Trip to Denver

Sorry that we haven't posted an update in a while.  We were very busy last week and then this week our computer died.  Luckily, our neighbor is a computer doctor and revived our computer for us.
We made a trip out to Denver, CO a few weeks ago to visit Emily's sister and brother-in-law.  Our last trip out there was over 3 years ago when Eliana was just 8 weeks old and we wanted to come out again before our #3 arrives.

We also wanted to come out so that the girls could play in the snow.  Denver weather cooperated and when we got there, they still had a couple of inches on the ground.  The girls suited up and went outside to build a snowman.  Karina was very uncertain about walking in the snow.  She is very stable on her feet now, but didn't like something about the snow. 

Eliana, on the other hand, loved it.  We built a snowman in the shade so he would last longer.  Uncle Darin helped out with the body and head.  He also found Eliana some sticks for the arms.

Eliana used rocks for the eyes and mouth and a carrot for the nose.  Darin found pine needles for hair.  Karina is helping rearranging the charcoal brickets stuff on snowman's belly.

After the girls were done, Libby the lab come over to inspect their handiwork.

Jen and Darin have a rambuctious chocolate lab and semi-shy ocicat.  The dog was a little too much for the girls, but they were obsessed with Lida the cat.  Karina was constantly searching for the cat saying "kitty!  kitty!?"

We were there for four days and thought that the novelty might wear off.  It didn't.

Eliana wanted to hang out and pet the cat.  The feeling was not mutual.

The girls were willing to pet the dog as long as they were sure that Libby wouldn't lick them. 

Darin is an avid hunter and hiker.  During a hike, he found some shed antlers on the ground.  Eliana pretended she was a buck.

Uncle Darin was fletching a few arrows in the basement.  Eliana took a liking to him and would hang out with him downstairs.

Eliana slept in the same room as we did, and slept better than we expected.  She had a mini-mattress laid out next to our bed and picked out blankets that she liked.  And being the nester that she is, made up a little nest for herself.

On Sunday, we drove out to some hills to go sledding.  Elvin pulled Karina along flat ground on a sled, then asked her, "Do you want to go again?"  "No" was her answer.  Apparently, Karina is not a fan of the cold and does not have a need for speed.

So she spent most of the time in her mommy's arms.

Eliana, on the other hand, LOOOOOVES sledding and inner tubing on the snow.  She went down about two dozen times and had a huge grin on her face every time. 

Later in the afternoon while Karina was napping, Elvin and Eliana went with Uncle Darin to run some errands.  We passed by a Cabela's-like store and Eliana got to see a bunch of wild game stuffed and mounted on the walls.  But her favorite was a statue of a bear holding a fish.  She was holding her stuffed animal cat and thought the bear was holding it's stuffed animal fish.

And here's a video of the girls playing with/tormenting the cat.  Emily says it's time for us to get a cat but Elvin continues to veto the idea.

Pay Day

A few weeks ago, Eliana started asking for things every time we went to the store.  "Mommy, can you buy me this?"  Of course, she didn't understand the concept of money.  She also knew that she got some money as a Christmas present from her grandparents in California, but we weren't going to let her spend it all on trinkets from Walmart.

So after doing a little bit of research, we tried to come up with a system where she can learn the value of money.  Eliana can now earn money by doing chores.

As you can see on her chore chart, Eliana can earn money by doing things around the house like setting the table, picking up the books in the living room, or taking Karina's dirty diapers from the upstairs to the downstairs garbage.  She gets a sticker everytime she does a chore and at the end of the week, she gets paid 10 cents per sticker on her chart.

Here she is grabbing her piggy bank.  She is holding it very carefully.  She had another piggy bank (a ceramic one) that she dropped on the floor and it shattered to pieces.

She carefully puts her dimes into the bank.  We are also trying to teach her to save and also give to others. 

So when Eliana earns money, she needs to put 10% into the "give" jar, another 40% into the "save" jar and only the rest can go into her piggy bank.  Eliana is very resistant to this--she especially does not understand why she has to give her money away.  We hope to teach her the value of giving to others, especially those less fortunate than us.

And what was Eliana's first purchase?  An iPhone app.  Is this a sign of the times or what?  She has a game she really likes playing on Emily's phone and paid $0.99 for the full version.  She is now saving up for a doll.  She has 50 cents saved and $19.50 to go.

Karina continues to grow and develop.  She can almost turn on the water faucet (not a good thing) and can open door handles (also not a good thing.)  She was also climbing over the baby gates we set up...and almost falling off as a result.  So we took them down and she goes up and down the stairs by herself.

Karina is definetely a "climber" and tries to climb onto anything.

Karina gets into everything.  She grabbed a hold of stickers once and started covering the mouse with them.

