Caroline's New Pastimes

As you may recall, Caroline has long been obsessed with her ab routine.  She has kept this up, adding to her normal leg lifts and crunches a new exercise that involves pumping her legs vigorously while sitting in her bouncy chair to simulate the action you would normally find on a swing.  I mean, she really makes that thing a BOUNCY chair!

She is also still talking, enjoying her da-da-da quite a bit.  No new vowels have emerged, but she is getting better at varying tone and inflection.

But there are some new things.  Sadly, some of them require video evidence that we either haven't yet acquired or still need to import and edit.  Others were just too adorable at the time to run away from to find the camera.  But I'm sure I'll be able to post visual proof of the following soon:

1.  Caroline has begun clapping - sometimes with her fists, sometimes with one fist and one open hand, and sometimes with both open hands.  When she gets those two open hands going, she can actually make quite a noise.  We are sure this is her response to our hours of hard work training her on the appropriate Miguel Tejada applause (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, as an A's fan from around 2005).        

                                                                                                  
2.  Caroline has improved her mastery of the raspberry.  This has been on its way for quite some time, but recently reared its adorable head as she had whole raspberry conversations with her grandparents on Sunday.  Obviously, she knew the Yankees were coming into town the next day and she was practicing.

3.  Caroline enjoys reading the paper.  If you put Caroline on the floor and put a section of the paper anywhere near her, she will wiggle her way over to it, grab a corner, and unfold it.  She holds it above her head and studies it, then moves the pages around so that she can see it from another angle.  Then she rolls on her belly and spreads it out on the floor in front of her.  Occasionally, she will pull it up over her like a little bum blanket, but usually she focuses on reading.  She is currently slightly better at managing the tabloid format than a full page newspaper, but then, who among us hasn't been stymied at some point trying to refold the paper? (I think you might actually see her clapping or doing a mini-raspberry or two in this one as well.)

4.  Finally, (and this is the one I have the pictures for NOW) when the paper isn't available, Caroline will read anything she can get her hands on.  This includes any and all ointment bottles that happen to be on the changing table.  I know, I know, all babies go through a stage where they grab and play with the things on the changing table.  But you will see in the photos below, it's not just that she grabs them, but also that she focuses so intently on the writing on the backs of them!  I think she's already comparison shopping!