Our pediatrician was very pleased with how well Eli is doing. Eli has stayed fairly consistent in terms of growth: tall and thin. He weighs 23.5 lbs (55th percentile) and is just about 32 inches tall (90th percentile). Apparently the other babies’ heads didn’t grow quite as quickly as Eli’s though as he is now in the 97th percentile. This probably helps explain why he’s such an excellent linguist. The doctor called him a precocious child and we had to agree. About a month ago he started actually talking and he now says about 10-12 words (the amount of your average 18-month old). He says the basics, like “mama”, “dada”, and “hi” but also “ba” (for sheep), “cheese” (his favorite food), “ball”, “mail” (we have two toy mailboxes), “belly button” (sounds like “bebo”), “down”, “vroom” (for his toy cars), “balloon” (sounds like “boon”) and he says and signs “done” and waves and says “bye”. It seems like every day he learns a new word. And when he’s not saying words we recognize he’s still constantly babbling away. He’s quite the happy, chatty little boy.

As this past month was the month of snow, we weren’t able to get out much but we’ve been having a blast at home with Eli. Unfortunately due to the snow, we had to have a scaled-down version of Eli’s first birthday party. Eli continues to cruise all over the place and has even begun trying to climb up the couch and his large toys. He is not walking independently yet, but he loves to use his lion push-toy to walk around the house. This week he’s started taking steps while holding our hands and for the first time today he took two steps completely on his own (from the couch to me).

This month Eli has also decided to expand his palette. He suddenly loves whole blueberries and grapes and bananas (he only barely tolerated them before) and will eat pretty much anything he sees us eating. Soon we’ll be introducing Eli to peanut butter but the doctor said no shellfish for a while, so no crab cakes for Eli for some time. We started weaning Eli from breastfeeding and began transitioning to whole milk on his first birthday. It’s gone pretty smoothly and he now nurses just once in the morning and the rest of the day he gets regular, whole milk from a sippy cup with one bottle before bed.

We were afraid that we’d have to report that Eli still only had two teeth, but his third tooth finally popped through last weekend. There seem to be a whole slew of teeth ready to break out, which should make this a fun teething-month.

Sleep has continued to go well. Eli continues to go to bed between 7 and 7:30pm and wakes up around 7am. Some days he takes two 1.5 hour naps and others he skips his morning nap and sleeps for 2-2.5 hours in the afternoon.

This will be the last monthly update and elephant pictures we’ll be doing – we’re switching to quarterly updates so we’ll update again at 15-months. As usual, Nicole’s SmugMug site has all the January pictures and his 12-month elephant pictures and February photos, but here are three great shots of little Eli (click to see bigger):

Here’s how Mozilla describes the Add-on Collector:

Discover more of the best add-ons and organize your favorites in easy-to-manage collections. Subscribe to see how the collections you admire grow, and fans follow when you manage and update your own collections.

At first, I assumed this meant I could subscribe to lists (aka collections) of Firefox add-ons and have changes to those collections pushed to me. The truth is that it only half works like that.

Yes you can subscribe to collections of add-ons. And yes you will be notified when those collections change. So far so good. But the Add-On Collector provides no way for you to easily install all the add-ons from a collection. You still have to install each add-on one by one, manually. It even asks you to restart after each one (hint: you can wait until you’ve installed all of them before restarting).

I assume Mozilla didn’t think installing add-ons automatically was a good idea for security reasons. Imagine if the publisher of a popular collection quietly added a “Steal all your info” add-on to the list and then cackled as all his subscribers’ browsers auto-installed it. So it makes sense that the Add-On Collector doesn’t auto-install add-ons. But there’s not even a button to “Install All” when you subscribe to a collection (or “Remove All” when unsubscribing). Subscribing to a collection just shows you the list of add-ons and it’s up to you to go install them or not.

In addition, you have to register for a Mozilla account in order to add or manage subscriptions. Your subscriptions are stored on Mozilla’s servers. There’s no option to keep everything local on your machine. This isn’t a big deal, but it’s kind of a pain. Ideally after installing the Add-On Collector I could just start using it immediately without jumping through more hoops.

Overall, I’m a little disappointed in the Add-On Collector but it’s still better than nothing. It’s not an end-to-end solution for add-on installation and management. But once you have a Mozilla account (and remember to log in), it’s great for add-on discovery and for organizing your favorite add-ons.

You can install the Add-on Collector (which is itself a Firefox Add-on) from this page.

Once it’s installed, check out my “Can’t Browse Without” collection of add-ons. Or browse other popular collections.

