Eight Months Old

Spending each day with the girls, it's easy to forget how rapidly they are developing.

At eight months of age, each day brings new discoveries for the girls, and each day they show off new talents to us.

What is especially fun to watch is how each girl is really their own personality

Before I forget just how exciting each new daily discovery has been over the past month, I present to you: "Katherine & Caroline at Eight Months".

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KATHERINE
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Katherine on the whole is more easy-going (like Mommy). She will sit quietly, and likes to take her toys carefully in her hands and look them over carefully before playing with them.

The only exception to Katherine's mellowness is when she sees Mommy come home from work or first walk into a room. Then she cries until Mommy comes to hold her or kiss her.

Katherine's best friend after Caroline is her left thumb. She exclusively sucks her left thumb -- never her right. When she is very tired, she will suck her left thumb while holding a blanket to her right cheek with her right thumb. See "Linus & Katherine".

Katherine goes to sleep very quickly when you put her down. She usually sleeps straight through the night.

Katherine likes to eat. She is game to try just about anything you want to feed her.

Katherine is happy to hang out and play whatever games, or read whatever books you have for her. One of her favorite things to do, however, is to clap her hands along to whatever music you are playing.

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CAROLINE
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Caroline is the more fussy of the two (like Daddy). She took longer to learn to crawl, but has since become faster and quicker than Katherine. She grabs for her toys (unfortunately, even if someone else is holding it!) and likes to bang them on the hardwood floor and screech at the top of her lungs.

Caroline likes to play with Katherine. She will crawl over to Katherine and grab her face, pull her hair, or climb on her back to try to get attention. Katherine will patiently take this abuse, and calmly try to continue whatever it is she is doing!

Caroline sleeps restlessly. She will often whimper or cry numerous times before she settles down to sleep. Often, Daddy or Mommy will have to hold Caroline and walk her around a darkened house until she soothes herself to sleep. Even then, Caroline wakes up at least once or twice a night to feed or just be held.

Caroline has developed a number of games that she is very proud of having discovered on her own. They include:

• Shaking her head from side to side. If you copy her, she will burst out laughing.
  
• Squinting her eyes at you. Again, if you copy her, your reward is a hearty laugh.
  
• Covering her face with a burp cloth, then pulling it away quickly, and acting surprised to see you, then laughing hysterically (She just showed us this one tonight, much to our surprise and delight, and played it for a good 15 minutes. We've been playing peek-a-boo with her since birth, and so it was exciting to see her emulate something we've been doing with her a long time).

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THE DYNAMIC DUO
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Katherine and Caroline are now big enough to sit up, crawl, and even pull themselves onto their feet without assistance (getting down off their feet is still a bit of a challenge).

The girls will often spend up to 20 minutes playing with each other, oblivious to where Mommy and Daddy are. This has afforded Mommy and Daddy some precious down time to just sit and watch the girls, as opposed to being the center of attention all the time.

The girls favorite game to play together right now is to take small plastic balls in their hands and crawl around the hardwood floor, banging them on the floor. They will then toss the balls down the hallway and then race to see who can get to them first (To be honest, I'm not sure if they are tossing the balls on purpose, or if they just lose their grip on them while banging them on the floor!)

Another favorite game the girls like to play is to help with the laundry. It works like this: Mommy and/or Daddy fold all the laundry. As quickly as they fold the laundry, Caroline and Katherine try to unfold the laundry, or alternatively, crawl into the laundry basket. I think the girls like the warmth of clothes just out of the drier. In any case, they love the game:

We can unfold faster than you can fold.
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The girls now eat all manner of foods: vegetables, cereal, and CHEESE. They love Kraft American Cheese. I call them the "Cheese Queens."

Finally -- the girls favorite place to nap is the car, in their car seats. Often, they will fall asleep on the ride home from running errands and still be asleep when we arrive at home. We've learned that if we let them sleep, they are often good for a 30-60 minute nap. Being no fools, we follow the cardinal rule of parents of twins: LET SLEEPING BABIES SLEEP! This has led to us eating many meals in our garage:

Food tastes better when you eat it in your garage with your sleeping babies!
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Of course, it's all worth it. I wouldn't trade our "picnics" in the garage for all the fine foods of the world.