KK is 17 months old!

Funny, funny, funny! Oh, how this beautiful little girl makes us laugh! Tonight she was turning in circles for no apparent reason other than she figured out that she could. She made herself dizzy and fell down - then tried to get up only to stumble and fall over sideways, only to get up and stumble and fall over sideways the other direction. It looked like she had taken a few sips of Daddy's gin and tonic! Daddy and I were laughing so hard! She still likes to make funny faces and has recently started to "act sneaky." She'll look at me with a mischeivious smile and slowly walk behind me to "hide." When I turn my head around to look at her, she'll give me a toothy grin or do something else goofy and we both just crack up.

KK's repertoire of words is huge now. She even says one sentence consitently when we're cleaning up toys, "Put'it waaay!" She always makes an effort to repeat any word we say. She likes to name colors ("yeyyohh" for yellow is the cutest!) and counts "two! three!" after we start her off with "one." She often surprises me by blurting out a new word seemingly on her own. Tonight she was drinking apple juice out of the little Gerber bottle and she pointed to the label of the bottle and said "apple" plain as day. It caught me a little off guard. I know that in a few months she'll be talking our ears off, and she learns new things from different people every day, so a new unprompted word shouldn't surprise me - but it does! Every new thing she does seems like a miracle to me!

KK is also really good at learning names and remembering who people are. After being introduced to a small group, she can point to each person when you ask her 'who is who' an hour later. On Christmas, Uncle Ray walked into the room and she happily said "Hi Ray!" and I had never heard her use his name unprompted before. Again, normal stuff in general. To me, a little miracle.

We've still been casually working on the potty chair thing. Sometimes she likes sitting on the potty, other times she screams and cries and won't even try. Either way, she's never produced anything so we still have a long way to go. No hurry though.

Food. I'd like to skip this topic, but I won't ignore our struggles. KK likes cheese. Lots of cheese. Sometimes she'll allow a banana to be thrown in with her cheese. Maybe a cheese covered banana would add a little variety to the menu. Seriously, she does love cheese and bananas but she will eat other things when the mood strikes her. She still won't eat chunks or pieces of most fruits and veggies. Except corn. One. Kernel. At. A. Time. (And bananas, of course.) She will eat pureed fruits and veggies, though, so we still offer those for nutritional value. We also introduced peanut butter and everything went well. (Uncle T is allergic, so we were a bit cautious.)

Utensils haven't gone over well either. When left to her own devices she'll feed most of her food to BuddyBuddy, so we tend to feed her ourselves more than we should. Some good news is that she is down to only one bottle a day (at bedtime) and along with practicing using utensils, we'll be working on transitioning exclusively to a sippy cup over the next month. Wish us luck.

KK is a delightful little person to be around. She is becoming quite the Daddy's girl and they have been spending lots of time together lately. We are both completely and totally smitten with her, and she has us wrapped around her fingers.

Happy 17 month birthday KK! We love you!