Eli has been cruising all over the place (standing and walking sideways while holding on to things) and he has even started climbing and standing on things (like toys, boxes, etc.).  Last month he would play peekaboo or hide and seek if we hid from him, but now he now will hide and wait for us to find him (usually behind a toy or ducking behind the coffee table).  He recently started waving, “giving five”, and he can push his train around the floor.  He climbed up stairs for the first time this month and he’s also started dancing and bouncing to music or when we sing or clap.  He has so much energy, at least until nap time.

Eli is starting to eat more table foods now.  Cheese is still his favorite by far, in fact we give it to him as dessert.  He also eats ham and turkey lunch meat as well as a little bit of meatballs and chicken.  He isn’t too keen on feeding himself fruit and veggies but loves them as a puree.  He will feed himself sweet potato fries, banana, prunes, and small pieces of dried fruits.  Just yesterday he started eating cheddar pasta with veggies, but if the veggie pieces are too big or not stuck to the pasta he’ll spit them out (baby steps, baby steps). We’re still trying to teach him how to use a sippy cup on his own but he’s getting better at it every day.  

I don’t want to jinx us, but Eli was a great sleeper last month.  He has been sleeping through the night again (for the last 5-6 weeks) and the week before Christmas he started sleeping even longer.  He now goes to bed between 7p and 7:30p and he sleeps until around 7am.  And best of all, he puts himself to sleep at bedtime and for naps with minimal fussing. While we’re a little sad that he doesn’t want to be rocked to sleep anymore, it’s made a world of difference stress-wise.

Nicole and I have also recently been abandoning entrusting Eli to a babysitter which has allowed us to get some adult time in with our friends.  We put Eli to bed and go out after he is asleep while paying the babysitter to basically just listen to the monitor. At some point soon we’d like to try leaving him with a sitter (non-relative) when he’s awake but I’m not sure if he or we are ready for that yet.

Eli now has two sharp little teeth! Seriously, they’re like razor blades, and only slightly crooked.

You can find our pictures from December and more elephant pictures on Nicole’s SmugMug site

How Beckham Blew It from SportsIllustrated: this one is a little old (it’s from June) but it’s a fascinating read on how David Beckham failed as captain of the LA Galaxy and instead alienated his teammates and allowed his cronies to mount a takeover of the team.  This article is an expert from a new book by Grant Wahl, senior writer for SI, called The Beckham Experiment: How the World’s Most Famous Athlete Tried to Conquer America. It’s a fascinating read for any fan of Major League Soccer.

Science, Civilization And The Noble Savage In Space from NPR: there have been a million articles recently about James Cameron’s new movie ‘Avatar’, but this article is interesting because it examines one of the movie’s central themes, the ‘noble savage’ and what it says about our own culture.  Also, if you haven’t already done so, subscribe to NPR’s new science blog, 13.7 Cosmos and Culture.

Whaddaya Mean Obama Hasn’t Done Anything? from Esquire: an interesting examination of what Obama has accomplished in 2009 and why both the left and the right only want to focus on the things he hasn’t done instead of his actual achievements, which include items from both the liberal and conservative side. Turns out Obama has achieved a fair amount – give the guy some credit!

Falkland Islands Government guilt in Supreme Court for Human Rights Abuse by Falklands.net: this article delves into the shocking behavior of the Falklands Island government to silence, threaten and harass an environmental conservationalist investigating the deaths of hundreds of thousands of penguins due to the government’s self-serving policies. After reading this, you’ll be shocked to learn that, as the article states,

“… such a corrupt regime operates under the protection of the British government… British servicemen gave their lives in 1982, under the false belief that they were upholding democracy. These servicemen made that sacrifice to ensure that the people of the Falklands would have the right to lead their lives free from political tyranny; free to hold beliefs and opinions without oppression. It is ironic that 22 years after British troops died for democracy in the Falklands, that a British citizen would be forced to flee the Falklands to escape political corruption and death threats, to seek democracy and freedom of speech in Argentina.”

How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room by the Guardian: this behind-the-scenes account of the final hours of the Copenhagen Climate Talks describes how China was able to destroy any chance of a meaningful agreement in such a way that the western nations would take all the blame.  According to the writer who was present during the final negotiations between heads of state, China employed a variety of Machiavellian strategies to ensure that it achieved its goals without appearing as the bad guy.  It’s a sad and cautionary tale – hopefully western nations will learn to be bit more strategic when they engage in multilateral talks with China in the future.  At the very least they should read a Tom Clancy book or two.

And last, if you were snowed in this past week like me due to the biggest December snowstorm to hit the mid-atlantic since 1932, you’ll enjoy reading How Did This Happen? by the Capital Weather Gang.  Learn how a “convergence of factors stretching from the North Pole to the equator” created such a powerful storm and how they may continue to affect our weather all winter.