"Sharing"

The two girls are the best of friends, but sometimes get into fights if someone snatches a toy from someone else. Sharing toys is a value that we're constantly trying to enforce, sometimes with mixed success. Usually, it's Eliana doing the snatching.

In this video, Karina has a toy that Eliana wants. But knowing that Daddy is watching (and video recording), clever little Eliana uses a creative way to get Karina to voluntarily give up her toy. Poor Karina realizes she's been duped a little too late...

But in the end Karina gets her toy back. As with anything, half of what makes a toy appealing is that the other person is playing with it...


The rain has abated for a little bit, so we've been able to walk to our neighborhood park lately. Karina really enjoys the swing.

Elvin took the girls by himself and put Karina in the swing. As you can see, her arms were pinned to her body. "She didn't seem to mind it," he says.

After a while, she wiggled one arm out.

The other arm found freedom too.

While she hates being on her tummy, Karina LOVES standing up. She legs are getting firmer and firmer every week. As long as someone is holding her hands, she can stand up.

Here she is standing up...


When prepping something in the kitchen, we'll often put her in her chair. She sometimes gets tired of her regular toys and enjoys playing with something new.

This past weekend, our church had an Easter egg hunt for the kids. There were dozens and dozens of eggs laying around. Eliana, however, was very particular about the eggs she picked. She would leave numerous eggs untouched because she only wanted pink ones. And not light pink, only dark pink.

She found one!

But her most exciting find was a pink balloon that she took home.

Eliana's been working on a couple of new skills. One is buttoning and unbuttoning things. She practices on Emily's sweater, which has nice big buttons and big holes to push them through.

Eliana also wishes she could whistle. Instead, she purses her lips and makes a high pitched sound. Which sometimes degrades into more of a dog barking sound.

And she can now open the sliding glass door by herself. One day, Eliana declared she wanted to go outside. Considering that she was barefoot and wearing only a skirt and short-sleeved shirt, and that it was 50 degrees outside, we told her she had to put on warmer clothes. She ran off, then came back wearing "warmer clothes"--she had put on a pair of mittens. We've decided that either Eliana is very literal or more devious than we realize.

After dinner, we sometimes have dessert. It's the easiest way to get Eliana to eat fruit or vegetables. A bowl of ice cream is a strong motivator for her to finish off her cucumber sticks. (Besides corn and french fries, this is the only vegetable she'll eat.)

Spring is finally here, so hopefully we'll have more pictures up of outside activities!