Visit to California

This past weekend, we flew down to California to visit Elvin's parents. For the first time, Eliana had her own seat on the plane. Karina got to spend some time with Nai-nai (grandma),

She also got to show off some of her rolls during bathtime.Eliana spent time with Yeh-yeh (grandpa).

We got Ellie some little dissolvable capsules with sea creature sponges inside. Yeh-Yeh helped her do her "experiment". In San Jose, there is a kiddie amusement park and zoo that Emily used to go to when she was little, called Happy Hollow. We decided to try it out with Eliana. She LOVED it, and went on lots of different rides. She looks totally bored, because she was exhausted from our very very late night the night before. Despite the looks, though, she really enjoyed it, and is still talking about the dragon train, the merry go round, and the cars. We'll definitely go back!



Elvin's parents put on a dinner for their friends, so they could have them "meet" Karina. Here she is, with all the food...

There was also a cake. Since Karina isn't much interested in blowing out candles, Eliana helped out...

Before leaving for the airport, we took a Yuen family photo. Karina was more interested in looking at Eliana rather than the camera.

And heading back home...Eliana with her backpack of course...

Fall is here...

Because the weather here is cooling off so quickly, Emily takes advantage of the sunny, rain-less days by going to the park. Both of the girls like riding on the stroller and they often come home in time to see Daddy pull into the drive way from work.

The sisterly love is still going strong. Whenever Karina is within reach, such as on the changing pad on the coffee table or on our bed, such as below, Eliana wants to touch and play with her. Eliana scales the bed like a little monkey and gives Karina a hug, a kiss, and pats on the head.
They happen to have matching PJs, which is sooooooooo exciting (for Ellie).

Whenever Karina has her "pink panda jammies" on, Eliana has to as well. Unless they are dirty because Eliana had a little accident, such as today.

Here they are posing together--pre-accident. This was the best picture out of the 50 taken. Thank goodness we don't use film cameras anymore.

In the same way that Eliana is learning to put on her clothes, she's also learning how to take them off. But in this case, you can see that she's put herself in a difficult situation. And this past weekemd, we visited a pumpkin ptach. She was excited because she has a book about it. Also, because of our trip to the farm last month, she also thought we were going to see goats. We tried tempering her expectations.

9 weeks old...

Karina is 9 weeks old and at her two month ckeck up last week, she came in at 14 pounds, 10 ounces. She has been gaining a whopping one pound a week. No one in the Yuen household has done that since our cruise to Alaska last summer and Elvin overate at the buffet lines.


We've started feeding her formula once a day. Emily is gone in the evenings once a week, so having the option of bottle feeding Karina let's Elvin stay home with the girls. Eliana likes to help.





Karina loves a mobile that friends originally gave to Eliana when she was a baby. Karina can be fussy, but when you put her down in the crib and turn the music on, she will be riveted by the movement.






This past week, Emily's sister visited from Seattle, so Karina got to see some of her cousins.

Eliana adores her cousine Lena. She followed her around like a shadow and copied everthing Lena did. Lena had a root beer float bar for dessert, so Eliana grabbed one too.

Eliana's other cousins also spent the night last week. Eliana pretended she was a baby and made herself comfortable in Karina's Moses basket while her cousin Millie read her a story. What service!Here is Eliana and Abby watching a Chinese language video together. The girls are in their PJs all ready for bed. No, they did not all sleep on the same bed.As Eliana exerts her independence, she wants to do more things herself. She buttered this piece of toast herself. There's about a tablespoon of it on there. And of course, only the part with butter gets eaten!

Visit to a farm

A couple weeks ago, several farms in the county organized tours where people could visit and hear about some of the behind the scenes stories about running a farm. Eliana was agreeable, and Karina didn't object so we made an excursion of it.

Last week, we also celebrated Emily's birthday. Eliana equates having a birthday to having a birthday party and didn't understand why we didn't throw a party for mommy. Instead, we celebrated by going to Cold Stones. This was Karina's first time and probably won't remember much of it.

Mommy and Daddy shared a large cup of sweet cream with peanut butter cups and peanut butter. Eliana wanted to have the "blue" ice cream (bubble gum flavored). But after sampling it, opted for her standard sweet cream with "candy" (sprinkles).

We also had angel food cake. Eliana helped to blow out the candles but really was interested in only one thing--the red candy letters on top.

And we went to Red Robin. They give you a free sundae for your birthday. But for every bite that Mommy took, it seemed like Eliana snuck in 4 bites...

Eliana's maternal instincts manifest themselves in new ways all the time. Here, she put her baby doll in the chair where Karina sometimes sleeps.

Here is Eliana, you guessed it, breastfeeding her doll.

But the most fun thing to do is to hold her little sister by herself. She requests this about 6 or more times a day. "I'm holding her all by self!" she'll say.

Karina definetely recognizes her sister. Eliana loves interacting with her and gets a kick out of seeing Karina smile back. Here is Eliana jumping for her sister.

Eliana is getting better at dressing herself. She practices every night with her PJs...

Now that our lives have settled into a routine, we started potty training Eliana. (Or as she calls it, "potty train", and she'll sign the sign for a choo-choo train.) She's actually done pretty well and gets one piece of (small) candy as reward. Also very exciting is that she gets to flush.

Also a sign that Eliana is growing up is that her 2nd 2-year molars have come in. They bother her, but only a little she says.

So that's the update from us. Hope you're doing well.