When I’m not busy abandoning/starving* her, Caroline is still the sweetest baby ever. Notice I didn’t say “most cooperative” or “easiest” or “least likely to shatter your eardrums” because damn, that girl knows what she wants when she wants it and is not shy about screeching until she gets it. You’re eating a grape? How DARE you eat a grape! GIVE ME THAT GRAPE!

Speaking of grapes, Caroline eats ANYTHING. An-eeeeee-thing. The only thing holding her back is missing chompers – she only has two full teeth (the bottom front two) and one little sharp edge on the top, so chewing up her spicy pulled pork sandwich was a little difficult. But by golly she gave it her best shot! Her favorite things so far are mini pretzels, clementines, apples, and cheese sticks. She also decided to tolerate a spoon, so I bought a bunch of those sqeezey pouches and the little spoon attachment for them (GENIUS, amirite?) but feeding her like that takes so much…effort. Baby-led weaning for the lazy parenting win.

Despite all the eating she remains a tiny peanut sized baby, wearing mostly 3-6 month onesies and 6 month dresses. In public, strangers stop to tell me she’s so LITTLE and how can she possibly be SITTING UP in that shopping cart, since she can’t be more than 4 or 5 months old?! It blows their mind that she’s 8 months old, and then their minds are doubly blown when she smiles at them and her cuteness lasers shoot out of her giant eyes and they fall right over dead from adorable. She’s a lady-killer – especially elderly ladies at the grocery store.

I think being tiny is working to her advantage in the motor skills department. Her lack of chub makes her body easier to haul around, which explains her lightening speed crawling and her independent standing skills. THAT’S RIGHT. My eight-months-old-today baby will crawl to something, pull herself up, and then just….let go and stand. I’m only a little ashamed to admit I’ve started knocking her over (GENTLY AND LOVINGLY, OBVS) so she doesn’t get any ideas about walking, but her balance is amazing and sometimes she refuses to be knocked.

I’m betting she takes her first steps in less than 3 weeks – which would put her a full month ahead of her brother when it comes to walking (Little Evan started at 9 months, 3 weeks and I thought that was INSANE). I’m going to have two babies running in opposite directions within a month. HOLD ME.

Being attacked by a toddler in a tutu is just part of her day

Ok, so she has some KIND OF chubby bits

Someone's quickly losing patience with these monthly photo shoots

8 Month Milestones (from BabyCenter, as usual)

Mastered Skills (most kids can do)
Says “mama” or “dada” to parents (isn’t specific) – Her babbling has really picked up and she says mama and dada, but I don’t know if it’s TO a parent.
Passes objects from hand to hand – Yes

Emerging Skills (half of kids can do)
Stands while holding onto something – Pulls up, stands, LETS GO. I’m signing her up for tightrope lessons for her first birthday.
Crawls – She’s a crawling machine.
Points at objects – Uh….no. I have seen no pointing. Mostly she just goes and gets what she wants.
Searches for hidden objects – Yeah, like my iPhone. You CANNOT HIDE IT FROM HER.

Advanced Skills (a few kids can do)
Pulls self to standing, cruises – Yes
Picks things up with thumb-finger pincer grasp – She can pick up small things (goldfish crackers, half a grape, bits of dog hair) and get them in her mouth, but it’s mostly a grab-with-her-fist-and-shove method.
Indicates wants with gestures – Yes, if by “gestures” you mean “high pitched pterodactyl screams”.

I will try to get some videos of Caroline doing adorable Caroline-like things this weekend, because there is no way to describe in words how weird it looks when such a TEENY TINY baby chases you down and climbs your leg.

*My supply is back to normal and I’m hoping to re-build my freezer stash ASAP. I’m SO relieved.

Sunday:

Lazy parenting 101: Babies love feet

Lazy Parenting 102: Beach balls rarely break things in the house

Lazy Parenting 201: Forget that strawberries are one of those food you're maybe not supposed to give an infant. Infant is fine.

Monday:

Don't worry, children, you won't be trapped inside today

Lake Compounce!

Now he needs a teeny tiny leather jacket

If I had remembered to bring my knitting, this traffic would have been a lot less annoying. For me. E was driving.

Tuesday:

Angry Birds on the iPad

Angry Birds in real life. They're scary.

Demanding we walk down to see the vegetables at Town Farm

  So I fed him to a pit bull. Just kidding. Big Boy is a very nice dog.

