Toddler Life: Cute Things Lexi Does (12-13 months edition)

Rather than doing monthly updates for the whole 2nd year of Alexis’ life, I decided that it would be much more fun and special to regularly write about all the cute new things she does. I will attempt to keep this a regular features and add things to it as she learns new things or blows our mind with the adorable things she can do.

CUTE THINGS LEXI DOES:

• When asked where something is, she always points to it if she sees it. However, when she doesn’t know what we’re asking about or doesn’t know where it is, she will thrust her arm forward with her finger pointed and show in random directions with a quizzical look in her eyes and a “uh!?”

• Alexis loves playing with a rubber ball. She grabs it, picks it up, kisses it, and throws it down, dribble-kicks it like a real soccer player while following it around. When we throw the ball to each other with her standing in the middle, she gets so excited. She gets a huge grin on her face and spins around trying to follow it and slaps her hands on her belly.
• When Lexi gets super excited, normal clapping won’t do, so she squats a little bit and starts slapping her knees in excitement
• She invented a sign for flying. It is used for birds, butterflies and when she is very excited. Often happens at mealtimes when everyone is watching her. She will shake her hands very fast in front of her in a flying motion with crazy excited eyes.

• A new skill that Lexi has been perfecting is walking backwards. She does a really good job an can walk backwards very fast. She tucks her chin in and starts backing up as fast as she can.
• A part of walking backwards has been backing into a wall. She’ll position herself parallel to the wall an slowly backup until she hits it. Then she squats a bit and starts slapping her hands on the wall.
• She’s figured out two ways of sitting down in chairs and on ledges. She would either climb up onto a surface and then carefully turn herself around. Or ( the cuter way) she cautiously backs up into where she thinks the chair is located, and the try to sit down. The thing is she hasn’t quite perfected going in a straight line, so often she veers away from the chair and misses it 🙂
• Her favorite word? You guessed it! DADA! (Mama is only said when she REALLY wants me). But the way she says it is the cutest thing is the world. She has this pretty angelic high voice and she always puts a questioning tone, like “DADA?” And then answers herself – DADA! She says it every time she sees her daddy or I mention him or I call him. It’s so cute, I have to make sure to catch it on video.

• About a month ago she started blowing kisses. I was perplexed because we’ve never blown kisses or shown that to her, so I figured she got it from her BFF, Lexi twin. Until I realized what she really does is signs THANK YOU! It’s cute because she will give me something and then sign thank you. She knows I always sign it after I ask her to give me whatever it is she is holding.
• Lexi has become a bit of a dictator here. She is asserting her will and independence  and it’s the cutest thing in the world. One of the ways she does that is by showing us what we need to. Like if she wants to be read a book, she will bring a book, sit down in our lap (forcefully if needed), then take one of our hands and place the book INTO the hand while saying “Eh! Eh!”
• Walking has been a huge blessing for her and her favorite activity ( besides being read to). She has been on her feet since the first day she went off running at the mall. She still doesn’t walk, she runs. But now running has gone from “I look like I am falling” type of running to a “I am a full fledged toddler and I pick up my feet and run completely vertically” type of running.
• Lexi can now confidently go up and down small steps on her own ( not full adult steps but little step ups). The cutest part is that she is always very cautious in front of step downs and step ups and if one of us is standing near her, she will look up at us and reach out to hold our hand for support. However if we’re not around, she makes sure she balances herself well and makes it just fine.
• She loves climbing up my body. I hold her hands and immediately she starting climbing up my body with her feet till I pick her up while laughing the whole time.

• She has also become pretty possessive of her bean bag chair that she now adores. If anyone is sitting there when she wants to be sitting, she will run up to them and either pull them by their clothing or push them from the back. The first time she did it, we couldn’t understand what she wanted, but she continued pushing and climbing into the chair, until silly mommy and daddy finally got it that they need to GET OFF HER CHAIR! Haha!
• Her true love, besides books, are the tiniest items she can find. She LOOOOOVES picking up anything that is so small you can barely see it. She’ll pick it up with her two fingers and then run proudly with her arm stretched out. And don’t try prying it from her fingers. Oh no, she’s so sneaky and she knows it!

• She still loves showing off if she can tell people are watching her. It’s truly the cutest thing to watch. You’d never know she is actually showing off if you don’t know “THE SIGNS”, because she doesn’t even look at you when doing it. As soon as she recognizes that someone starts praising her and watch her, he instantly turns away and runs to the first toy/item she can see and tries to do something “impressive” with it while saying a short “Ah!! Ah!”. She’ll throw toys behind her, put items on her head, lay down, put her legs in a funny position, run away, sit down, throw her arms around. All while not looking at you ( except for on occasion to make sure you’re watching). At some point she runs out of things to do, and she starts frantically looking around for something else she can show off with. She gets so into it that she’s hurt herself a few times ( fell, dropped a heavy toy on herself, etc)
• If you follow us on Vine or IG, you might have noticed a persistent theme when it comes to photographs of Lexi. Whenever we are outside, she ALWAYS feeds her lions. Yes, she got two lion statues as her pets and she happily runs outside and goes to pick flowers and leaves to bring to her lions. She feeds (read: shoves) the leaves into their open mouths and then pets them on the head. She can do it for a long time, running from one statue to the other.

Lexi is wearing:

Dress by Hippo Hula from Zulily ( you can add the brand to your favorites on Zulily and they will notify you when a sale starts)

Hair Bow by Hopscotch Boutique

Shoes by Pediped Footwear