It was picture day at Eliana's preschool a little while ago and we just got the pictures back. We can't believe that our little baby has grown up so fast into a little girl!
And we're amazed that she seems so composed in the picture, with a nice, normal smile (not the Calvin and Hobbes faces that she usually makes when it's us taking pictures.)
Here is her little class. We really like Eliana's teacher, Mrs. Walker. Because Eliana already knows her letters and can count fairly well, Mrs. Walker modifies the activities and assignments for Eliana a little bit to keep things challenging for her. Needless to say, Eliana loves going to preschool.
What's been going on in the Yuen household lately?
After Halloween, Eliana has been eating down her stash of candy. She's allowed to have one treat after lunch and another after dinner. She's been opting for a halloween candy instead of her normal choice of ice cream with sprinkles on top.
Here, Eliana is trying to eat a pixie stick (paper straw with flavored sugar inside.) She has a hard time getting anything to come out, though, because she licks the paper straw, which makes it close shut.
So we used scissors to give her a fresh start. This time, however, the rush of sugar coming out went down her shirt.
So Mommy helps out. This reminds Elvin of when people give their pet cats medicine.
Meanwhile, Karina innocently looks on.
A couple of weekends ago, the girls' cousins were visiting. They love playing with Karina and Eliana. Apparently, they also like teaching Karina new skills.
One of Eliana's favorite games to play right now is hide-and-seek. One of her favorite places is under the end table. Other places are under the coffee table or under a blanket in the middle of the room. If the seeker does not immediately find Eliana, she will give you a clue by yelling out, "I'm HEEEEERE!"
A little while ago, Eliana had fallen asleep in the afternoon for a couple of hours. She does not take a nap anymore, because all it does is push her bedtime to a later time. Because of this, Elaina was not going to fall asleep until 10pm that night. To help kill time, Daddy proposed a night out "camping." In a darkened room, on their sleeping bags and using a lantern, the two of them hung out and read books together. It was a very fun night.
Eliana is a very girly girl. She only wears dresses or skirts. Likes necklaces and rings and wands too. One thing that she has been asking for is to get her nails painted. Daddy feels like she is a little too young for that, so Eliana takes matters into her own hands. When there is no nail polish available, then red markers are a good stand in. At least she's creative!
Recently, Eliana's bicycling skills have really improved! Whereas before, she would always need a shove forward to get going, Grandpa worked with her and now she can start pedaling from a standstill. Whenever Eliana goes out on her bicycle, Karina follows pushing her baby-sized stroller (on which she puts rocks or dirt.)
And Eliana has turned out to be our little extroverted, social butterfly. She loves being around people. At the park, she is always searching out for new kids to play with.
In the mornings, if she hears talking outside of her room, she drags herself out of bed so that she doesn't miss out on the action. And we mean drag in the most literal sense of the word.
Karina is getting better and better at climbing things. She can now seat herself on these little kid chairs. But then, she kicks it up a notch by climbing up and standing on it. But this can be a little nerve wracking as she is not 100% stable on her feet still.
And Karina's always building things, trying to put things together, or trying to figure out how things work. Emily calls her our little engineer. Here she is playing with a bunch of packages of shampoo samples that she found in a drawer. She is also learning new signs every week; in this video she uses the sign for "help."
And one very exciting thing that happened is that Eliana got pajamas that match Mommy's! She wanted to wear them right away so that they could match together!
And that is what's going on in the Yuen household these days.
The day before Halloween, we all sat down to decorate pumpkins (or "pumkim" as Eliana calls them). The girls used pens to draw on theirs.
Eliana got to use a Sharpie, which she loooves using because she knows usually only grown ups get to use Sharpie pens. (For good reason: the other day she accidentally drew on our dining table. Anyone have ideas on how to get Sharpie marks off of wood?)
Daddy's pumpkin was a little bigger and got a face carved into it. Karina helped out.
On Halloween Night, Eliana was super excited. She ate dinner really quickly and changed into her princess costume right away (with a dress, pearl necklace, and sparkly pink shoes). Then kept asking every 30 seconds if it was time to start trick-or-treating yet.
After dinner, we put Karina into her costume. This bumble bee costume kept her really warm.
Before going out, we wanted to have the girls take a posed picture with the jack-o-lantern. No such luck; they would not hold still. The only one that was cooperating that night and smiled for the camera was the pumpkin.
"I loooove the Halloween!" exclaimed Eliana as we were tromping through the neighborhood collecting more and more candy. There seems to be a correlation between her love of certain holidays and the amount of sugar that the holiday produces. Although we actually visited only about twenty or so houses, it still took a while to do that. This was partly because midway through trick or treating, Eliana started doing the potty dance and we had to run back home. (Yes, rookie parent mistake: not forcing your kid to go potty before heading out.) Also, if a house featured scary decorations, Eliana would freeze about 15 feet from the door and we would have to retreat and head to another house. But overall Eliana and Karina enjoyed themselves.
After getting back home, Eliana had fun checking out her loot while Karina took swigs of water. (She really enjoys drinking water out of any container that is NOT her sippy cup.) Eliana got to choose and eat three pieces of candy. Eliana raided a Reese's peanut butter cup out of Karina's stash and let her have a couple bites of that.
And this picture shows the goodies that we were passing out at our house. Yes, that's right, bottled water. Before you start scoffing... In the beginning of the night, the kids were interested only in the candy. But as the night wore on, more and more kids took the water instead. And by the end of the night (presumably after some kids had been eating handfuls of candy and were dying of thirst), lots of kids were downright excited about seeing water. "Look, Mom! They have water!" And one parent gave us a thumbs up to us and yelled, "Way to go!"
