In the Yuen household...

We've had rain pretty much every day here for the past couple of weeks.  So it's a curl-up-on-a-sofa-with-a-book kind of weather.  The girls seems to agree.  One day, they decided to sit on the sofa together and read books. 

 

Or they play board games.  Eliana had never played with Candyland before but saw the box on our shelf and asked for the game "with the stripes on the letters".  She very much recognized the stripes as candy canes are one of her favorite food.  Eliana played with Mommy and was happy that Eliana won twice in a row.  Emily is not looking forward to the day when Eliana has to deal with defeat.

 

Another fun activity is...well, we're not sure what the name for this is.  You hang your feet on the coffee table and make your body as stiff as a board.  Maybe it's more fun than it looks.

When it's snack time, Karina tromps over to the refrigerator for a peek.  She started being able to open the refrigerator doors recently and takes full advantage of her new found skill.  In fact, she'll sometimes have both the refrigerator and freezer doors open, which does wonders for our electricity bill.

A favorite snack in our household is eating spoonfuls of peanut butter.  In this sitting, Karina ate about five spoonfuls.  She loves the stuff.

Then Eliana joined is for some too.  You'll notice that Eliana is holding Mommy's iPhone.  Emily has books on tape that Eliana likes (like the American Girl stories) and Eliana will sit with the phone, listening to the books for hours and hours on end.

 

Also in the kitchen, Karina, our little engineer, likes to figure out how things work. She likes seeing what it looks like when all the drawers are pulled out.

 

 A couple of weeks ago, Karina and Eliana got new pets.  We went to Petsmart and each girl got one cricket as a pet.  For $0.11, they're a lot cheaper than any other pet and also don't take up a lot of space.  Eliana paid for hers using her own money that she saved up doing chores.  We keep them in jars and Karina has named hers "Blue."  We're not sure why, because they're brown.  When Eliana named her cricket "Blue Gabriel,"  we were even more perplexed.

 

 Karina also like to pretend she's a baby every once in a while.  She'll play on Gabriel's mat and suck on the pacifier. 

Gabriel quite likes the mat and especially has a good time when he is sitting up, so he can reach more of the toys.  He is sitting up by himself pretty well, but will fall backwards every once in a while--so he's not reliable yet.

He still gets lots of love and attention from his sisters.  Here he is practicing sitting up by himself on the sofa, with Eliana lending a hand in case he starts to tilt.

But if she gets too close, she better watch out because he loooooves to grab hair and give it a good yank!

 During bath time, Eliana, who can sound out and read simple words now, tries to teach Karina how to read.  It's a tall order, since Karina only recognizes "O" right now and that's about it.



 And during bath, Gabriel patiently waits his turn.  Even when in a fussy mood, putting him down in the bathroom floor usually cheers him up because he knows that his turn will be coming up soon!

6 months old!



Our little Gabriel is 6 months old now!  Time has flown by and he is growing up fast.  He now likes playing with toys and can entertain himself with them for little tidbits of time.  It turns out that one of his favorite chew toys is a silicone spatula.  It is nice and soft and must feel nice on his gums.  It's also too big for him to accidentally shove all the way into his mouth.

 

He also enjoys normal baby toys.



He is a happy baby and if he hasn't seen you in the past minute or two but looks up to see you smiling at him, he'll smile back at you.

As you probably know, everything goes into his mouth.  Some people said that his cheeks actually look smaller than before.  This may be true, because yesterday he went to the pediatrician where he weighed 24 pounds--so did not gain weight as much as before.  But he has grown 1 inch since the last visit, which would explain why last week his 12 month onesies were really tight on him and we had to upgrade him to 18 month onesies.

 

We recently started giving him water to drink.  He won't drink from a baby bottle, but only from a straw cup.  He loves sucking on the straw and also chewing on it, of course.

 

 

We've also tried giving him some baby food.  He swallows some but mostly he sprays it back out.  Yes, the food doesn't just dribble out of his mouth, but he'll spray it all over the counter.

 

His two little bottom teeth which started coming in a few weeks ago are now more than nubs.  You can see them in the picture, where Elvin has pulled his lower lip down.

 

Gabriel still enjoys taking baths.  Even though he gets fussy in the evenings, when he hears the water running in the bathtub, he gets very excited and starts flapping his arms like a bird.  Here he is enjoying the warm water.

His sisters are still very fond of him.  Karina will give him hugs and say, "My Gabiel..."  (She can't say the "r" sound yet.)

 

Here she is showing Gabriel her telephone.  He wants to grab it to stick it into his mouth, of course.

We are happy to announce that he can roll over!  He will roll over from back to front, but only towards his right side.  And when he does this, his right arm gets pinned under his body, which you can see below. 

 

And he is still a big-time thumbsucker.  He'll suck mostly on his left hand and mostly when he is tired.  Pretty much every time he takes a nap, in goes the thumb, until he is asleep.

 

Our Gabriel is a funny baby.  We can't wait to see what the next 6 months holds!

 

 

 

 

 



The theater...