Wednesday:

Watcha doin' mama? Can I play? Can I can I can I?

Get me out! I think he's gonna poop!

Thursday:

Jazz Hands!

Hanging at the lake, stuffing pickled cabbage into his face. You know, normal toddler stuff.

Caroline is "pre-loving" the projects I'm knitting

Friday:

Hotness. Literally, it was really hot & I was at Stroller Strides.

Awesome lunch: homemade black bean & corn salsa, avocado and crab in a sundried tomato wrap. Low fat & SUPER filling.

Hung out at the yarn shop all day & managed to finish my shawl

Saturday:

YARD SALE YARD SALE! It looked promising but whoever priced all the junk seems to think "old and broken" meant the same thing as "pricess antique"

My friend Miranda blogged about these, so when I saw them on clearance I HAD to buy them.

I got my hair trimmed, and then took this picture with the AC blowing in my face for maximum Cosmo cover effect. Ask me for my 10 tips to make your crush think about you while he's on vacation!

 Whoa, three pictures of myself? What is this, The Suzanne Show? I promise next week I’ll focus more on the ginger babies because that’s what you come here for. Oh, wait, that’s a total lie because this is the week I ABANDON MY CHILDREN so I can go pretend I am a Fancy Business Woman in the Blogging Industry with Influence Over Important Things Who Also Wears High Heels and Earrings. (More accurate title: super awkward scaredy pants mom of two whose only goal is not to throw up on anyone for any reason.) But AFTER I get back from San Diego I’ll be taking so many pictures of the babies you’ll practically feel like you live with them too.

Did you take any camera phone photos this week? Link up with one or lots using the linky below and grab the code (so it shows on your blog too!) over at Amy’s . It’s really fun!

We went to the Sunflowers for Wishes event last year (with teeny tiny Evan – seriously, he looks like such a BABY in those pictures) and it was really fun but crowded and hot and although it mades a great photo op I wasn’t sure I wanted to try it with two babies. But Sunday was a little overcast with predicted showers so we headed out right when they opened for the day and it wasn’t too warm or crowded. Plus, ice cream made it totally worth it.

Buttonwood Farms

Even better, I had mentioned our plan to my two best mama friends (mamas to Little Evan’s two best toddler friends) and we ran into both of them before we got on the hayride! I love having real life friends and I love that we’ve lived here in Connecticut long enough that we often just “run into” people I know when we’re out doing stuff (Except of course when I run into my OB at the grocery store in my pj’s. True story.)

Hayride! They gave us hay to feed the cows this year and the toddlers LOVED it.

Little Evan was ready to throw his entire body out of the wagon to get closer to the Cow-Moos.

Cow-Moo. Don't you love his coloring?

I put E in charge of pictures because of his fancy new photography class skills, but unfortunately for all he’s learned about aperture and focus and ISO, he still doesn’t have an eye for (what I consider) PRETTY pictures. I think the technical term is “composition” or maybe “figuring out how to zoom so you cut the strangers out of the background.” He also sucks at getting the kids to LOOK AT THE DAMN CAMERA. I’m looking forward to Caroline being slightly more self-sufficient so I can take control of the camera again without a baby trying to eat the lens.

At least you can see Caroline's adorable sunflower clippie. I'm wearing one too. MATCHING SUNFLOWERS OMG WE'RE TOO CUTE FOR LIFE.

And now no one is looking at the camera. But I have cute hair, so I'm posting it anyways.

Sunny Baby!

That's the SMALL tractor wheel

Amelia declared the tractor DIRTY but Evan tried to convince her it was cool

And then it was time for ice cream. Amen.

So what if she's not my kid? She's adorable!

Bouquets

She drew a crowd with her cuteness and she loved it.

I love my ginger baby

I will just stop now before I post the other five dozen shots of sunflowers in fields

If you’re seeing this and thinking “Oh no! We didn’t go this weekend!” don’t worry! You’ve got all week to go take your own gorgeous sunflower photos. I highly recommend 10 am sharp as the best time of the day.

The clippies Caroline and I are wearing came from Audry & Ulric, who I’ve written about as one of my favorite handmade shops before. The wonderful Samantha sent them to us as a lovely surprise thank you for mentioning her in my post last week. Isn’t she sweet?! I can’t even tell you how many people stopped me to compliment them.

