In the strange position of being the eldest child raising a youngest child, I am often aware of the advantages and disadvantages of birth order.  With my older son, whom I call Cakie in blogland, I made much of his baby food from scratch.  He didn't go to daycare until he was a year old, so I taught him baby sign language as I fed him every day.  He got a whole lot of attention.  I can't believe we thought we were busy back then.

Does he have the advantage?

My baby, Trucker to you blogettes, occasionally gets a big batch of homemade baby food.  Yeah, he gets a lot from the jars, too.  But I've learned a few things along the way.  I'm actually a better baby food cooker, if you can believe it.  I've learned to roast the veggies, instead of steaming, to make them all carmelized and sweet.  When Cake was a baby, I had two books I used to guide me as I made the baby food.  One was returned to its original owner.  The other has the best recipes for toddlers and tells you to steam all the food for babies.  Now I found a great website that answers most of my questions for me. 

Cakie sat around on his bum until he was nine months old.  Again, we thought we were busy.  Trucker, perhaps in an effort to keep up with his brother, started crawling at six months and pulling himself up at seven.  I fear he'll be walking at nine months.  It all makes me wonder if Trucker has it a little bit better.  Cakie got a lot of attention.  And he still needs a lot of attention.  It might be his personality, or it might be what he is used to.  I wonder if Trucker will be more independent because I was too busy playing superhero with Cakie to cater to his every whim?

Since Cakie made it out of babyhood in one piece, we are a lot more relaxed about Trucker.  Will this make him a mellow guy?  Or will he just have more trips to the emergency room?

Will Trucker will ever pick up the sign language?  I'm doing my best to work on it.  Though he'll probably just start talking this month.