One month old!

Karina is now a month old! The past five weeks have flown by as we have adjusted and formed new routines. Karina still sleeps a lot and eats about every 3 hours. At night, she usually goes back to sleep after eating, which her parents are grateful for.

Karina's day usually starts around 7 or 8am. If she is still awake after her morning feeding, Mommy gives her a bath.

Here she is all bundled up after a bath. Her hair gets a little curly when it's wet.

Then Karina gets to follow Mommy around, whether it's around the house, or running errands, or whatnot.
As you can see, she still sleeps for a good part of the day.

When Karina is not sleeping, Eliana likes to entertain her. Eliana continues to be a doting big sister. To help Karina reach the developmental milestones earlier, Eliana has started to read books to her sister. Here is Eliana's rendition of a Sandra Boynton book. She "reads" it all from memory, and while she does not get most of the words right, she has the intonation down pat!

And when not being read to, Karina, is still prodded, poked, kissed, and manhandled by her bigger sister several times a day.

Last weekend, we went to Emily's parent's house to pick wild blackberries. Karina came along for that and Eliana gorged on berries. It was hard to keep up with her.

In the evenings, Karina partakes in the bedtime routine. By now, Karina is getting a little tired and fussy and most of the time enjoys sucking on the pacifier. Her older sister never liked the pacifier as a baby. But now, she wants to be just like her little sister. (Also, in the picture, Emily is teaching Eliana how to sign the letter "L". Eliana's interest in sign language is as strong as ever and daily asks for the sign language equivalent of words that she is learning verbally.)

Elvin usually puts Eliana to bed and she is asleep by 8 or 9pm. He then comes down to keep Karina company so that Emily can get a well deserved break. Elvin and Emily usually try to be in bed by 10pm or 10:30pm, but lately, Karina has decided that she doesn't want to fall asleep (and stay asleep without someone holding her) until 11pm or later!

She loves her sister...

Eliana continues to love her baby sister, and Karina continues to tolerate her affection, although she does squawk a bit when the handling becomes too rough. Ellie constantly asks to hold her little sister, preferably "all by myself" (with some discreet parental help). Hopefully, they will continue to like each other as they get older...

I'm too cool for you...

We were taking in Karina to Elvin's workplace so that his co-workers could see the new baby. Eliana decided that it was time to accessorize. Is she two going on thirteen in this picture?

Karina has been feeding well and gets chubbier by the day. Even we, who see her everyday, notice it. Her cheeks are getting fuller and the folds in her necks are becoming rolls. Yes, she still is a good sleeper.

Emily's sister visited this past weekend from Denver. She spoiled both of her nieces. Karina got to be held nearly all day long by her Aunt Jenny and Eliana got a new playmate. Here they are playing "running" in the backyard. The rules are simple: run and have a good time doing it. Eliana is an accomplished eagle eye. She spotted two sticks of butter on the countertop and immediately grabbed them. "I LOOOVE butter", she says, and would probably have eaten the butter if we had let her.

And for those of you who tried to guess which baby was which from the last entry, Baby A is Karina, and Baby B is Eliana.

Twins separated at birth...

Well, not quite... Eliana and Karina are two years apart, but if you look only at their baby pictures, you'd think that they were twins.

Decide for yourselves. Below are two videos of each when they are 3 weeks old. Let us know who you think is who and we'll reveal the answer next week...

Baby "A"

Baby "B"


Last week, Elvin was home on leave and took Eliana to go blueberry picking. Even though she used to love frozen blueberries, she claims that she doesn't like them anymore. So most of the 15 pounds that Elvin picked are going into the freezer.

We keep a Moses basket in the living room in case we need to put Karina down while she is napping. The main purpose for this is to keep Karina from being accidentally trampled by her bigger sister. Of course, Eliana finds it fun to pretend to be a baby and curl up in there too.

Elvin's parents visited this past weekend from California. They saw Karina for the first time and also spend quality time with Eliana.

Karina continues to be a very laid-back baby. She mostly lets her parents sleep at night and also takes pretty long naps during the day. Last week at her check-up, we found out that she had gained a pound and a half in one week.