Karina is also getting very snatchy.  Whenever she sees Eliana playing with a toy, she grabs it and says "Mine!".  Eliana has been an extremely tolerant older sister and usually lets Karina have whatever she is coveting.  But every once in a while, Eliana puts her foot down and will not give the item up, which leads to a tug-of-war.  In this case, we make Karina wait for the toy, which usually elicits some crying and wailing on Karina's part. 

Here is a tower that Eliana built.  Then Karina wandered over to destroy it and Eliana (in vain) was trying to protect her tower from the sneak attack.

But all in all, the girls usually get along very well... 

Another weekend...

We had another nice weekend last week and spent some time outside.  We went out for a walk and went to grab the mail.  Karina was kind enough to carry the mail for us in her stroller.

Karina is learning new words every day.  Just this past week, she's learned how to say "dog" and "bag", and she's learned how to sign "airplane."  Last week she started saying "door."  She also seems to be cutting her canine teeth, so has had a runny nose lately.

She had her 18 month check-up last week.  Her weight is still near the 99th percentile, but her height is now down to the 80th percentile.  Her head is still off the charts.  That's probably why we bought a bike helmet for her that's for 4 to 5 year olds.

Here's a little video of Karina pushing her stroller.  Like any one year old, she gets distracted by everything and getting anywhere takes twice as long...



Happy 1 and 1/2 Birthday, Karina!

Yesterday was Karina's half birthday!  She is now 18 months old and well into toddlerhood.  It was mostly a normal day, but after dinner we celebrated with singing and some cupcakes.



Eliana had announced during the day that Karina doesn't know how to blow candles and that Eliana would do the honors.  It turns out that Eliana isn't so adept either.  It took her about 5 tries--Eliana was aiming her blowing about 5 inches below the flames.

Here is Eliana enjoying the cupcake, stuffing it into her mouth as fast as she can.  Eliana really has a sweet tooth.

Karina, on the other hand, sometimes seems to prefer savory things compared to sweet things.  But she still enjoyed the frosting off of the cupcake. 

Karina is very much a little girl now, with her prefences and wants.  She even threw her first full-fledged tantrum a couple days ago, complete with laying on the ground, rolling and fists and feet banging on the ground. 

Eliana has an American Girl Bitty Baby doll that Karina really likes.  Although her big sister is fairly generous about sharing her stuff, Karina was trying to claim the doll as her own.  So Emily got down an extra Bitty Baby doll that she had gotten at a garage sale and was saving until later.  But with Karina so fascinated with Eliana's, she got this one and LOVES it.  We also put Karina is a little dress that she inherited from her older sister.  It's one of the first times that she's wearing a dress and it's still a novelty to her. 

Since Karina likes to laugh, she LOVES to be tickled.  Here she is asking to be tickled over and over.

This past weekend, Eliana had her first ice skating lesson.  She's been asking for it for a long time because she's seen ice skating in the books she reads.  So we signed her up for a Parent and Me class at the local rink.  Elvin strapped on a pair of skates as well and fiendishly tried to remember back to his junior high days when he last stepped onto the ice.

First things first...the teacher showed us how to fall down safely and how to get up from the ice by ourselves. 

Then we learned how to balance and then take baby steps forward.  Eliana fell on her bottom a few times.  She probably got tired of that since towards the end she decided to stay on the ice and even tried to make a snow angel.  It didn't work.  We'll see how next weekend goes.

This weekend was also clear and sunny.  So Elvin spent time in the backyard doing some overdue fall clean up while the girls amused themselves.  Here they are playing with tubs of cornmeal and dried beans.

Eventually, Eliana went worm hunting.  She also filled her bucket with leaves and dirt for the worms to live in.

In the evening, we went to a Chinese New Year event at a local church.  Both girls were excited about putting on fancy Chinese dresses.  They were admired by many and strangers would come up to them to take their pictures.

They enjoyed some of the crafts that someone brought.  Eliana made a fan.

On Sunday, Eliana's Chinese teacher came over.  (Eliana has weekly Chinese language classes for 30 minutes.  Right now, she knows a few dozen Chinese words.)  In honor of the end of the two-week long Chinese New Year festival, her Chinese teacher showed her how to make tang yuan, which is a Chinese dessert made with red bean paste and glutinous rice flour.

Karina also tried helping out. With all the practice from play-doh, she's gotten pretty good as using a rolling pin!

And here are the girls being silly in the bathtub.  They continue to be good friends and are starting to play with each other more and more.

Here's an example of them goofing around after bathtime.  Eliana will talk nonsense to her little sister.  Karina really enjoys this...she's probably thinking: "Finally!  Someone that speaks my language!"

New member of the family...

Eliana has always loved staring at the fish in pet stores.  And in the past year, she has expressed aloud every now and then about how she wants to have a pet fish.  In a tank.  With a castle or coral.  Karina also likes to look at fish a lot.  Fish was one of her first signs.

