Teddy love

There's still no great progress on the walking front, as K will only walk a few steps if carefully stood up a few steps from me and she's encouraged to walk back into my arms. I'm sure she'll be running like mad in no time though.
Two nights ago, we finally saw K take a real liking to an inanimate object - she started noticing her teddy bears and giving them hugs. It was so sweet to see her clutch two of them to her chest and squeeze tight. She'll also grab them and bend over and hug them while lying on top of them. The next morning, one of the teddy bears was the first thing she reached for when she was picked up out of her crib. Yesterday DH said he saw her put her soft baby doll down on her changing pad, and today she hugged her doll and patted it on the back. So cute!
K finally started saying "papa" instead of only "dada" yesterday. "Mama" hasn't been heard in months around here though. At least with the amount of clinging she does to my legs, begging to be picked up, I know that I'm still in favour, even if she doesn't say my name.
She's also finally showing off her ability to turn around and crawl downstairs backwards. Our nanny has been working on that with her, but I haven't seen her do it consistently until yesterday. She got to the one step down to our front door from the dining room and stopped herself to turn around and crawl backwards to the edge of the step and stand up on the next level down. She proceeded to make it backwards down most of the stairs to the basement too, which was quite impressive. Hopefully she'll soon start to notice when she's at the edge of a piece of furniture and will climb off that carefully too.
We're so impressed with how well K eats these days. She still gets 3 bottles a day, plus 3 meals and 2 snacks. It's unbelieveable the amout of food she can stuff down at times. She loves pasta with tomato sauce, liked the chili I made last week, and adores asparagus and fish. She's not a fan of oranges or canteloupe, but she'll eat pretty much anything you give her. I guess we should enjoy this while it lasts, because I keep hearing she'll start getting pickier soon. She's certainly getting more demanding and vocal about getting her own way about things, which is (at this point) fun to see.