Portland has a theater group that puts on plays just for kids.  Recently, they put on a musical about Pinkalicious, which is a book that Eliana has read.  It's about a girl who eats too much pink stuff and wakes up to find herself turned pink herself.

This seemed like a fun outing, so Elvin took the two girls plus their cousins to see the show.

This was Eliana and Karina's first time seeing a live musical. 

The show is about to begin.  Since it is geared towards kids, the show is only 1 hour long, as opposed to 2 or 3 hours.

 

Here's a picture after the show was over.  Eliana liked the musical and understood the plot.  Karina probably was not following the story, but she said she enjoyed it.

 

Because the storyline involved the main character eating one too many pink cupcakes, the theater partnered with a local cupcake bakey to create "Pinkalicious cupcakes."  Elvin picked up two for the girls as a special treat.  They are big cupcakes, but they really only ate the frosting.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We celebrated Thanksgiving this year at Emily brother's house, which is a short 20 minute car drive away.  We're thankful that we don't have to board a plane on the busiest travel day of the year with three little kids.  Thanks to our nephew Tim who took most of these pictures.

 

There were about 30 people there and lots of food!

 

Gabriel, of course, couldn't have any of the food.  But he took in all in.  

 

Gabriel's little cousin Jace was also there.  Jace is about 2 months older and came in from Colorado.  This weekend was the first time that they met.

 

The girls were very happy because their beloved cousins were there.  Also, they got to eat lots of candy.  Notice the little cup full of Lindt chocolates that Eliana is holding.

 

Karina tried a peppermint candy but deemed it too spicy so returned it to Mommy.



 

It was a long evening for Gabriel but he handled it pretty well.  The 30 min. nap in the middle of dinner helped!

 

The next day, some of the family members gathered again to hang out some more.  We put the two little cousins together so that they could spend quality time together.  Watching them interact became quite the attraction.

 

The little boys were very cute...they were getting to know each other not by using words, but by poking at eyes, grabbing ears, feeling each others fuzzy hair, etc.



5 months old!

Our little baby is 5 months old and doing new things every day.  Gabriel is very adept at putting things into his mouth now and likes to suck on everything--just like his older sisters when they were babies.

He is also teething!  About a month ago, he was sleeping through the night but that ended a couple weeks ago, when he would wake up 3 or 4 times a night.  A couple days later, Emily noticed that two little bottom teeth were coming in.  Hopefully the worst is over and he is started to sleep longer again.

Here is a video of his recent life...

Our "little" baby boy...

Our Gabriel is growing...fast!  We can't take him anywhere without people commenting on how chubby he is, and how big his cheeks are.  We are amazed not just at his cheeks, but at how fast he has grown, weight wise, and in length.  Elvin often puts Gabriel to bed at night, and will sometimes have Emily take a picture of him holding Gabriel.  These pictures do a pretty good job of showing his growth through the last 5 months!

 

1 day old...

 

3 weeks old...

(look how baggy his pajamas are on him!)

 

 

 

5 weeks old...

(the cheeks are starting to fill out)

 

7 weeks old...

(the chubbiness is coming in)

 

 

2.5 months...

(look at how much longer he is)

 

 

3 months...

(the ankles don't show anymore)

 

 

4 months old...

 

And 5 months old...

 

Happy Halloween!

We survived another Halloween!  Eliana was very excited about Halloween and talked about it all month.  The weekend before, we rolled up our sleeves and set out to carve our pumpkins. 

 

Of course, the girls wanted nothing to do with squishy pumpkin guts, so Elvin had to do the dirty work for the four pumpkins. 

Eliana did a little bit of the carving, but Elvin did most of the rest.

 

He pretty much did all the work while the girls supervised.

 

Elvin's pumpkin's got carved into Chewbacca.  (And Eliana asked who Chewbacca was, which took Elvin a rather long time to explain, and turned into a complete summary of Star Wars, edited for a very sensitive, easily scared four year old.)  Eliana claimed one of the pumpkins as her own and the other she claimed for Go-go, her stuffed animal cat.  The little tiny one the size of a baseball was Karina's pumpkin.  All these other pumpkins got carved with Hello Kitty image.  No scary faces on our pumpkins this year.

 

This year, a friend invited us over to their house for pre-Halloween dinner and trick-or-treating around their house with a bunch of Eliana's little friends.  But before that, the girls got into their costumes.  This year, both girls wore official Mulan costumes from the Disney Store. 

 

We did trick-or-treat in our neighborhood a little bit, before taking off for the party.  Our next door neighbors are very fond of the girls and said that although they weren't planning on handing out candy to any of the neighborhood kids out there, they did want our two girls to come over and knock on their door...  It was very sweet because our neighbor put together a package for each girl with candy, a halloween pencil, glow in the dark Pez dispensers, Halloween mugs/bowls, clips, and glow-in-the dark bracelets!

 

At our friend's house, we got together for one more picture--this time with Gabriel in a Yoda costume.  The costume is for 0 - 9 month olds, which is why the green skull cap does not fit on his big head and why the velcro straps that are supposed to clasp under his chin are dangling partway  down his cheeks.

 

The girls had a fun night out trick-or-treating and we hope you did too!