Bye bye bottle

Our little girl is growing up. She had her last bedtime bottle on Sept 23rd. I didn't realize that was going to be it at the time, so I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I would have otherwise.
I wasn't even really intending to stop the bottle, because when I looked up the study that our doctor was referring to (about babies who drink from a bottle at 18mo being more obese at 5.5 years old), I didn't find it was likely going to be all that applicable to us. The study actually asked whether the children were still drinking from the bottle during the day or before bed at age 2, and found some correlation to an increased chance of obesity at 5.5. Where they got the 18 month cut-off from in their conclusions, I'm not too sure. K wasn't going to bed with a bottle, nor was she drinking 8 oz before bed. They thought the increased obesity might be due to the children just getting too many extra calories from large amounts of milk in the bottles.
At any rate, though we still have a bit of a challenge with getting milk into K from sippies or straw cups, she was in such a good mood on Sept 24th that I decided I'd see how she'd do with drinking her milk from a straw cup while we read her bedtime stories. It took ages to get it into her, and she couldn't really read and suck at the same time, but finally, we got there. After that, I decided it would be worse to confuse her by going back to the bedtime bottle, and so we made the switch. We've been slowly tweaking things - now we start giving her her milk right after dinner, so that we can slowly give it to her while she's playing. Then we get changed for bed, take the vitamin D, read books, brush teeth, and go to bed. Getting rid of the bottle hasn't made the process much harder. In fact, I'd say she's even more likely to lean over towards her crib to get put to bed as soon as I take her into her room, whereas before, she'd still be all cuddly and snuggly from the bottle and would want to be held for a couple minutes before leaning over to her crib.
Her speech seems to be progressing in leaps and bounds now. I'm losing track of all her new words. About a week or so ago, we pointed to a chunk of cheese in one of her books, only to have her point to the little mouse sitting beside it and say "Maus" (=mouse). She really loves finding all the mice in that particular book now. She'll say "Kaese" (= cheese), "Baubaer" (= blueberries), "Erbaer" (= strawberries), "Kispie" (Rice Krispies), "eerio" (cheerios), "mehr" (=more), "Fliege" (= airplane), hat, "Shush" (= shoes), "Bau" (= belly), "Brus" (= breast), "Hals" (= neck), "Shos" (= lap), "nee" (= nooo), "Yesh" (yes), "No" and "Nein" (= no), "Mil" (= milk), "Fisch" (= fish), "Ball", "eyesh" (eyes), "nos" (nose), "teet" (teeth), "duck", "eyesh" (eyes), "nos" (nose), "Opa" (= Grandpa), and "Puppe" (= doll). It's pretty cool when she now says Puppe for what she used to call baby, because we know she's been listening to us and taking things in. When we point to the pants or T-shirt in one of her books, she'll pull on her pants or shirt, rather than repeating the word. She says "Hallo" and "Bye-bye" very sweetly at times, but seems less interested in saying them to other kids when we prompt her to. Hopefully she won't turn out as shy as I was.
She's definitely getting her own little mind now. She'll sit down in the middle of a street crossing when you insist she holds your hand. She's getting to be more against brushing teeth, though I'm still winning that battle. She absolutely takes after me when it comes to eating, as she'll get frantic when she sees something she likes on someone else's plate and sees that it's disappearing fast. She really loves to eat some strange things: olives, capers, pickled ginger, sushi, wasabi peas, seaweed and miso soup. It seems odd to me that she'll love to eat that stuff, but many fruits just leave her cold.
She's very loving, giving lots of kisses when asked (and sometimes just out of the blue). She'll walk up and give your leg a hug, and occasionally wraps her little arms around your neck nice and tight for a quick squeeze. She gives her teddies and baby lots of hugs and kisses too. The latest thing is for her to put a teddy on my lap when I'm sitting cross-legged on the floor and then sit on top of teddy's lap herself. She also likes to try to give teddys and dolls some of her water or milk as well. It's very sweet!
I put her back in a Gro.bag against DH's wishes when the weather started getting colder again. He was sure she wouldn't sleep well in it. In fact, she's sleeping a little longer again now, and now he's pretending to claim that it was his brilliant idea in the first place.
Both bottom molars are all the way through now, and the top ones each have an edge through. I hope they'll finish erupting soon, and that maybe then she won't keep sucking on her two poor fingers as much. They're in her mouth constantly the last few days, and she won't take them out when we ask her to any more.
K's almost impossible to photograph or video any more, because as soon as she sees a photo or video being taken, she reaches over and starts saying "Baby" really loudly. Because she wants us to show her the baby on the screen. She loves seeing photos or videos of herself.
Almost-19-months is a pretty darn fun place to be!
ETA: She now weighs 12kg (stable or slighly down from a couple weeks ago) and is 85cm tall at nearly 19 months.