Happy New Year!

Happy year of the tiger! Our Chinese New Year/Valentine's Day was pretty low key. We went to the Chinese grocery store to buy ingredients to eat hot pot. Eliana really liked looking at the live fish, crabs, and lobsters in the tank.

We also had Cold Stone's ice cream.

An update on the slide: Eliana has realized that if she's not wearing her socks, she can climb the slide from the bottom up. Eliana's cousins came over to spend the night and she saw them playing checkers. Later on, she tried playing checkers by herself.Elvin sometimes uses his English-Portuguese dictionary to look up words he doesn't know. Apparently, Eliana also does the same.

Eliana loves to be tickled, or "tee-kel" as she says it.

New slide!

Eliana loves to go to the nearby neighborhood park. We don't mind taking her, except when it's raining. She, of course, doesn't care about getting wet but we don't really enjoy the experience.

Craigslist to the rescue! Emily found a small slide that we now keep in our living room. The first night we got the slide, Eliana went up and down the slide at least 20 times in a row.

Eliana's Soliloquy

This past week, Eliana caught the sniffles and Elvin had a little cold too. So we spent the weekend wiping the snot trails coming out of her nose.

But before that, we took a video of her babbling nonsense and otherwise having fun. She calls Elvin "Papai", which means "Daddy" in Portuguese. If you look closely, she's wearing a badge--it's Elvin's work badge that she loves to wear as well. It is her first question for Papai when he walks in the door. And you'll see her trying to escape into the garage. Lucky for us, she doesn't (yet) know how to unlock the door.

Visit to California

This past weekend we flew down to California to see Elvin's parents and to attend a friend's wedding. Thankfully, the plane was not full and the middle seat stayed open for Eliana to roam around on. We brought plenty of toys and activities, as her attention span lasts only about 3 minutes per activity.

Ye-ye and Nai-nai ("Grandpa" and "Grandma" in Chinese) got to spend some quality time with Eliana. Here is Eliana letting Ye-ye taste some of her pretend cooking with her tea set.

She got to walk outside and practiced going down the steps by herself.For the wedding on Saturday, Eliana wore a dress. She lasted about 10 minutes into the ceremony and then we moved her outside so that the couple could get married in peace without her commentary ringing through the sanctuary. She was happy to run around on the lawn.

A little fall soiled her tights, though. Her new shoes also got smudged.

At the reception, we admired the happy couple's wedding "cake." Instead of a traditional cake, though, they opted for a wedding donut as both are huge donut fans. Eliana almost got a hold of a maple bar.

This was one of the most kid-friendly reception we've been to. The organizers thoughtfully provided a basket full of toys, coloring books, stickers, and play-doh for the kids to play with. Here is Eliana pretending to eat play-doh (she knows she's not supposed to but likes to pretend she disobeying.)

The next morning, we spent some time with friends who were also in town for the wedding. We tried to take pictures, but our daugher refused to be normal.
Take #2. Still wriggling around. Maybe she got a hold of a Calvin and Hobbes comic book?

We flew back home on Monday. Since we got up at 6am, she was very tired and ready for a nap by the time the plane landed at 10am.

18 months old...

Eliana had another visit to the doctor today. She is at 90th percentile for height, 75th for weight, and off the charts for head circumference. She has a big head! She's 18 months old and is practicing at being a two year old.

She's taken an interest to climbing things around the house, so we have to watch her closely. The chairs in the kitchen took her about a week to master.

Like everyone, she enjoys a bowl of ice cream. So that not even one drop is wasted, she tilted the bowl and licked the inside of the bowl as far as her little tongue could reach.

Daddy likes to lay down and read the paper every once in a while. Eliana has decided that looking at the pictures can be pretty fun.It's not that cold out anymore, but when we go out, Eliana wants to wear her "outside mittens."

Eliana's Antics...

Eliana's new words this week are: "sep-sool" (step stool), "sair" (Portuguese for 'to leave'), "fie-ving"(flying), and "bah-sh" (brush). She's also putting two words together, like "mommy mok" (meaning, mommy's glass of milk.)

Eliana's biggest fan may be...herself. She has caught on to the fact that the blog has pictures and videos of her. A recent request has been: "Elya cook. Elya cook." Eliana wants to see a video of her cooking...



A snack she sometimes asks for is peanut butter (or "pee-pa-bo" as she calls it.) We give it to her on a spoon because when we used to give it on a piece of toast, she would just lick the toast.




Eliana likes to help out with chores around the house, such as using the Swiffer. Sometimes, however, she has trouble handling it--it IS much taller than she is...

And the peekaboo games is a perennial classic. This version involves hiding behind the chair in the kitchen.

Snow day!

Last week, it snowed on Tuesday evening! Although it only snowed about 1.5 inches, it brought the entire city of Portland to a standstill because Portlanders are not used to it and because the city does not have enough snow removal equipment. Plus, there was no warning--the weathermen were forecasting rain and many people got caught in rush hour traffic.

Although the snow created gridlock in the freeways, it made Eliana very excited. Since Daddy had the whole week off, he was able to take her "outside" (which is maybe her favorite word?)

The snow started falling at about 3pm...

Trying to catch the snow on her tongue? Not sure where she learned this...

When she's outside, she has to go on her bike.Later in the evening, it had stopped snowing and we went out again. Pushing a stroller is kind of hard in the snow.
So is riding a bike. Daddy had to push it and in the process worked up a sweat.
And she had a moment of quiet reflection, meditating on life, world peace, and other things.

The next day, we went out to check out what was left of the snow. By midday, most of it was gone.