13 months and The Wheels on the Bus

I've been a slacker on Ethan's monthly updates. I don't even think I did one last month. Oops! So here's a rundown on Ethan's 13th month:

• I would officially say that he is WALKING! Altough he's been taking steps for a month and a half now, he wouldn't normally choose to do it. Now, it's finally his main mode of transportation. The only problem is that he still can't get to a standing position on his own. He has to pull up on something and then let go. So if he falls when he's walking, he has to crawl to get to where he can pull up on something, then he takes off again. It's actually kind of funny, but he needs to learn to stand up on his own!!!
• His eating habits are improving - still not great, but improving. You never know what kind of meal we'll have; some meals he eats fine, other meals it's torture! On Sunday he screamed bloody murder when I tried to feed him oatmeal and strawberries for breakfast, but then sucked on lemons nonstop at lunch at Texas Land and Cattle!
• He's now saying bye-bye! He loves to wave goodbye and say "bye bye!" Now in his vocabulary are: Mommy, Daddy, ball, uh-oh, bye-bye
• He's signing more words: all gone, more, bath, eat, milk, we're working on please and thank you - they're a bit more abstract!
• He loves to "give five"
• We're completely paci-free. We gave it up at naptimes at least a month ago, but still let him use it at bedtime. We actually gave that up a month ago too, but that only lasted 2 nights - he ended up getting sick and we felt bad so we gave it back to him.
• Ethan's adjusted extremely well to whole milk. We switched him the weekend of his birthday and never looked back! We still warmed it up for him, though, so we finally gave that up last weekend.
• He has been so silly and fun the past week or two, since he's been feeling better. Love it!
• He has started patting me on my back, just like I do to him. He snuggles up on my shoulder and pats me with both hands. It is just tooooooo precious!
• He's an outdoorsman - loves to play outside! Our new swingset should be delivered tomorrow, so we can't wait to put it together and play outside!!!!
• He still only has TWO TEETH!!!! Is something wrong with my child????

Okay, that's enough. I'll probably think of more later and will add on, though.

Oh, and by the way, my boy's a genius! Ethan and I love singing The Wheels on the Bus together. We have a book of it, so we read it too. He's learned to do the actions with me. He won't do all of them all the time, but he'll usually do 3 or 4 of the verses. What completely amazes me is that all I have to do is turn the page, and he recognizes from the picture what the action is supposed to be. Sometimes I won't even have started singing and he is already doing the actions. How smart is he????