Busy week...

The girls continue to grow--literally. Eliana can now reach the light switches. We're not sure that this is a positive development.

The pediatrician recommended that we introduce solids to Karina. She's not particularly fond of this yet.

Her older sister has coincidentally taken an interest in the baby food as well..
Karina is now reaching for and grabbing everything in front of her. While sitting on Daddy's lap during dinner, she has almost pulled the dinner plate onto the ground a couple of times.

Eliana has always enjoyed playing with a soccer ball. We discovered this past weekend that Karina, for some reason, finds soccer incredibly funny.

Eliana has been practicing how to hop on one foot. Up until this past weekend, she needed to hold on to something to prevent falling over.

In case you're not in the Christmas mood yet, maytbe Eliana can help. She has learned how to sing Jingle Bells. But she doesn't know all the words, so she improvises. She is singing this instead of going to sleep.

Last week we also visited the Zoo Lights event at the Oregon Zoo. The entire park is strung with thousands of lights. Eliana enjoyed riding their mini train.

We plan on staying in town for Chrsitmas. During New Year's we will be flying to the Bay Area to visit Elvin's parents. With the wrapped presents accumulating underneath our Christmas tree, Eliana has gone through them all and identified which are hers. She also asks constantly whether its Christmas yet, so that she can open her presents. What torture!

We hope that everyone has a happy and safe Christmas.

As we approach Christmas, the weekends get busier. We went to a Christmas party at Elvin's co-worker's house. Since we were in charge of bringing dessert, Elvin was making whipped cream. Eliana was instantly addicted, but who wouldn't be?Eliana and Karina's cousin Millie also spent the night. Everyone enjoyed each other's company.Karina continues to be a good sleeper. We have moved her out of our bedroom and into her own room. She seems to be sleeping better at night as a result. Maybe she never quite got used to her Daddy's snoring?

Karina is cooing and talking more. She also likes looking at faces on photos...

This past Sunday, we went to a friend's house for another Christmas party. They rented a Santa for the kids. Eliana was fascinated that the Santa that she's read about in books actually came to visit. She was not so enthused about sitting on his lap, though, and wouldn't answer any of his questions.

We also got a tree and set it up this past weekend. As you will see, Eliana was quite excited about it. This is the first Christmas where she really understands presents, decorations, and other things.

Christmas is coming...

This past weekend, we put our Christmas lights up. Eliana wanted to help and pretended to hang the lights with Daddy.

We have two Advent calendars that Eliana gets to open each day. One is a wooden Christmas tree. There is a door for each day of the month with a little ornament that you hang on the tree.

The other is an Advent calendar from IKEA. Behind each door is a little piece of Swedish chocolate. (Elvin is rather jealous of this one...but Ellie isn't interested in sharing her little chocolate square..)

Eliana is now 36" tall and has figured out a way to open the refrigerator door. This makes the fridge yet another place where she can scavenge for food.

She regularly resists taking naps or bedtime. On most days, she'll do whatever she can to keep herself awake. Here is a nonsensical song that she's making up on the fly.

This week, Karina had her 4-month check-up. Her pediatrician called her "chunky." That's saying something given that the doctor sees all types of babies all day long.

And here's a picture of both girls sucking on their pacifiers and chillin' out after bathtime. What a life, huh?

It is very important to Eliana that they wear matching jammies every night, and each night she asks Mommy, "what we wearing tonight?" We have had to be creative with some of the matches - same color (sort of) or both have animals on them somewhere, or something. This match is pretty good, though! (just a side note, Ellie has NEVER used a pacifier...until after Karina was born, and can only manage it for about a minute, but still insists she needs it periodically)

Modern Art

Have you ever walked through a museum of modern art and said to yourself, "A two year old could have drawn that"? Eliana this past week felt inspired to draw likenesses of her family members. Below is Papai--following the minimalistic school.

Emily is the larger red/orange circle below. Eliana is the brown squiggles below Emily's "eyes." Karina is also somewhere in there, she said.

Here's a more realistic picture of Karina. She is definetely not a newborn anymore but looking around a lot, making eye contact, and smiling.

She, like her sister, likes to put everything in her mouth. If you put a finger or knuckle in front of her, she'll lunge for it.

She is starting to transition from her squawking noises to more mainstream baby noises such as cooing. She's also starting to grab things more, so that she can put them into her mouth of course.

Karina doesn't like to be put down and ignored, although she tolerates this more than her sister did. But like most babies, Karina prefers to be where the action is. The only catch is that she has to put up with being held like a football while Daddy is vaccuuming the family room.

Karina still gets plenty of loving from Eliana. Karina loves watching her sister's antics and chuckles periodically for reasons known only to her.

On Thanksgiving, Eliana spent time with her cousins who drove down from Seattle. They made chocolate-covered peanut butter bon-bons together.

Eliana really looks up to her cousin Lena and copies everything Lena does. Here they are lickking the chocolate off of the utensils.

When Eliana found out that Lena was going to wear a fancy red dress for Thanksguving dinner, she also wanted to wear one.