So...we informed Emily's parents that a perfect Christmas present would be a fish.  Specifically--we had heard that beta fish are hardy (i.e. hard to kill, unlike the goldfish we had a few years ago). 

So on Christmas morning, Eliana opened up a package that was set apart from all others and found a fish inside!  Very exciting! 

At first, she didn't know what to call the fish.  Eventually she settled on the name "Rainbow Fish", named after a fish in one of her books (which is how she's come up with names for all her stuffed animals.)  So feeding Rainbow Fish is the highlight of the girls' day.  Every evening after dinner, each girl gets to drop a pellet of food in the water.  Then they watch him swallow the thing whole.  They also know that they're not allowed to pet Rainbow Fish or to knock on his bowl or swish it around.  

Here's a video of Rainbow Fish Yuen...

PS You might have noticed in the video a piece of paper taped to the fish bowl.  This was a drawing for a fish that Eliana colored and taped on to keep Rainbow Fish company.  But you know betas--they're very territorial.  We think Rainbow Fish feels encroached on by this intruder and this actually  might be stressing him out.  He seems to have gotten less distressed by the "other" fishes presence...poor fish.

Snow day!

This past week, we finally got the snow that Eliana has been wishing for.  We got 2 inches of snow overnight and in the morning, Eliana ran into our room shouting, "It's snowing!  It's snowing!".  Technically, by the morning it had actually stopped snowing and had started raining, so we bundled up quickly to play outside in the snow before everything melted.  Elvin went in to work late to spend time with the girls outside.
Here is Eliana getting bundled up.

The snow was beautiful outside.  But walking through it made you realize that there was a lot of slush at the bottom.

It is awfully hard making a snow angel on only 2 inches of snow.  But Eliana tried anyways.

Eliana and Daddy worked at making a snow man.  The snow was so wet that it wasn't hard to do at all.

Here is the final product.  We didn't have a carrot handy, so a branch from last season's collard greens made a nice stand in.  The snow man is about 4 feet tall.

Karina came out too.  But her footing was a little unsteady and she refused to budge without holding someone's hand.  All in all, it was lots of fun.  In the afternoon, it had warmed up to the 50's and the snow was all gone by then.  Crazy weather.

Because it's been rainy recently, we've had to come up with fun indoor activities.  We used a big box and made a house out of it.

At Eliana's request, Elvin cut out windows, which are very fun to look through.

Karina has to copy everything that her older sister does.  It's cozy in there, but often both girls go in there at the same time.  The girls brought in a set of silverware into the house.  Also, Eliana decorated the front door with a wreath (a holdover from Christmas, I guess.)

Karina has turned out to be quite ingenious when it comes to reaching things that she wants.  If she sees something on the counter that she wants, she will take a step stool or cardboard box, push it to the right location, and then climb on it to reach whatever she wants, in this case, grapes (a favorite snack of hers.)  We have to keep a close eye on her ALL the time.

Karina's attention span for books has also taken off recently.  Whereas before, she wouldn't read a book for more than 15 seconds, she will now flip through pages by herself for a while.  Reading a book while laying on the ground is a favorite position of Eliana's, so Karina copies her. 

Karina's language is also developing a lot too.  She can now sign "sleep", "doll", "duck", "elephant", "monkey", and "orange" (the fruit).  Also, she's gotten a lot better at mimicking words we say.

And Karina has lately been sleeping pretty well.  She is usually in bed by 8pm and the majority of the time, she sleeps through the night until about 7am the next day.  Hallelujah!  Here she is in her sleep sack (she often gets cold at night but moves around a lot in her sleep, so a normal blanket would never stay on top of her) and her favorite blankie that she sleeps with every night.

It's a boy!

We are having a boy!  Emily is 20 weeks pregnant and we just found out the gender this past week at the ultrasound.  Although we didn't have a preference for either boy or girl, it took us by surprise a little just because this will be a new experience for us--having a boy in the house. 

Eliana and Karina went along to the ultrasound appointment, and Elvin came in from work as well.  At first, the girls were content to watch whatever was going on on the computer monitor.  Eliana didn't know what to make of things but was still excited to find out she was going to have a baby brother.

Then the girls got bored and started their usual antics.  Elvin got a couple of surgical gloves and blew those up.  That kept them occupied for a little while.

The ultrasound tech was a really nice guy.  He might have small children himself because the yelling/laughing/screaming going on 5 feet away from him didn't phase him at at.  Included in the CD-ROM he gave us was a short video.  It shows our baby boy swallowing, he says.  It also shows the heart beating.

Here is one of those fancy-shmancy 3D ultrasound pictures.  It creates a picture that's a little strange, we think.

Emily is due at the very end of May or early June.  We are excited and look forward to a very busy summer!