Favorite nap position

After feeding, Eliana usually goes into a food coma for about 5 minutes. Then she wakes up and becomes alert for about half an hour. After that, she starts fussing and needs to be soothed to sleep. Eliana's favorite position for that is tummy to tummy with her Mommy. It takes between 5 minutes and 45 minutes to get her to sleep, and after that...she'll be out cold for 1-3 hours.

Grandparents' visit...

Last week, Eliana's grandparents from Elvin's side flew in from San Jose, CA. This was the first time that Yeh-yeh (grandpa) and Nai-nai (grandma) got to see Eliana. They showered attention on her and spoke a mix of English, Portuguese, and Chinese to her. This either thoroughly confused her or is helping her become trilingual...or maybe a little of both.

Yeh-yeh, Nai-nai, and Eliana...

And here are all four grandparents...

Eliana's weight gain...

We just came back from Eliana's 2-week appointment with her pediatrician. The doctor said that they expect most babies to get back to their birth weight at the 2-week point. Our Eliana, however, weighed in at 8 lb. and 12 ounces. That's 1 lb. and 2 ounces over her birth weight. Do we have a future competitive eating contender?

Because I'm sure you'll all be asking for it, here is her weight all graphed out for you, starting from the day she was born until today. (At this stage in her young life, I figured she's not that sensitive about her weight, so I didn't think she'd mind be posting this.)

Hanging out with Eliana

So we've been told that Eliana is a very mild-mannered baby (so far.) When she cries, it's usually for a reason, like "I'm hungry and need some grub!" or "Why in the world did you wake me up for?" Otherwise, she's been sleeping at 3 to 4 hours at a stretch and been gaining weight like gangbusters.

Besides eating and sleeping, she does spend quite a bit of time looking around, swinging her arms around and--with her legs--kicking at an invisible soccer ball. (We hope that someday she'll be on the women's World Cup team for the U.S.) She also enjoys making a variety of grunts, loud exhale sounds, and squeaky noises.

Here's a look...

Eliana's first week

Eliana has had a long week, beginning with being born and leaving her cozy womb, to taking her first car ride, meeting some of her cousins, and moving in with her Mommy and Daddy.



Eliana has learned how to sleep through her Daddy's snoring and her Daddy has learned how to sleep through Eliana's screaming. (Mommy has a hard time sleeping through either.) We are adjusting well as a family.



Here's a video summarizing her first week...

Little hands and feet

At the hospital, they took a stamp of Eliana's tiny hands and feet. Some of the impressions went onto the birth certificate, we believe, and others were for us as keepsakes. She has long little fingers...

While she was taking a nap...

Eliana is holding Daddy's finger.

Waking up routine...

About every 3 hours, Eliana has to go through her wake up routine. She instinctively knows to do her calisthenics, especially after we take her out of her swaddling. She stretches her arms and legs out straight, contorts her face in a myriad of expressions, and gradually starts wimpering...which soon turns into shrieking if we don't get her some food!