Because we do not yet have a picture with the whole family together, we asked our 20-something niece Erica to take some portraits using her SLR. She took a lot of pictures, because our 2 year-old goofball decided to act silly for most of them. Here are the bloopers.

Luckily, we found one that is semi-decent.

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving!

Another week...

Karina is growing more everyday. Emily stepped onto our bathroom scale holding Karina and according to that, she is now 19.5 pounds. Her chunky thighs seem to confirm that.

Karina is getting stronger everyday too. She can hold her neck up and when propped up against the sofa, can sit up as well, for a while.


One of Eliana's favorite activities right now is watching videos on YouTube. Specifically, she watches Calliou, which is a cartoon about a boy and his family. The videos we let her watch are dubbed in Portuguese, which she seems to understand. The boy is a little whiny, though, and Eliana, unfortunately, has started copying him a little. We're going to have to find a better role model for her.

A Costco opened up not 2 miles from our house this past week. On the evening before the grand opening, people were invited to tour the facilities and feast on hors d'ourves. Instead of little snacks, they served all-you-can-eat pizza, hot dogs, chicken bakes, smoothies, salmon, cheese platters, roast beef, egg rolls, ice cream, gelato and more. We were all stuffed. Eliana did not have enough hands to keep up with what she wanted to eat.

She also continues to have a fascination with goggles. Eliana found a pair of swimming goggles from her older cousins and loves wearing them. She wanted to wear them to church, but we told her 'no.'
Eliana has also expressed interest in learning how to use chopsticks. We bought a pair of training chopsticks for her. It slows down her eating, but she enjoys using them.

She also wanted to eat an apple during dinner. We usually peel it for her, but this time, she wanted to eat the peel. (We guess that she's seen Elvin eat the peel). When she was done with it, the apple looked like the cratered surface of the moon.

We are looking to move Karina from our room into the nursery. That meant moving Eliana from the nursery, where she's been sleeping on the twin bed, into her own room. We spent the weekend re-arranging furniture and Eliana was very excited to have her OWN ROOM!And as part of her bedtime routine, she gets two books read to her. But instead of wanting to hold her baby sister in her lap, she wanted Karina to sit next to her. In this picture, Karina looks to be enjoying the book as much as Eliana. She's come a long ways in the past 3 and a half months!

Not to be outdone by Home Depot, Lowe's also offers free workshops for kids. You not only get a free apron, you also get to keep the safety goggles, which are so fun to wear. This is a good indoor activity on a rainy day, so Eliana and Papai went this past Saturday to build a periscope, or "periscote" as Eliana calls it.

After you're done, they give you a certificate and a badge.

Later on in the day, Eliana's cousins who live in Portland came over to spend the night. Karina got lots of attention that night. Here she is sucking on her fist, which she spends a lot of time doing lately.

Eliana wanted to relive Halloween, so dressed up as a .... we're not sure. The apron is from Home Depot, the goggles she acquired that morning from Lowe's, and the mask we got awhile back during a visit to the pediatrician.

By the end of the night, it looked as if a tornado had hit our living room. No toy was left untouched by the four girls.

So Karina continues to be a good sleeper. She goes to sleep for good at around 9 or 10pm, gets up once during the night to feed, then sleeps until 8am or earlier if her older sister harasses her. And last night, she actually slept all the way through the night, from 10 to 6:45!

She continues to be her squawker self and will squawk more for Eliana or Mommy than for Daddy. As she is developing more awereness of her surroundings Karina is also developing a strong case of stranger anxiety, just like her older sister at this age.

The sisters love spending tinme together and we hope the sisterly love lasts through the teenage years and beyond.

On the first Saturday of every month, the local Home Depot has a kids workshop, where they give kids a free kit as well as a supply of hammers and wood glue. Last time, Eliana built a fire boat and this past weekend, she built a spice rack (which she had a hard time understanding the purpose of, until we brought it home and put spice jars on it.) She has fun, can hammer a nail in with Dad's assistance, and even got her own apron to take home. If you look closely, her apron is in Spanish; they must have run out of English ones.

On Saturday evening, we made green onion pancakes for dinner. Eliana helped to roll out the dough and sprinkle green onions on top. She was a very good helper. During dinner, she tried eating them, but declared that she didn't like them. We think they were too tough and chewy and also she said she didn't like the "salad" inside of them.

Eliana came up with a new game called "shopping." She stuffed her toy shopping cart with her toy fruits and vegetables and brings them to the cashier. This went on for about 1/2 hour or more.

Karina is becoming quite the talker, or rather, the squealer or squawker. The noises she makes sound like what a bird would make, or maybe a pterodactyl. Sometimes during dinnertime, she is the one doing the most talking while the rest of us just listen.

Bathtime is much more intriguing to Eliana now because Karina will often join her. Eliana thinks its VERY exciting to share a bathtub with her baby sister.

Karina enjoys the baths as well. She enjoys floating in the warm water.
After bathtime, Eliana was frolicking with her sister before putting on her pajamas.