Three weeks old...

Gabriel is three weeks old on Wednesday!  He has already outgrown his newborn clothes, but this also might be because he's moved up one size of diapers and the new diapers are bulkier than the newborn ones.  In weeks one and two, Gabriel was sleeping quite a lot.

Now that his jaundice has worn off, he stays awake for an hour or two about 3 or 4 times a day.  And once a day, he will stay semi-awake and be very fussy for 3 or 4 hours straight.   It's fine when this happens during the day, but painful when he does this in the middle of the night!

 

The girls' favorite activity with Gabriel is still holding him on their laps.  We've been letting them do this less, though, since he's becoming a lighter sleeper.

The girls' maternal instincts are kicking in.  Eliana will change diapers on her dolly and also breastfeed her dolly.

Here is Karina tucking in her doll to sleep.

One thing we noticed right away about Gabriel was his long fingers.  He does not have stubby baby fingers at all but it seems like his hand is already proportional like an adult hand.  The only difference is that it's only 3 inches long.

Elvin was able to take a couple weeks off work and has gone back this week, but still on a part-time basis.  With Emily busy with the baby, Elvin has been trying to spend more time with the girls and keep them occupied.  Here they are at a local farm picking strawberries.  These are Hood strawberries, which are about 3 times sweeter and 10 times more flavorful than the ones you get at the store.  They picked 6 pounds and paid about $7.50!  At home, Karina probably ate about half of them.

Elvin also took them to the zoo.  Karina has been watching her signing videos and now knows almost all the names and signs to all the animals.  Because she can only say a few consonant sounds, the name comes out garbled but it all makes sense when she signs. 



We've also been enjoying the bounty in our backyard.  We've had an extremely wet and cool spring and beginning of summer, but our raspberries have ripened nevertheless.  We were able to pick about a pint of raspberries so far.

Elvin's parents visited last week to meet Gabriel.  While they were here, we took the girls to a toy store where the girls were each allowed to pick one toy to buy.  Eliana, to our surprise, ignored the princess costumes, and picked out a veterenarian dress-up costume, complete with a cap, stethescope, and lab coat. 

Of course, Karina had to try it on too...

All in all, we are doing well and despite some hiccups, the girls seem to be adjusting well to the huge change in our household.