If you're happy...

As you can tell from the last post, Eliana really enjoys music and singing. Besides "Twinkle, Twinkle..." and the ABC song, she also knows "If you're happy and you know it," "Humpty Dumpty", "Jesus loves me" and some songs from her videos.

Here's her singing (sort of) one of them...

23 months old...

Eliana's language has really taken off, especially in English. She conjugates some verbs, uses plural for some nouns, and has mastered the word "MINE!" Although she can say all the colors, she recognizes green and pink really well. She can count to twenty if prompted, and also knows how to use "and." She also recognizes all 26 letters, if they are capital and has started to learn the phonetics sounds of some, thanks to an educational video. Her Portuguese is not as developed, of course, but she is saying new words in Portuguese all the time as well, such as "depois" [after], "em cima" [on top of], and "esta ali" [it's there].

Here she is singing head and shoulders, knees and toes.

And the World Cup is on, so the Yuen household is watching with rapt attention. Eliana's favorite breakfast is waffles (or "butter syrup" as she calls it) and breakfast is made all the more enjoyable watching a game online.

Life at 22 months...

With a new baby sister on the way, we thought that Eliana would appreciate having a doll so that she can be her doll's mommy. Last weekend, she got her American Girl Bitty Baby doll (Elvin had never heard about Bitty Baby's until recently). She likes making it sleep by laying the doll on her back and then making it "WAKE UP!" by jerking it upright. Also last weekend, Yeh-yeh and Nai-nai flew up from California to visit for the weekend. This means that Eliana got to play and dance with them for two days straight. Here she is being silly while dancing to some music.

We went to Ikea and picked out a new rocking chair for Eliana. It's a tiny bit too big for her right now, but she can rock on it back and forth.

In honor of Memorial Day, our church had a BBQ with ponies! We weren't sure that Eliana would like it because she tends to shy away from large animals. But she loved riding on them and when her turn was over, she cried and cried and asked to ride again. We rode three times but Eliana would've stayed on the horses for hours if she had a choice.We also installed a new swing on a tree in the backyard. It doesn't go as fast as the swing at the nearby park, but satisfies her swing cravings temporarily.

Because it's been an usually wet spring, we've had to come up with lots of ways to entertain ourselves indoors. We brought in from the garage a Duplo set that she inherited from her cousins. She built this tower all by herself, complete with a "fan" (that's what she calls the propeller") on top.

Another fun activity is tea time with all the stuffed animals, dolls, and plastic dinosaurs. (Excuse the lack of pants in this picture.)

The weather finally got warmer on Saturday. Elvin was outside cleaning the car and caught Eliana hitching up her pants in a very stylish way.

And Eliana always gets a kick out of being silly. Before bathtime, she wore her shirt like a wig, which is especially interesting to do in front of the mirror.