Visit to a farm

A couple weeks ago, several farms in the county organized tours where people could visit and hear about some of the behind the scenes stories about running a farm. Eliana was agreeable, and Karina didn't object so we made an excursion of it.

Last week, we also celebrated Emily's birthday. Eliana equates having a birthday to having a birthday party and didn't understand why we didn't throw a party for mommy. Instead, we celebrated by going to Cold Stones. This was Karina's first time and probably won't remember much of it.

Mommy and Daddy shared a large cup of sweet cream with peanut butter cups and peanut butter. Eliana wanted to have the "blue" ice cream (bubble gum flavored). But after sampling it, opted for her standard sweet cream with "candy" (sprinkles).

We also had angel food cake. Eliana helped to blow out the candles but really was interested in only one thing--the red candy letters on top.

And we went to Red Robin. They give you a free sundae for your birthday. But for every bite that Mommy took, it seemed like Eliana snuck in 4 bites...

Eliana's maternal instincts manifest themselves in new ways all the time. Here, she put her baby doll in the chair where Karina sometimes sleeps.

Here is Eliana, you guessed it, breastfeeding her doll.

But the most fun thing to do is to hold her little sister by herself. She requests this about 6 or more times a day. "I'm holding her all by self!" she'll say.

Karina definetely recognizes her sister. Eliana loves interacting with her and gets a kick out of seeing Karina smile back. Here is Eliana jumping for her sister.

Eliana is getting better at dressing herself. She practices every night with her PJs...

Now that our lives have settled into a routine, we started potty training Eliana. (Or as she calls it, "potty train", and she'll sign the sign for a choo-choo train.) She's actually done pretty well and gets one piece of (small) candy as reward. Also very exciting is that she gets to flush.

Also a sign that Eliana is growing up is that her 2nd 2-year molars have come in. They bother her, but only a little she says.

So that's the update from us. Hope you're doing well.

7 weeks old...

Karina is leaving the newborn phase and now turning into a "real" baby. She seems to recognize her mommy and daddy's faces, but really responds the most to Eliana. She really likes her big sister and doesn't seem to mind it if Eliana encroaches on her personal space.

Karina is starting to go longer between feedings at night and we hope that within the next several weeks she'll go through the whole night needing just one feeding.

If fussy, usually the following work to soothe her: rocking up and down, loud white noise, sitting on the swing on our front porch, and sucking on her pacifier. Here she is sucking vigorously on her Soothie.



Eliana continues to entertain us. We encourage her to eat her 5-a-day, but the only vegetable that she'll eat are cucumbers. And from the cucumbers, she'll actually only eat the seeds. It's her favorite part and she won't eat the fleshy part of it.

She's a resourceful little scavenger. The other day, dinnertime was approaching and she was getting hungry. So she pulled out a snack: 2 pounds of string cheese.

Eliana has been asking us for awhile to sign her up for a "sports" class that she has seen other children participating in at the local community center. We finally did; here she is getting ready to go to her first day of class, or "team" as she calls it. She is especially proud of her new running shoes!

Here you can see the extent of what goes on in a toddler sports class...combined with Ellie's distracted excitement to see Papai (Daddy) in the middle of the day.

Autumn is here...

Up here in the Pacific Northwest, the hot and sunny days have given way to cloudy and usually rainy ones. But before the rains arrived, we took full advantage of the last few days of summer.

A couple of weeks ago at the farmer's market we stumbled onto a booth run by the humane society where they were displaying kittens for adoption. We window shopped for a while.

At the local park in our neighborhood, Eliana loves going down the slide. It's made out of plastic and is charged with static electricity. Makes Eliana's hair stand on end!

Eliana has not yet mastered how to put her pants on, but is doing well with socks. Once she realized that they needed to go over ALL of her toes before they could be pulled up, she was able to consistently put them on. But sometimes her silly side wins out and she puts her socks on her nose.

Karina has settled into a pretty predictable pattern. She gets up around 6am or 7am to eat. She'll have some awake time (when usually she gets a bath) and then goes to sleep. She's a pretty good sleeper during the day and will even sleep on the couch by herself for a long stretch.
In the evenings, she has more awake time, especially during dinner and afterwards.
Then between 9pm and midnight, she'll finally fall asleep again for the night. She gets up to eat twice during the night, but usually goes back to sleep after eating.

Eliana continues to ham it up. She has three songs mastered: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star; ABCs; and Old McDonald Had a Farm. However, with the last song, she confuses the words and melody with a different song about a farm that she learned from her video...

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.