"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!

8 months and babbling...

About a week ago, Karina stopped making her dinosaur sounds and grunts and started making more typical baby-like sounds, like babbling. Although she can do the "b", "d", and "g" sounds, she usually sticks to "ba ba ba..."
She is still a happy baby, that is, when she is not surrounded by strangers. It especially upsets her when the strangers come up to her to pinch her chubby cheeks. She still chews on everything that she can get her hands on.

Karina usually eats solids a couple times per day. After eating oatmeal cereal or wheat cereal/mush, she gets either pureed butternut squash, which she likes, or avocado, which she ADORES. She can eat quite a bit of avocado in one sitting. In the picture below, Karina's stuffed rabbit got a big smooch from her after Karina snacked on avocado. Karina still thinks that her older sister is the most entertaining thing on earth. And ever the ham, Eliana obliges more often than not. Here's a video that Elvin took while he and Eliana were pretend shopping. You can hear Karina, who is sitting on Elvin's lap, laughing at the jig that Eliana is doing while unloading her cart.
When a little bit frustrated, Karina communicates her displeasure by scrunching up her nose and snorting. We finally got it on video. Maybe all babies do this? Eliana did the same thing when she was a baby.

Karina still takes 3 naps a day. Usually, she'll take a short 30 minute nap 2 hours after waking up around 7am. Then she'll take a longer afternoon nap and a short late afternoon nap if everything works out right. But sometimes she resists her last nap, which makes for a very grumpy Karina during the evening.

A regular activity is walking down to the mailbox to grab the mail. In our neighborhood, all the mailboxes are in a centralized place about one block away. Here is Eliana enjoying the sun; can you tell that she picked out her outfit?

Unfortunately, Eliana fell down and skinned her knees on the sidewalk. This happens with regularity and we keep a supply of band-aids handy at all times. After they go on, the tears usually disappear.

A while ago, we bought Eliana a "very pretty" dress for Easter. Unable to wait for Easter, Eliana dragged her step stool from her bathroom, down the hall, and into our walk-in closet where the dress was hanging. (This was no small feat as the step stool probably weighs about one third her weight.). Then Eliana tugged on the dress until it came off the hanger, changed clothes, and presented herself. She even put on her fancy shoes. It's amazing to think that 2.5 years ago, she was just a baby!

Life at the Yuen Farm...

Just like her mom, Eliana drinks vast quantities of milk every day. A couple of weeks ago, she requested milk in her sippy cup, which we provided for her. Then she changed her mind and wanted milk instead in her pink cup from Ikea. Since we are the ones doing dishes and sometimes feel like we are washing too many sippy cups on a nightly basis, we refused to pour milk into the pink cup until Eliana finished the milk in her sippy cup.

Determined to drink milk from her sippy cup, Eliana took matters into her own hands--literally. The sippy cup has a rubber opening and Eliana quite effectively started milking her sippy cup like a cow's udder. It was quite a sight. All that was missing was the sound of mooing cows in the background.

Eliana has also been working on her drawing skills. She made a big leap a couple of months ago. Whereas before her drawings were really scribbles, in early Feb., she sat down and deliberately drew circles for eyes, a smile, etc. She was very proud of it too.

She's been getting better since. Here is a self-portrait. Maybe the constant rain has been getting her down?

Eliana has also started writing letters. She has "E" down pat. And can write the rest of her name but doesn't understand putting them in order - she just writes the six letters scattered around the paper. Here is another self-portrait. This drawing has arms and legs, plus ears and decorations on the cheeks.

Below is another drawing? Not sure who this three-eyed monster is.