Visit from Yeh-yeh and Nai-nai

Elvin's parents flew up for the weekend to visit. Two weeks ago, we had told Eliana that they were coming and she'd been asking ever since, "Are they coming today?" It's hard to explain the concept of "They're coming in 2 weeks" to a 2-year old.

They finally arrived and took Eliana shopping. She noticed that Nai-nai wore a scarf, so she wanted one too. She got one and many other new clothes at the outlets.

Eliana also wanted a watch. We looked for a digital one, but the only ones in stock were Barbie watches. On the other hand, they had analog watches with ladybugs and Eliana opted for that.

She checked her watch constantly thoughout the day. Things to do and people to see, I guess.

And Eliana also got some cool rainboots.

Eliana played around with Yeh-yeh. One of her favorite things to do is to go grocery shopping. She pretends our living room is Costco, beeps when putting things past an imaginary scanner and has a fake debit card she uses to pay with.

On Saturday, we went out to eat at a German restaurant. Eliana had cheese fondue for the first time. Karina had to settle for her rice cereal. She has in the past few days acquired an immense appettite. She will eats bowls and bowls of rice cereal, even after breastfeeding. Here she is looking longingly at french fries. She is very interested in food and sometimes gets very mad when we don't give her any of ours.

Later in the evening, we celebrated Nai-nai's birthday. Eliana helped to blow out the candles. It took about 5 tries to get that last one out.

It was a full but fun weekend. You might have noticed that there are no pictures of the grandparents holding Karina. That's because Karina has decided that strangers are scary. Only mommy or daddy or her sister are acceptable right now. We'll see how long this lasts...

Another week...

Karina is now 7 months old and getting more interactive by the week. The girls were playing together on the playmat, sharing their toys nicely and entertaining each other.
Eliana even shared her toy with Karina. Hopefully shades of things to come.
Although she can't read yet, Eliana has memorized quite a few of her books. She will sometimes go off by herself, find a corner, and leaf through her books by herself.


This past weekend was the opening day of the Vancouver Farmer's Market. When I asked Eliana if she wanted to go, the answer was: "YEEEESSS! The swings!" Eliana has a very good memory. Even though it's been almost 6 months since we'd been to the farmer's market, Eliana remembered very clearly that there was a park with swings next to the booths.

Karina tagged along as usual. She likes being outside and observing all the people around her.

Elvin got a chance to go outside and catch up on overdue fall clean-up work. Eliana is currently enamored with wearing shorts and skirts even though it can still be quite chilly. Here is an interesting outfit that she chose...

Karina, on the other hand, is still in her pajamas. It's often easier to keep her in her pajamas than dealing with pants that are too tight and socks that fall off all the time.

Eliana is pretty adept with a spoon and fork now. She's also pretty good at spreading butter onto a piece of bread with a knife. But she recently decided she wants to learn how to cut food with a fork and knife at the same time. She's getting pretty good at it.

Eliana is taking Sports Classes again at our local community center. She's now in the class for 2 to 3 year-olds and each session concentrates on one sport. She's had football and soccer already. Last week's session was on hockey. Coach Mike taught the kids how to handle the hockey stick with two hands. He also showed them how to pass the ball (they used a ball, not a puck in class). And how to shoot the ball into the goal. Many of the kids got the hang of things. Eliana, however, was interested in doing her own thing...

Bathtime at our house usually starts at around 7pm. The girls take baths together and usually get along pretty well. We try to keep the toy snatching to a minimum.

Eliana likes her monkey towel.

She also likes acting silly.

With Karina's two teeth, we're brushing her teeth every night. She thinks it's pretty fun.

Matching Jammies

Ever since Karina was born, Eliana insisted that they had to wear the same jammies to bed. Karina is now 7 months old and this trend is still going on strong. Almost every night for the past 7 months, Eliana has stuck to this ritual: after bath is over, she runs (naked) to Emily and asks, "What we're wearing tonight?" Meaning--what will Karina and Eliana wear as jammies?

Lucky for Eliana, Carters uses the same print to make jammies of all sorts of sizes.

Here's a picture from when Karina was only 3 months old. Eliana is happy to be matching and Karina is tolerant as usual.

Here is when Karina was 4 months old. They're both wearing heart jammies.

More heart jammies.

These are the pink jammies. We convinced Eliana that because the background color is the same, and they both have polka dots, they match.

Here are the snowman jammies.

And here are the frog jammies.

And there you have it--you're now seen all the jammies in Eliana's and Karina's closets!

New skills

Eliana has some new tricks to show the world.

The first is cartwheels. She is amazing at them--we hope you'll be as amazed as we were when you watch this video.

That was an incredible cartwheel, huh? We were amazed--and confused--when she first showed us her cartwheel. It took a little digging to figure out what she was trying to do.

She also has a special technique for "spinning." She puts her arm around her and then spins. Maybe to get more momentum?

Eliana loves pretending. She sometimes pretends to be her music teacher, or the librarian that we know well, or Mama Bear (from Berenstein Bears), or she'll pretend to be "Mom" (i.e. Emily). One night, she was pretending that she was a cat.

This past week, on a trip to Ikea, Eliana got clothes for her favorite stuffed animal, Go-go the cat. Clifford the dog also got an outfit.

A new twist during nap time was that Eliana wanted to take a nap in the living room instead of her bed. She had the idea of using her pillow from upstairs, and asked/demanded that Emily fetch it for her and then promptly fell asleep without the usual 20 min. to 1 hour of delay tactics!

Eliana also likes playing soccer. Because it's still mostly rainy, she's confined to indoor soccer. But one can't play soccer unless one is wearing shorts and a short-sleeve shirt. So she runs upstairs and changes into her soccer outfit before coming back down to play--much to the delight of Karina.

Eliana continues being a good big sister and only occasionally snatches Karina's toys away. When we catch her doing that, she gets a reprimand and a threat of going to time out. (Although the "time outs" are diminishing in effectiveness as a punishment, we've been noticing lately.)

Because Karina officially eats meals with the rest of the family, Eliana is interested in feeding her sister as well as eating Karina's special foods. We give her baby rice crackers, which Eliana begs to have as well.

Karina has started learning how to suck on a sippy cup. Eliana is glad to assist.

So Karina continues to grow. She has started making "g" sounds again, after a long hiatus of only yelling and doing impressions of dinosaur sounds.
A couple of weeks ago, we got a bit of snow again. Although the predicted 3-6 inches didn't pan out, we did get a couple of inches. Eliana, of course, wanted to be out where all the snow was. She had a great time exploring and playing in the snow. She built another snowman, not that much taller than her first one. Also, Elvin took a 2 hour lunch break from work that day so that he could take Eliana sledding. Unfortunately, we don't have any good hills near our house. So Elvin got the lucky job of being the pack animal pulling the sled.