Teething...

Karina is almost 6 months old now. All last week, she seemed especially fussy. Then we realized the cause--she was teething. Just like when her older sister first started teething, Karina has two little teeth coming out on the lower jaw. And just like her sister, Karina started teething at 6 months. Eliana and Karina still get along really well. Eliana, most of the time, tries to be a good older sister. If she sees that Karina is fussing, she'll stop what she is doing to fetch a toy for Karina. And she does this without any prompting.

Karina is getting better at eating solids. She is finally getting the hang of swallowing food. Right now, she's having some rice cereal and baby yogurt.

As you will see, Karina likes to grab the spoon and put it into her mouth herself. Unfortunately, she sometimes misses the handle of the spoon and grabs the food itself, which makes for a messy meal.


In addition to Karina being fussy, Eliana caught a little cold. It actually didn't slow her down very much, except for the fact that she complained about a sore throat (actually, she said her neck hurt, which we then decoded) during the night. She actually enjoyed being sick because then she could take grape-flavored medicine. She seems to be 90% better now. We are lucky that this is the first time this winter that either of the girls have gotten sick. Unfortunately, the cold has spread to Emily, but so far Elvin and Karina have been spared.

One night, Eliana came up with a creative position to sleep in. She adjusted her pillow sideways, then propped up her feet onto her bed rails. Then fell asleep. We took her feet off of the rails, just in case she was cutting off the circulation to her poor little feet.
What happens when you leave a two-year old with casette tapes? Yes, we have casette tapes and actually use them all the time. We have a tape player that Eliana can operate herself, and Eliana plays tapes of children's music that Emily actually had when she was a kid. This red casette tape, however, is done for.

A sunny week...

Karina is starting to say some consonants, like "gooo" and "baa". She grab things well (she got Elvin's glasses the other day) and is learning how to stand up more and more. She is content to sit somewhere or lay on the floor if there is something entertaining going on.

Karina still enjoys bathtime, for the most part. As long as she has a toy to suck on, she is happy.

We're trying solids again with Karina. This time, she is actually swallowing some of the food instead of spitting it back out. But after every bite, she likes to suck on her bib, so it's anyone's guess as to how much she is eating versus how much is getting plastered onto her bib.

Karina likes playing peek-a-boo. Her little giggles are quite infectious.


This past week, we have had quite a few days of sun. Eliana's comment about this was, "I never see that before!" She put on her sunglasses in celebration.

Sunny weather means that Daddy can be in the backyard finishing up the fall cleanup. Eliana also came along to help. She used her shovel to fill up a bucket full of dirt. She asked Elvin to put worms in it, then she buried the worms. "I love worms," she says. We think she likes worms because she associates worms with gummy worms. But, in her defense, she really does like worms, and will hold them and play with them.

She also helped rake the leaves off of the grass.

"I want paint hands, Mommy!" That's what Eliana calls finger-painting. After putting on an old T-shirt, she is ready.

The masterpiece comes to life. Eliana actually did a pretty good job, but wasn't used to her hands being covered in paint. She asked Emily to wipe them clean periodically.

This past weekend was Grandma's birthday, so some family and cousins came over to celebrate. Eliana wanted to help blow out the candles and pre-emptively blew out about half of them before we could stop her.
All the girl cousins hung out and played with each other.

After almost everyone had left, Grandpa and Eliana stayed in the living room to relax and read books.

Eliana's Half-Birthday

Eliana's half-birthday was last weekend. Just for the fun of it, we decided to celebrate it. It was the first weekend in a while where we had no big events planned and could just take it easy the entire weekend. We got a coupon for a free ice cream from Cold Stones. So we told Eliana she could get ice cream on her half birthday. She was very proud of her coupon and pretended that she could read what was on it...


On Sunday afternoon, we visited Petsmart, which is closer than the zoo and almost as interesting. We saw dogs, kitties, and birds. She didn't like the snakes or lizards.

We also made cupcakes in the evening. She thought all her cousins were coming over for her half-birthday party (they came over for her 2-year party), but we told her this party would be a small one, just our family. We put two candles in the cup cake, plus another one sticking out halfway. She blew them out all by herself (during her 2-year party, she didn't have the coordination to do that.)

This past week, Emily also took Eliana and Karina clothes shopping. Eliana has always admired her girl cousins' night gowns. Now, she has one of her own. Here she is modeling it.

Karina got some new outfits as well, since she is growing like a weed. She is now wearing 12-mo. pajamas!
Karina has, thankfully, stopped her raspy throat sound, and makes more normal, baby-like noises. She makes a pitiful sounding whimper when she is not happy. Elvin thinks it is very cute.

Karina continues to be her happy self. She can kind of sit up by herself already and has a grip as strong as anyones. Elvin has had his cheek grabbed by her and felt like she almost tore his skin off. At the same time, she can't roll at all; she wouldn't be able to roll if her life depended on it.

