking all of the books off the bookshelf.  he has some odd toys such as a wireless keyboard because he watches mommy bang away on the lap top all day and so he thinks its fun to have one of his own.  i put it down on the floor for him and he played with it for a while and then moved on to a little toy dinosaur that sings songs.  later on in the day i looked at the keyboard and noticed the number 9 was missing.  i looked all over for it, did not see it, and thought i just must not have previously noticed it.  i went on with my life.  then, a few hours later, i saw daxton with his miniature van gogh book making a b-line for the waste basket.  he crawled right to it and proceeded to toss the book into the trash.  i told him that was not a good idea and took it back out.  he giggled and threw it back in.  repeat about 4 times, when i really looked into the trash can and found - not only the missing number 9 - but an ink pen, a computer book, and a block - along with all of the other trash...  sneaky mc sneakerton was really making a stash in there.  the waste basket is now sitting on a desk.

it's getting more and more fun!