I forgot what a fun age 13 months is! Elijah is a miniature person who has “it” incredibly figured-out. He “talks” on the phone, puts on his brother’s play necklace, tries to put on shirts and socks, stabs at food with a fork, knows what the remote is supposed to do, drives toy cars with great sound effects, and pulls string cheese out of the fridge, doing the Happy Dance as I open it for him.

As with our first two boys, sign language has fantastically bridged the communication gap. He has made the signs for: book, car, ball, bath, change, up, down, where, more, please, cold, hot, dog, drink, eat, nurse, milk, bubbles, hat, cereal, moon, dad, and mom.

He seems to understand the signs for: sit, shoes, socks, no, yes, go, stop, cheese, cookie, spoon, close, open, in, out, door, share, apple, banana, story, kiss, help, sleep, bed and perhaps a few others that don’t come to mind.

He says: mom/mommy, dad/dada, Eeyuh (Ian), a somewhat Hebrew-sounding Isaac, ‘ere (here), no, nur (nurse), uh-oh, hi, hey, don’t, no do, ea’ (eat), hair, down, um (up), ni ni (night night), makes a doggy sound and a number of other sound effects. He is pretty accurate with his repetition of speech sound and cadence. Sometimes he can even whistle. I’ve been so tickled lately by his “grown up” babble; He gets his tongue really involved in the talking and it’s so amusing to watch. He throws back his head in a mock belly-laugh.

One of his favorite games is to chase his brothers from mom’s or dad’s arms. We hold him out and run after the big boys and Elijah belts out a villainous “wah ha haaa!” He’s pretty fearless. He’s been climbing to the top of our stairs almost as long as he’s been crawling. He stands precariously at the top yelling for help down, or bombing us with toys from the catwalk. He will sit and do shape-sorter toys or carry a bowl around filled with toy eggs, and other container-filling activities, but he’s always busy being busy. When we got him a riding toy, his first instinct was to use it like a kick scooter. He loves to run outside and scale the hills out back. One time he made it up into the woods and was army crawling backwards through them and back down the hill into our yard. He insists that I sit him on his brother’s balance bike and zoom him through the house. He follows his brothers across the hop scotch game, trying to will himself into the air with each step.

He’s very friendly, running over to fellow restaurant patron’s tables to say “hah.” In the store, he waves “hey” to people we pass. As long as he’s securely in mom’s arms, or exploring on his own terms, he’s quite sociable. If I turn him over to someone, he gets pretty dramatic, and the bottom lip comes waaay out. He’s every bit as stubborn as he is happy.

Right now, he has a waffle fragment in one hand and a clothes pin in the other. He’s making a big show of throwing them to the ground, while he looks at me in disbelief, saying “oh no,” and other infantile musings. Then he picks them up and proudly shows me how he saved the day, before throwing them back down to poke his waffle with the clothes pin.

Why is everything he does so STINKIN’ CUTE!? I just want to squeeze him and chew his ears!