Kent is 14 months old!

Kent has changed so much this month. Seriously. He's all grown up and he's a little boy now. First, he mastered walking. In less than two week's time he went from 2-3 steps before crashing into me to walking around the house ALL DAY having a grand ol' time. Forget toys, these feet are made for walking! See the progression here:

 There were lots of bumps on the head/face/mouth.

Walking makes for a tired boy. It seemed like he needed a morning nap all over again, and I caved several times, cutting his nap short (40-45) but then I spent the majority of the afternoon trying to get him to sleep and it was the most frustrating thing. His afternoon nap was sometimes 30 minutes and sometimes nothing at all. So we went back to 1 nap at noon and it's been much better. In fact, yesterday he slept for 3 hours. It was epic. I was starting to miss him. Must have been all that sunshine and sledding. He went "eh" to me to brush the snow off of his fingers.

With walking came an enormous appetite. I've never seen him eat so much. A couple of times he ate just as much as me. The other day, he ate 1.5 cups of risotto with mushrooms and zucchini and a little mozzarella. That is a heavy meal. Wow.

With eating comes... picky eating! But fear not for I have figured out the key: utensils. No joke. He used to pick up his food from his tray and either throw it or reach out and give it back to me. He started pushing away my hand when I'd feed him non-finger food (yogurt, oatmeal, applesauce), so I had no choice but give him the fork or spoon. Lo and behold, no former "gross" food was rejected. Everything is yummy when using utensils. Unbelievable. This not only slows meal time, but it's definitely improving his hand-eye-mouth coordination. He's pretty good. His technique? Hold the spoon at the tip, scoop and fling it into the mouth, catapult-style.

Utensils are a form of copying. Kent copies a lot now: noises, putting a toy on the head, playing peek-a-boo, playing with a toy a certain way, putting the cell phone to his ear, and putting on chapstick (cap on).

 Here, he's putting poker chips into a slit in the lid of a yogurt container.

With copying sounds comes talking, at least a little. He says "ball", "dog", and "cat". When I was pulling him on the sled this week, we went by the sandbox and he said "ball" which was crazy because he never says his words unless he sees them. So I looked around and there was a ball in the sandbox, barely visible under all that snow!! Unbelievable. I gave it to him and he held it happily and I continued pulling him on the sled.

With communication comes other forms of communication, like pointing and grunting "eh". He hands you a book and says "eh" which means he wants you to read it to him (again and again and again). Too cute!!! This is how we read books now - laying down :)

Here he says "eh" to help him get up.

We love how much he's growing up. He's no baby anymore!