"Sharing"

The two girls are the best of friends, but sometimes get into fights if someone snatches a toy from someone else. Sharing toys is a value that we're constantly trying to enforce, sometimes with mixed success. Usually, it's Eliana doing the snatching.

In this video, Karina has a toy that Eliana wants. But knowing that Daddy is watching (and video recording), clever little Eliana uses a creative way to get Karina to voluntarily give up her toy. Poor Karina realizes she's been duped a little too late...

But in the end Karina gets her toy back. As with anything, half of what makes a toy appealing is that the other person is playing with it...


The rain has abated for a little bit, so we've been able to walk to our neighborhood park lately. Karina really enjoys the swing.

Elvin took the girls by himself and put Karina in the swing. As you can see, her arms were pinned to her body. "She didn't seem to mind it," he says.

After a while, she wiggled one arm out.

The other arm found freedom too.

While she hates being on her tummy, Karina LOVES standing up. She legs are getting firmer and firmer every week. As long as someone is holding her hands, she can stand up.

Here she is standing up...


When prepping something in the kitchen, we'll often put her in her chair. She sometimes gets tired of her regular toys and enjoys playing with something new.

This past weekend, our church had an Easter egg hunt for the kids. There were dozens and dozens of eggs laying around. Eliana, however, was very particular about the eggs she picked. She would leave numerous eggs untouched because she only wanted pink ones. And not light pink, only dark pink.

She found one!

But her most exciting find was a pink balloon that she took home.

Eliana's been working on a couple of new skills. One is buttoning and unbuttoning things. She practices on Emily's sweater, which has nice big buttons and big holes to push them through.

Eliana also wishes she could whistle. Instead, she purses her lips and makes a high pitched sound. Which sometimes degrades into more of a dog barking sound.

And she can now open the sliding glass door by herself. One day, Eliana declared she wanted to go outside. Considering that she was barefoot and wearing only a skirt and short-sleeved shirt, and that it was 50 degrees outside, we told her she had to put on warmer clothes. She ran off, then came back wearing "warmer clothes"--she had put on a pair of mittens. We've decided that either Eliana is very literal or more devious than we realize.

After dinner, we sometimes have dessert. It's the easiest way to get Eliana to eat fruit or vegetables. A bowl of ice cream is a strong motivator for her to finish off her cucumber sticks. (Besides corn and french fries, this is the only vegetable she'll eat.)

Spring is finally here, so hopefully we'll have more pictures up of outside activities!

8 months and babbling...

About a week ago, Karina stopped making her dinosaur sounds and grunts and started making more typical baby-like sounds, like babbling. Although she can do the "b", "d", and "g" sounds, she usually sticks to "ba ba ba..."
She is still a happy baby, that is, when she is not surrounded by strangers. It especially upsets her when the strangers come up to her to pinch her chubby cheeks. She still chews on everything that she can get her hands on.

Karina usually eats solids a couple times per day. After eating oatmeal cereal or wheat cereal/mush, she gets either pureed butternut squash, which she likes, or avocado, which she ADORES. She can eat quite a bit of avocado in one sitting. In the picture below, Karina's stuffed rabbit got a big smooch from her after Karina snacked on avocado. Karina still thinks that her older sister is the most entertaining thing on earth. And ever the ham, Eliana obliges more often than not. Here's a video that Elvin took while he and Eliana were pretend shopping. You can hear Karina, who is sitting on Elvin's lap, laughing at the jig that Eliana is doing while unloading her cart.
When a little bit frustrated, Karina communicates her displeasure by scrunching up her nose and snorting. We finally got it on video. Maybe all babies do this? Eliana did the same thing when she was a baby.

Karina still takes 3 naps a day. Usually, she'll take a short 30 minute nap 2 hours after waking up around 7am. Then she'll take a longer afternoon nap and a short late afternoon nap if everything works out right. But sometimes she resists her last nap, which makes for a very grumpy Karina during the evening.

A regular activity is walking down to the mailbox to grab the mail. In our neighborhood, all the mailboxes are in a centralized place about one block away. Here is Eliana enjoying the sun; can you tell that she picked out her outfit?

Unfortunately, Eliana fell down and skinned her knees on the sidewalk. This happens with regularity and we keep a supply of band-aids handy at all times. After they go on, the tears usually disappear.

