About two months later, and she really hasn't added to her vocabulary. She still says "night-night" at bedtime, but that's about it. Though we've come to realize that she understands quite a bit, and definitely expresses her preferences. She knows "where is" her head, and nose, and ears, and tummy, and belly button. She likes pointing out the lamps. And lot of other stuff. She knows how to hug, and "pet (something) nice". Usually with those ones, she makes a little vocal coo, "aww...". I've been teaching her that mostly to keep her from aggravating Enya and Bella.

Just a few days ago she picked up shaking her head "no", and it's rather changed mealtime and TV watching. She definitely knows what she wants. We're leveraging that into a "yes" as well, but she isn't quite as reliable at that. Vera taught her about whispering and yelling, she can't do either one but yelling to her is throwing her arms up in the air.

About two weeks ago she really started walking around. She had been standing up pretty good for a couple months; on her birthday she stood up long enough to take pictures, but just barely. I don't remember exactly when she took what we called her first steps, but it was in the kitchen. We found that she would take steps if she had something in her hands, and one of her favorite things is digging through the low drawer of kitchen implements and choosing her favorites. Vera discovered that if she sat just a few steps away, Amber would bring her each kitchen tool one by one, walking the way there and back. She doesn't like to fall down, so mostly she would stick to crawling if she wanted to get somewhere.

But a couple weeks ago she noticed how useful walking is, and is doing a lot of it now. She still doesn't like to fall down, so if she does that a few times she'll usually go back to crawling. But she is walking clumsily all over now. And climbing, whenever she can.

She also discovered, quite on her own, about lifting heavy things. She really likes it. I think the first thing was a bag of bird seed that she found, and she got quite a joy out of picking it up. I encouraged her with "oh that looks heavy, grrrrr!" and now if anything is a little bit heavy, or if I tell her it looks heavy, she grabs it with both hands and lifts it up very enthusiastically.