Unexpected Haircut

While Elvin was at work last week, he got a call from Emily. She said, "Just to psychologically prepare you, Eliana got a hold of a pair of scissors and cut her own hair." Eliana, along with two other little friends, found scissors in a drawer that was supposed to be locked. And they all cut their own hair (and each other's) to various degrees. As you can see, Eliana cut a good 2 to 3 inches off of her left side. Her friend also cut some off of the back, but not too much. Thank goodness that the bangs were spared. We've now lectured her that she is not supposed to do this. She shrugged off our lecture like a teenager.
We decided to seek professional help to even out her hair. Her hair is shorter now, and very modern looking too -- very layered.We use candy at various times to bribe Eliana to do things. She likes Pez candies and has a princess Pez dispenser that we store out of reach. The other day we found Elvin's old Chewbacca Pez dispenser. At first she was scared of it. Elvin had to explain who he was and that he was a friend. The next time she saw it, she called it a hamster.

Karina is now 5 months old and her smiley self. Some nights she gets up only once to eat and on other nights, she gets up multiple times.

Karina no longer coos anymore. She has switched to making a raspy sound with her throat instead. She does that when she's happy, annoyed, or just talking to herself. It's a little hard to explain, so here's a sample video of her just after taking a bath.

New Years in California!

We flew down to California last Friday to visit Yeh-yeh and Nai-nai (Elvin's parents). Eliana was looking forward to the trip all week long, partly because she knew that she was going to get another set of Christmas presents from her grandparents and aunt/uncle. Essentially, she was going to celebrate Christmas all over again. Also, she loves going on airplanes -- anywhere!When we arrived in California, Elvin's cousin, Franklin, his wife, Anne, and their 7-month old son, Sebastien, were in town from Brazil and stopped by. Also, Uncle Leslie (Elvin's brother), Auntie Sue, and their 6-week old, Elliott, were also there. Suddenly, the house was full of babies!On Saturday night, we had a big dinner and opened presents afterwards. Eliana was VERY excited to get her own umbrella. "It's beauful!" she says. Thereafter, every 2 hours, she would ask if it was raining so she could go outside and use it.
In the past month, Eliana has developed a habit where she pretends she's checking her email. She'll do this on an alarm clock or an imaginary laptop. Apparently Santa took note because Eliana got a toy laptop during her 2nd Christmas. It plays music, which she loves to dance to, and also has pretend emails on it.

We took family portraits after opening presents. Amazingly, all three kids/babies cooperated.

Uncle Leslie, Auntie Sue, and baby Elliott were also taking a family picture. Eliana decided to insert herself into their family picture. After all, isn't everyone part of the same family?

Eliana was super lucky because her Nai-nai loves buying Eliana toys, clothes, and candy. Eliana got a Godiva chocolate gingerbread man from Nai-nai. Eliana promptly bit its head off.

She was also fascinated with baby Elliott. She watched his every move and wanted to pet him and hold him.

On Saturday, we visited Happy Hollow Park & Zoo, which is a petting zoo and park in San Jose geared towards young kids. She loves riding the merry-go-round and chose the same "horsey" that she rode when we last visited the park 2 months ago.

We also fed and petted some goats, which AGAIN tried to eat the corner of Elvin's jacket. Karina thought the park was so-so. She mainly just hung out (literally) with Mommy while Eliana played around.

Back at Yeh-yeh and Nai-nai's house, she got more attention.

Karina enjoyed looking at baby picture albums of when Daddy was a baby.

We flew back home on Monday afternoon. Eliana refused to take her nap that day and fell asleep about 3 minutes into the flight.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas!

We hope you had a good Cristmas. Leading into it, Eliana enjoyed singing Jingle Bells as well as a new Christmas song... WeWish You a Merry Christmas (although she altered the lyrics a bit). She uses a bulb syringe as her pretend microphone. After she finishes her song, she takes a bow.



On Chrsitmas Eve, we attended Christmas Eve service at church. A tradition done at our church, we end the service with candles.

Eliana got to hold her own candle and did a good job holding it still and upright. She needed a little help blowing it out. The next morning, we opened our stockings and presents. In Eliana's stockings, some of the most exciting things that she got were Hello Kittyy band-aids, a tooth brush with a teddy bear, dental floss (she always plays with Mommy's and Daddy's), gummy worms ("I loooove worms!), and a wind-up toy monkey that does flips. She thinks he is Curious George.
Eliana also helped open Karina's stocking. Karina got a stuffed mouse (Karina likes playing with Eliana's old stuffed mouse, which Eliana does not approve of).
Eliana also got a chocolate "E". She's allowed to take a couple of bites at a time.

Aunt Jenny and Uncle Darin visited from Colorado and stayed at our house. This was great fun for Eliana and she followed Aunt Jenny like a shadow.

Eliana had someone to play with and reads books with all weeekend long. On Chrsistmas night, we went to Grandma's and Grandpa's for dinner. Eliana met up with her cousins and wrestled with them.
Karina was awake for lots of it... Here she is sucking on her rabbit's ear. Sucking on things is her favorite activity.

She is also looking around a lot, or arching her back to look at who is holding her.She slept through a lot of the Christmas festivities too.

Eliana was also pooped out from all the excitement and late nights.

We tried spreading the presents out to prevent overload. Last night (Tues.), we let Eliana open her last present. A little crib for a doll--or her stuffed dog. (The dog's name is Clifford, like the big red dog.)

This morning, it snowed for about 30 min. The snow stuck for a little while and Eliana stared out in wonderment at the snow.

Overall it was a busy weekend. This Friday we head off to CA to see Yeh-yeh and Nai-nai (Elvin's parents.)