"Where's your nose?"

It's getting harder to come up with new updates on K. Things are changing, but it's hard to nail down exactly when. She started being able to push herself up to stand and walk around while we were in Split on vacation. Before that she'd just sit there on the floor and reach up her hand for help standing up. A couple weeks later, she's so active and great at walking around. Her balance is way better, and she doesn't trip on her foam play area mats any more. She's even getting very close to running speed when she's walking around. The last week or so, she's really gotten into asking to be lifted up on the sectional, and then proceeding to stand up and terrify us by walking around on the couch. DH is convinced she's going to go flying off it, though I think she's getting to the point where she has better depth perception and should notice where the edge is.
She's still at 6 teeth and her hair doesn't seem to be getting too much thicker or longer at this point. I'm guessing she's about 11.5kg and 80cm now. Maybe I'll get a chance to weigh and measure her this weekend. Those numbers would put her up about the 90th percentile for height and weight. My chunky little girl! She has such a little beer belly, it's not funny.
Her language abilities seem to be improving. She hasn't added too many words to her vocabulary, I don't think, but she's understanding more and following instructions better. She opens her mouth to get her teeth cleaned each night when I say "Zeit zum Zaehne putzen". She even started pointing to her nose when we asked her "K, wo ist deine Nase?" on Sunday night. It's very cute. She babbles nonstop. DH was away on business last week, and she'd get so excited when he'd phone us at night to say hi. She'd stand in front of me, looking up at the phone and babbling, and often reaching for it. I'd put it on hands-free and hold it in front of her to talk, and she'd steal it and put it up to her ear while babbling a blue streak. One night, she even held it out in front of her and just kept saying "Papa, papa."
One of her favourite things to do these days is to get our keys and then stand at the inside front door, trying to get one into the lock. We'd better not dare to take the keys from her, or else a tantrum comes on pretty quickly. She also has taken to coming over to where I'm sitting on the floor and turns around to sit down on my lap, often with a book in hand to look at. I love it! She loves to walk up to you and try to push you over backwards so that you lie down and hold her on your chest to give her a snuggle (I managed to squish one of my bra hooks so much doing this that I could barely get the breastband open).
As far as food goes, K basically eats what we do. She enjoys lots of fruits and veggies, but is a real meat lover too. DH said she ate half a Bratwurst on Sat while I was away at a conference. Pasta's usually a top contender too. Favourite fruits continue to be blueberries and strawberries. I think she's finally starting to eat mango. Favourite veggies are broccoli, zucchini, and especially asparagus. She'll go through phases where she loves something for a few days, and then goes off it for a while. She loves beans too, and preferentially picks them out to eat first when we have chili.
She'll have her second last day of milk mixed with breast milk tomorrow, and her last day to have any breast milk will be on Jun 29th. I can't believe she's still getting breastmilk at 15.5 months, when they kept trying to get me to supplement her at 2 weeks. She's done great on the mix of homo milk and breast milk since she turned 1. I think I had her switched over to plain homo milk for a few days before our vacation and she was on that while we were away, but since we got back, we've been using up the last of our frozen stores. I wish I'd taken a photo of the deep freeze while it was pretty full of bags of milk. We took a couple photos of K holding the second last bag of frozen milk tonight when we took it out to thaw.
Thankfully I've found V.alue Vil.lage to shop at for K's clothes and shoes. I haven't bought anything new for her (aside from socks) in a long time. At first we were getting so much stuff from my brother and SIL, but they've now moved to Cali.fornia, so I don't think we'll be getting hand-me-downs any more. I'm now finding all this great stuff at VV though. Pants from The Childr.en's Pl.ace for $3.99. Shirts for $1.99. Shoes for $3.99. I had time after work on Friday and blew $130 on shoes and clothes. I saw that there was a 50% off day on Monday, but didn't want to wait to shop then because I figured a lot of the things I liked would be gone by then. Then today I stopped in to exchange a pair of shoes I got that are too small for her. Turns out they weren't taking exchanges, because of the sale. And who walked out of there with a trunk full of clothes for 2T-4T for $150? Yep, the shopaholic over here. I just can't turn down a good deal. Shoes for $2? Shirts for $1? It was dangerous. I left the stuff in the trunk, hoping to sneak it in when DH wasn't looking (because of course I was there for so long that I had to phone him to take over from our nanny because I was going to be late). No such luck - he decided to go shopping quickly after dinner, and came across all the stuff in the parking lot at the liquour store. Darn it! He wasn't too mad though, because he was still feeling guilty about feeling totally grumpy last night (which he phoned me at work to apologize for today). I'm sure I've bought her way too much stuff, but at least it wasn't crazy expensive. Second hand clothes are highly recommended!