8 months and babbling...

About a week ago, Karina stopped making her dinosaur sounds and grunts and started making more typical baby-like sounds, like babbling. Although she can do the "b", "d", and "g" sounds, she usually sticks to "ba ba ba..."
She is still a happy baby, that is, when she is not surrounded by strangers. It especially upsets her when the strangers come up to her to pinch her chubby cheeks. She still chews on everything that she can get her hands on.

Karina usually eats solids a couple times per day. After eating oatmeal cereal or wheat cereal/mush, she gets either pureed butternut squash, which she likes, or avocado, which she ADORES. She can eat quite a bit of avocado in one sitting. In the picture below, Karina's stuffed rabbit got a big smooch from her after Karina snacked on avocado. Karina still thinks that her older sister is the most entertaining thing on earth. And ever the ham, Eliana obliges more often than not. Here's a video that Elvin took while he and Eliana were pretend shopping. You can hear Karina, who is sitting on Elvin's lap, laughing at the jig that Eliana is doing while unloading her cart.
When a little bit frustrated, Karina communicates her displeasure by scrunching up her nose and snorting. We finally got it on video. Maybe all babies do this? Eliana did the same thing when she was a baby.

Karina still takes 3 naps a day. Usually, she'll take a short 30 minute nap 2 hours after waking up around 7am. Then she'll take a longer afternoon nap and a short late afternoon nap if everything works out right. But sometimes she resists her last nap, which makes for a very grumpy Karina during the evening.

A regular activity is walking down to the mailbox to grab the mail. In our neighborhood, all the mailboxes are in a centralized place about one block away. Here is Eliana enjoying the sun; can you tell that she picked out her outfit?

Unfortunately, Eliana fell down and skinned her knees on the sidewalk. This happens with regularity and we keep a supply of band-aids handy at all times. After they go on, the tears usually disappear.

A while ago, we bought Eliana a "very pretty" dress for Easter. Unable to wait for Easter, Eliana dragged her step stool from her bathroom, down the hall, and into our walk-in closet where the dress was hanging. (This was no small feat as the step stool probably weighs about one third her weight.). Then Eliana tugged on the dress until it came off the hanger, changed clothes, and presented herself. She even put on her fancy shoes. It's amazing to think that 2.5 years ago, she was just a baby!