8 months and becoming a little lady

The bear is 8 months old already. We love the stage she's in because she is a true baby! Not a newborn or an infant, nor a crawler or a toddler. She's a cute cuddly baby - a stage thats gone in a blink. When we pick her up she recognizes us and greets us with a smile and enthusiastic leg kicks. She sits contently on the floor and plays with toys, not yet interested in going anywhere. She squeals often and loves to hear herself sing, in fact, she's already mastered a lovely piece we call "The song of the dying bird" which she likes to perform over and over for us in quiet places like the car, a restaurant or at church. In it, she holds a throaty high pitched growl for what seems minutes at a time. Truly beautiful. I'll try to record it sometime.
She continues to function like clockwork on the schedule I outlined last month. She makes mothering easy. She's so quiet when she wakes up, sucking on her fingers, that I splurged on a video monitor so I could see when she's awake and go get her before she has to start crying from hunger or boredom. Its the least I could do I figured since she requires so little.
Her hair continues to come in and draws continual comments from family, friends and strangers. I tell people that she is the perfect mix of all her siblings: Ashley's hair, Jake's face and Luke's temperament. I love it.
We went to a resort in Scottsdale for the 4th of July. Tyler had to go into work the next morning so I was on my own to take the kids out swimming and to have some fun before we checked out. I of course attracted an audience of people who were sitting around the otherwise quiet pool, glancing up from their books often to observe the lady with four kids. I wondered what they were thinking as they watched all of us interact and hoped they could see how happy I am to be their mom. It made me think about how much I love them and how much joy each child brings us individually and collectively. This is the thing about having a big family, you can't imagine life any other way.
We certainly are grateful for our Claire. She is a cherry on top - in more ways than one! ;)