Cora - Eight Months Old

My petite, blonde haired, brown eyed girl is eight months old. What words best describe Cora? Tiny, curious, mellow, and independent.

Tiny. Cora is slightly below average in the height department and quite a bit below average in the weight department.

Curious. She has mastered the army crawl/baby scooch and spends her days exploring everything from the flowers on Grace's shoes to the underside of her exersaucer to the holes in her knitted baby blanket.

Mellow. Cora is a pretty even-keeled baby and is usually happy and content.

Independent. But, you've got to give her space to do what she wants to do. Especially with eating. So much for neatly spoon-feeding purees. Cora insists on feeding herself and does a very messy job of it.

Cora used to be practically silent all day, but in the last month, she has now found her voice and has started babbling. She also understands a lot. If I say, "Cora, where's Grace?" She looks all around for her until she spots her. If Michael is holding her and she gets fussy from hunger, all he has to say is, "Are you hungry for mommy?" And she calms right down because she knows he's gotten the message. If we repeat a word, she will copy it. i.e. "Cora, this is a banana. Banana! Can you say banana?" "BUH-NUH." "Good job!" And this of course leads me to think my child must be a brilliant genius. :)

In the last couple months she also got her first little teeth. Woop, woop!

Cora's favorite things

• Water. Drinking it, splashing it, bathing in it.
• Playing with mommy's hair, daddy's hair, and Grace's hair. There have been many exclamations of "Cora! No grab Grace's hair!" around our house these days.
• Cora continues to be absolutely enamored with her older sister. 
• Nursing. Cora would probably nurse every hour during the day and three times a night if I let her. She loves snuggling, playing with my hair, grabbing fistfuls of my lips, etc. It's very sweet.
• Cora has a magnetic attraction toward things babies aren't supposed to play with like wires, strings, and plastic bags.

Every night, she sleeps from about 7:45-7:15 with one wake up to nurse sometime between 4am and 6am. She takes two naps a day ranging anywhere from 40 minutes to 2.5 hours. She nurses seven times a day and eats three extremely messy meals of solids.

Here's Cora at her baby dedication at church.

Here's Grace getting a temporary princess tattoo from my parents with Cora intently watching.