I want to start this post out by telling you that Caroline the best, cutest, smartest, most advanced baby ever in the whole world, but I know you would think I am just saying that because I am her mother and I am SUPPOSED to think she is the best and the cutest etc. And yes, that is true. But she also is a really, really awesome baby and if you were to come spend the afternoon with her you would also agree she is the best – except, of course, for your OWN baby, because obviously you feel the same way about your baby as I do about Caroline.

But I also don’t remember thinking these things about Little Evan as much. I thought he was the cutest and the best, but I was constantly worried he was behind in his development – not rolling soon enough or catching on in baby sign language class. Some of that was true – he did take longer to roll and crawl – but I suspect a lot of it was first-time mom worry-warting for no reason. In fact, I think I STILL spend a ton of time worrying that Evan might not be hitting his milestones as fast as other kids, while when I think about Caroline’s milestones I think “meh, she’ll get there.”

Wow, that was a lot of words to say what I really mean, which is Caroline is awesome. Other than refusing to take a bottle (ARG BLERG BLAH) she is the perfect baby – easy, predictable, happy, and a good sleeper. She gets up sometime between 5:30 and 7, takes a short nap almost exactly 2 hours later, is awake until around noon when she goes back down for her long afternoon nap (conveniently at the same time as Little Evan!). She wakes up again around 3 and is her happy, playful self when Daddy gets home from work and while I make dinner. We’ve started giving both kids a bath together right around 7 pm and Caroline is asleep before 8. She usually gets up to eat once at around 2 am, but occasionally needs me twice and even more occasionally she’ll sleep straight through. She still sleeps in the swing at night in our room, but it is broken and doesn’t actually swing anymore. I’m just too lazy to set up the pack’n’play. Mother of the year, right here. We run a nightlight and a white noise machine and the classical music on the swing for her to make up for it.

I have no idea how we fell into such a pleasant schedule so easily, but I suspect it had a lot to do with already HAVING a schedule with the toddler and Caroline being easy-going enough to just fit herself in. Sometimes I feel bad for that – I don’t want her to suffer from Second Child Inadequacy Issues – but she is so obviously loved by everyone she meets I think she’ll probably avoid therapy at least a few more years.

She is still kind of a peanut, wearing mostly 3-6 month clothes with an occasional 6-9 month sleeper or dress. I like to think she’s conveniently pocket-sized for those times I need to carry her while chasing a toddler across a playground. It’s nice of her to accommodate me like that.

Caroline’s favorite things include boobs, the dog, the cats, crawling, pulling up on things, eating mulch, swinging, Twinkle Twinkly Little Star, her brother, biting me with her one teeny tiny tooth and nomming on things. Dislikes include bottles, sippy cups, purees, falling on her face, the sun in her eyes and not being able to walk. It fills her with Baby Rage.

Other things that fill her with baby rage: being forced to pose for photo shoots. Although I may have gotten just a FEW shots to post. And by a few I mean a bazillion.

All my tutu pictures are out of focus, because she wanted to eat it.

There was a little girl, who had a little curl

You have a baby...in a camera bag!

7 Month Milestones (from BabyCenter, as usual. New chart this month!)

Mastered Skills (most kids can do)
Sits without support – Yes, easily. We’ve reached the “oh just set her anywhere” stage where I don’t worry about putting a pillow behind her.
Drags objects toward herself – Yes, although it’s much more likely she’ll move herself towards an object.

Emerging Skills (half of kids can do)
Lunges forward or starts crawling – Crawls like a champ. She can do both a regular baby crawl and a funny half-sitting monkey butt scoot, where she has one leg up.
Jabbers or combines syllables – I swear on a stack of Twilight books she’s started saying “Mama”. I wouldn’t bet any money she actually MEANS mama, but she can say it.
Starts to experience stranger anxiety – My kids have never met a stranger they wouldn’t go home with, although today at the park a friend tried to hold Caroline and she was NOT HAVING IT. So maybe?

Advanced Skills (a few kids can do)
Waves goodbye – No waving, but she can sign milk. Like I said, smartest baby ever.
Stands while holding onto something – Yes. Our hands, my leg, the couch, the bouncy seat. STANDING IS HER FAVORITE.
Bangs objects together – Well, she’s not going to be playing cowbell with the Blue Oyster Cult anytime soon but she could probably whack a couple sticks together if I gave them to her.
Begins to understand object permanence – If I am in a room and she is looking at me and I leave a room, she sometimes gets upset. She will crawl around a corner to look for me. But I don’t think she does that with anyone else, so it’s more likely “Oh no my food is too far away!”