Oh how I wish I could freeze time! 13 months old is the best age yet - hands down. Daphne is so flipping cute all the time that I keep getting 'cute aggression' where I want to eat her/bite her/crush her. Google it (or click the handy link I provided, heh) - I'm not a psycho, it's an actual thing, a response to when things are so cute you have to rebalance your emotions by feeling violent. Like laughing when you're nervous or crying when you're happy - it's weird brain stuff and totally normal. Interesting eh? But I digress... Here's how Daphne's is at 13 months...

So, the biggest and best change is: she is FINALLY SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT. From around 7pm (she goes down at 6.30pm) until 7am. Cue massive hurrahs, loads of gin, and me generally feeling like a normal human being again. I had forgotten what it was like, in all honesty. It's amazing what a decent night's UNBROKEN sleep can do. It is bloody wonderful. We no longer have the weird dream feed thing at 11pm, so I can go to bed early if I like and get some proper zzzzs in. Of course, I never do (go to bed early) because it's too exciting have unbroken evenings to sit around, write blogs, watch TV and read books. Bliss.

I don't really know what exactly got her to sleep through, to be honest, but I did start to leave her for a bit when she woke at 11pm for her feed, and I did gradually water it down, and reduce the amount, over about two weeks. Eventually she sort of got the message that it wasn't worth bothering to wake up for, but it did take a while and there were several false starts. I think one of the keys to all of this is giving her a massive dinner, which can be a challenge as she's generally not that hungry in the evenings (she eats like a starved dog at lunch). But we have managed to get her to eat lots of different things for dinner - finger food works best - which keeps her interested and generally means we can fill her up before she gets too whiny.

However, the sleeping through the night hasn't been completely consistent - mostly because of the hot weather. The days when we were dealing with 30 degrees outside and 28 in her room she woke up a few times in the night at random hours, which was quite stressful. Settling her when she wakes is actually really hard now because she only semi wakes up - and usually sits up in her cot - and yet she can't seem to lie back down and go back to sleep. But if I go in to 'help', she often gets freaked out and wakes up completely - I think I'm interrupting her in the 'zone' as it were, and although she can't settle herself, it makes it worse if I barge in there and pick her up. She'll start to scream and freak out, which is pretty horrible. And the only thing that will settle her in that situation is a bottle, which always scares me as I don't want to start the habit up again...

But now the weather's cooling down, fingers crossed we won't have any more sweaty wake ups. Of course, there's still teething, separation anxiety, learning to stand up in the cot etc etc to keep me on my toes so I am sure there are plenty of unbroken nights to come, but the main thing is the majority of the time now she's sleeping through and it is bloody marvellous. I've aged about five years in the last year and I swear it's all sleep related. Sigh.

Another achievement this month is that we've weaned her off formula. She now happily drinks cow's milk and doesn't even mind if it's cold from the fridge. We've got a carton of formula to finish off so she's still having that at bedtime, but I'm quite confident she won't miss it. I can't wait to get rid of the Tommee Tippee machine from the kitchen (although it has been a lifesaver and is highly bloody recommended). Next up, we have to wean her off bottles. I thought it was too risky (read: stressful for me) trying to do both bottles and formula at the same time. She has all her normal drinks from a beaker but milk is in a bottle. I know it's not great for her speech development and my mum keeps telling me that I stopped using bottles at six months so I *know* it's something we need to get on top of, but she gets so windy and burpy drinking large amounts from a cup that I'm a bit wary. Any tips appreciated!

Weaning off things seems to be the order of the day at the moment actually - we've also just managed to get her to give up her Sleepyhead in her cot. Another great hurrah. I'm going to write a blog post about my issues with the Sleepyhead so won't go into too much detail here about it, but it's been another struggle and I'm so glad we've got rid of the damn thing. I replaced it with Airwraps - her cot has bars so without the Sleepyhead she can easily get her arms or legs stuck. The Airwraps have gone down quite well - they're not at all squishy though so don't particularly protect from bumping herself against the bars. She was a little freaked out at first, not having her nice soft pillowy sides to snuggle up against but she seems happy now. Her latest bedtime habit is sitting up in the middle of the night, turning round and crawling to the other end, so that her head is at the foot of the cot. She can change positions about ten times a night without waking herself up (we have a video monitor so can spy on her) which is rather amusing.

What else what else... on the speech front, we're no further along, but I wrote about that in my last blog post. She makes loads of different sounds but nothing specific or consistent yet. She's started pointing, sort of, but she uses her middle finger not her index finger and doesn't fully extend it so not sure it counts?! But she can follow me pointing at something and she also definitely understands 'no' now, and will stop what she's doing for a second if she hears me do my 'stern voice'. Although it doesn't stop her going right back to doing it. Sigh. I read somewhere lately (probably a self-help book or something on PMA) that babies are the ultimate inspiration as when they want something, they Just. Don't. Give. Up. I guess that's how you progress through life, and something we forget to do as we age/get lazy? Ha! I'll leave you there on that unexpectedly philosophical note...