13 months old!!

Jayden is 13 months old today. This freaks me out for a few different reasons. One, when we find out we were pregnant with Eli all those months ago, I remember saying to Dan while we sat in the ER in shock, "Jayden will be 13 months old when the new baby is born." That seemed SO far away then, and it seemed so old. Jayden is still a baby in so many ways, which means I will soon have two (yes I hear all my twin mommy friends now, chuckling away). Also, 13 months old sounds old to me at the same time. Where has my tiny baby gone? Who is this person that is walking, talking, interacting with his world, becoming more independent everyday? Some days I long for the times when he would sleep on my chest while I watched movies or napped myself. These days go by so fast!! So fast. I just want to soak them all up. Especially right now, while its still just me and Jayden a lot of the time. I want to pour my time into being with him, loving him, savoring our precious moments together. I never knew you could love like this, or this much. He is so incredible!!! So Happy 13 months, sweet boy!!!

Here are the cool things he is doing:
-walking!!! finally, he seems to prefer it over crawling. he's not great it yet and tends to tip forward a lot. but he'll promptly crawl over to something else and pull up and walk again. it is so fun to watch!!!
-talking like CRAZY. his current words are: mama/mom, daddy, hi, bye, kittie (keeeeeeeey), balloon (ba-oon!), all done, Jayden (this is SO cute), light, fan, ball, birdie, gram (we think that's what we heard a few times). he also repeats all sorts of things we say. its adorable!!
-learning to use a spoon to feed himself (see post below)
- eating all sorts of big people food. he had cream of chicken soup at Souplantation last night and LOVED it. his favorites are: raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, kidney beans, and peanut butter and jelly
-sleeps between 11 and 12 hours a night
- most days takes two naps but in the process of dropping one, we think. if he sleeps too late for his morning nap, he refuses his afternoon one and then is Cranky McCranky Pants by bedtime. so we'll see how this evolves over the next few weeks. as i type this, he is playing in his crib instead of napping :)
-climbing stairs like a champ. he LOVES the stairs and gets very sad when the gate is up and no one will follow him up.