And to close out this blog entry, here is a video of Eliana pretending to talk on the phone. She has obviously seen Emily talk to Aunt Gretchen and Aunt Jenny (Emily's sisters) a lot and does a pretty funny, and probably dead-on, impression of Emily on the phone.

Second week...

Karina is getting close to being 2 weeks old and adjusting well to life in the Yuen house. We're also adjusting well to life with her.

We are very lucky that so far she has been very considerate of her mommy and daddy's sleep needs. She gets up at night to feed but otherwise goes right back to sleep. In fact, she sleeps pretty much all day. At first we thought that this was due to her jaundice. But since the last blood test this past Monday, her pediatrician declared her jaundice over and Karina remains her sleepy self. Here is a common sight--Karina yawning.


And when she is awake, she's content to look around and wave her arms around like windmills.


Eliana's Aunt Ruth came over and brought Eliana a t-shirt that says "I'm a big sister." Karina got a matching litle sister shirt. Eliana absolutely had to put it on right away.

As a big sister, Eliana's motherly insticts are kicking in. Here she is reading a book to her dolly.

Eliana follows Karina everywhere. When it was bathtime for Karina, Eliana followed and took the opportunity to brush her teeth just because. Eliana has been able to take off her pants by herself for a couple of weeks now. We're still working on being able to put them on. Shirts are still a little ways off.

Eliana really likes music and has a good memory for songs. Here is Eliana singing some made up song.

First week at home...

This is Karina's first week at home. Because she has jaundice, we have had to go back to the hospital for a blood test almost every single day. They've also had us use a "bili-blanket," which is a blanket-type thing that emits blue light that is supposed to help get rid of the jaundice. We will have to go back tomorrow (Friday) for another heel prick--hopefully this will be the last time. The doctor also told us to feed Karina as often as possible and hopefully she will plump up in no time.
So far, Eliana's adjustment to being a big sister is more than we could have hoped for. She is extremely interested in this little person that now lives in our house and studies Karina intently. Every morning, Eliana rushes into our bedroom to see "Baby Karina."For now, we lay Karina onto our bed to sleep. Eliana likes to climb on to check things out. It is hard to contain her excitement and keep her from trampling over her sister.
Eliana likes to watch Karina's facial expressions and copies the sounds she makes. She also likes to copy other things... We keep Karina in mittens so she won't scratch herself. Eliana decided that she needed to wear her mittens too. (Nevermind that it was 70 degrees outside.)

Out of everyone in the family, Karina seems most used to Eliana's voice. Whether Eliana is talking, screaming (which she has certainly been doing more of, as she adjusts to us not giving her quite so much attention, especially Emily), crying, laughing, or shouting, Karina has the capacity to completely ignore it and carrying on with what she's doing--which is usually sleeping. In this video, we are all congregated in the bathroom during Eliana's bath when she launches into a long monologue. Emily and Elvin thought this was funny. To Karina, on the other hand, she's been listening to Ellie make noise so long, so she is completely oblivious. (Just to clarify, we only know about 50% of what Eliana is saying in this video. Elvin was telling Emily about something, and Eliana wanted to be the "speaker" instead, so she said "Papai stop talking Mommy" and started her own discourse, making sure not to stop, so we couldn't talk.)

Welcome home Karina!

Karina Mei-Li Yuen was born on 8/6/10 and we were able to come home the next day. She was 8 lb. and 6 oz. and 21 inches long. Emily is very tired but recovering well. It turns out that baby Karina (like Eliana) has a big head and so it took a long time for her to come out!

Her middle name, Mei-Li (美勵) means "beautiful encouragement" in Chinese.

While we were at the hospital, Emily's mom stayed with Eliana at our house. A few hours after Karina was born, Eliana came by to visit. By far, her favorite thing to do is to hold her little sister. (And other favorite things that Eliana likes to do are petting Karina, patting her, and trying to teach Karina sign language.)

When we came back home, Eliana was already home waiting for us. Here is her reaction; I was holding Karina in one arm and the camera in the other...

Karina has dark brown hair and medium brown eyes. One uncanny thing is that she is almost an exact replica of her older sister. When we compared Karina to a picture of Eliana when she was a baby, they looked almost identical.
So overall, we're doing well and happy to be back home again!