Physical Development

Many parents are distressed to notice that their 1-year-olds seem to be losing weight. There's a good reason for this: Baby is so busy exploring that she hardly has time to eat! She's also more interested in feeding herself, a less efficient process than being spoon-fed. And she's developed definite preferences, sometimes refusing all foods except a favored few.

Luckily, neither the weight loss nor the change in eating habits is harmful. In fact, if your child continued to eat at the rate she did the first year, she'd grow into the Goodyear blimp! The frequent, small meals she's now getting meet her nutritional needs. Don't worry about a small weight loss. If you work out at the gym, you know that exercise converts fat into muscle and reduces overall body weight. And no one, including Olympic athletes, gets more exercise than the average toddler.

Social Development

Regressive behavior is the catchall term for temporary setbacks in baby's development. All children have these: The saying "Two steps forward, one step back" aptly--and sometimes literally--applies to toddlers. Regression most commonly occurs when your child is expending energy on emotional adjustment--for instance, when you go away for a night, or when her routine changes dramatically. The energy that she was using to master new skills is now applied to handling the (for her) cataclysmic change, and skills slip as a result. This is a temporary situation, and it'll improve as baby adjusts to the change. As she grows older, her emotional responses won't be quite so overwhelming, although even adults have been known to regress in moments of extreme tension.

Intellectual Development

Although he loves you both, your baby probably responds differently to her mother than to her father. Dads tend to smile and talk less than moms, but engage in more physical play. Depending on your baby's temperament, she'll either adore the roughhousing or be slightly nervous about it. Most babies, especially boys, love nothing more than being swung in the air or tossed over a shoulder by Dad.

Moms, dads, and siblings aren't the only recipients of baby's love at this point. She'll hug or lie on top of other toddlers, and will even behave tenderly toward her favorite toys. The capacity to love and nurture is a direct imitation of your behavior toward her, so take it as a compliment--it means you're one heck of a mom.

Note: The information above offers general guidelines, but all babies develop differently, and few hit their milestones precisely when the conventional wisdom says they should. If your child was born prematurely, you may want to use your due date as a baseline for following baby's development.