A while ago, we bought Eliana a "very pretty" dress for Easter. Unable to wait for Easter, Eliana dragged her step stool from her bathroom, down the hall, and into our walk-in closet where the dress was hanging. (This was no small feat as the step stool probably weighs about one third her weight.). Then Eliana tugged on the dress until it came off the hanger, changed clothes, and presented herself. She even put on her fancy shoes. It's amazing to think that 2.5 years ago, she was just a baby!

Life at the Yuen Farm...

Just like her mom, Eliana drinks vast quantities of milk every day. A couple of weeks ago, she requested milk in her sippy cup, which we provided for her. Then she changed her mind and wanted milk instead in her pink cup from Ikea. Since we are the ones doing dishes and sometimes feel like we are washing too many sippy cups on a nightly basis, we refused to pour milk into the pink cup until Eliana finished the milk in her sippy cup.

Determined to drink milk from her sippy cup, Eliana took matters into her own hands--literally. The sippy cup has a rubber opening and Eliana quite effectively started milking her sippy cup like a cow's udder. It was quite a sight. All that was missing was the sound of mooing cows in the background.

Eliana has also been working on her drawing skills. She made a big leap a couple of months ago. Whereas before her drawings were really scribbles, in early Feb., she sat down and deliberately drew circles for eyes, a smile, etc. She was very proud of it too.

She's been getting better since. Here is a self-portrait. Maybe the constant rain has been getting her down?

Eliana has also started writing letters. She has "E" down pat. And can write the rest of her name but doesn't understand putting them in order - she just writes the six letters scattered around the paper. Here is another self-portrait. This drawing has arms and legs, plus ears and decorations on the cheeks.

Below is another drawing? Not sure who this three-eyed monster is.

Visit from Yeh-yeh and Nai-nai

Elvin's parents flew up for the weekend to visit. Two weeks ago, we had told Eliana that they were coming and she'd been asking ever since, "Are they coming today?" It's hard to explain the concept of "They're coming in 2 weeks" to a 2-year old.

They finally arrived and took Eliana shopping. She noticed that Nai-nai wore a scarf, so she wanted one too. She got one and many other new clothes at the outlets.

Eliana also wanted a watch. We looked for a digital one, but the only ones in stock were Barbie watches. On the other hand, they had analog watches with ladybugs and Eliana opted for that.

She checked her watch constantly thoughout the day. Things to do and people to see, I guess.

And Eliana also got some cool rainboots.

Eliana played around with Yeh-yeh. One of her favorite things to do is to go grocery shopping. She pretends our living room is Costco, beeps when putting things past an imaginary scanner and has a fake debit card she uses to pay with.

On Saturday, we went out to eat at a German restaurant. Eliana had cheese fondue for the first time. Karina had to settle for her rice cereal. She has in the past few days acquired an immense appettite. She will eats bowls and bowls of rice cereal, even after breastfeeding. Here she is looking longingly at french fries. She is very interested in food and sometimes gets very mad when we don't give her any of ours.

Later in the evening, we celebrated Nai-nai's birthday. Eliana helped to blow out the candles. It took about 5 tries to get that last one out.

It was a full but fun weekend. You might have noticed that there are no pictures of the grandparents holding Karina. That's because Karina has decided that strangers are scary. Only mommy or daddy or her sister are acceptable right now. We'll see how long this lasts...

Another week...

Karina is now 7 months old and getting more interactive by the week. The girls were playing together on the playmat, sharing their toys nicely and entertaining each other.
Eliana even shared her toy with Karina. Hopefully shades of things to come.
Although she can't read yet, Eliana has memorized quite a few of her books. She will sometimes go off by herself, find a corner, and leaf through her books by herself.


This past weekend was the opening day of the Vancouver Farmer's Market. When I asked Eliana if she wanted to go, the answer was: "YEEEESSS! The swings!" Eliana has a very good memory. Even though it's been almost 6 months since we'd been to the farmer's market, Eliana remembered very clearly that there was a park with swings next to the booths.

Karina tagged along as usual. She likes being outside and observing all the people around her.

Elvin got a chance to go outside and catch up on overdue fall clean-up work. Eliana is currently enamored with wearing shorts and skirts even though it can still be quite chilly. Here is an interesting outfit that she chose...

Karina, on the other hand, is still in her pajamas. It's often easier to keep her in her pajamas than dealing with pants that are too tight and socks that fall off all the time.

Eliana is pretty adept with a spoon and fork now. She's also pretty good at spreading butter onto a piece of bread with a knife. But she recently decided she wants to learn how to cut food with a fork and knife at the same time. She's getting pretty good at it.

Eliana is taking Sports Classes again at our local community center. She's now in the class for 2 to 3 year-olds and each session concentrates on one sport. She's had football and soccer already. Last week's session was on hockey. Coach Mike taught the kids how to handle the hockey stick with two hands. He also showed them how to pass the ball (they used a ball, not a puck in class). And how to shoot the ball into the goal. Many of the kids got the hang of things. Eliana, however, was interested in doing her own thing...

Bathtime at our house usually starts at around 7pm. The girls take baths together and usually get along pretty well. We try to keep the toy snatching to a minimum.

Eliana likes her monkey towel.

She also likes acting silly.

With Karina's two teeth, we're brushing her teeth every night. She thinks it's pretty fun.

Matching Jammies

Ever since Karina was born, Eliana insisted that they had to wear the same jammies to bed. Karina is now 7 months old and this trend is still going on strong. Almost every night for the past 7 months, Eliana has stuck to this ritual: after bath is over, she runs (naked) to Emily and asks, "What we're wearing tonight?" Meaning--what will Karina and Eliana wear as jammies?

Lucky for Eliana, Carters uses the same print to make jammies of all sorts of sizes.

Here's a picture from when Karina was only 3 months old. Eliana is happy to be matching and Karina is tolerant as usual.

Here is when Karina was 4 months old. They're both wearing heart jammies.

More heart jammies.

These are the pink jammies. We convinced Eliana that because the background color is the same, and they both have polka dots, they match.

Here are the snowman jammies.

And here are the frog jammies.

And there you have it--you're now seen all the jammies in Eliana's and Karina's closets!

New skills

Eliana has some new tricks to show the world.

The first is cartwheels. She is amazing at them--we hope you'll be as amazed as we were when you watch this video.

That was an incredible cartwheel, huh? We were amazed--and confused--when she first showed us her cartwheel. It took a little digging to figure out what she was trying to do.

She also has a special technique for "spinning." She puts her arm around her and then spins. Maybe to get more momentum?

Eliana loves pretending. She sometimes pretends to be her music teacher, or the librarian that we know well, or Mama Bear (from Berenstein Bears), or she'll pretend to be "Mom" (i.e. Emily). One night, she was pretending that she was a cat.

This past week, on a trip to Ikea, Eliana got clothes for her favorite stuffed animal, Go-go the cat. Clifford the dog also got an outfit.

A new twist during nap time was that Eliana wanted to take a nap in the living room instead of her bed. She had the idea of using her pillow from upstairs, and asked/demanded that Emily fetch it for her and then promptly fell asleep without the usual 20 min. to 1 hour of delay tactics!

Eliana also likes playing soccer. Because it's still mostly rainy, she's confined to indoor soccer. But one can't play soccer unless one is wearing shorts and a short-sleeve shirt. So she runs upstairs and changes into her soccer outfit before coming back down to play--much to the delight of Karina.

Eliana continues being a good big sister and only occasionally snatches Karina's toys away. When we catch her doing that, she gets a reprimand and a threat of going to time out. (Although the "time outs" are diminishing in effectiveness as a punishment, we've been noticing lately.)

Because Karina officially eats meals with the rest of the family, Eliana is interested in feeding her sister as well as eating Karina's special foods. We give her baby rice crackers, which Eliana begs to have as well.

Karina has started learning how to suck on a sippy cup. Eliana is glad to assist.

So Karina continues to grow. She has started making "g" sounds again, after a long hiatus of only yelling and doing impressions of dinosaur sounds.
A couple of weeks ago, we got a bit of snow again. Although the predicted 3-6 inches didn't pan out, we did get a couple of inches. Eliana, of course, wanted to be out where all the snow was. She had a great time exploring and playing in the snow. She built another snowman, not that much taller than her first one. Also, Elvin took a 2 hour lunch break from work that day so that he could take Eliana sledding. Unfortunately, we don't have any good hills near our house. So Elvin got the lucky job of being the pack animal pulling the sled.