Eliana's new hairdo!

So, after 22 months of refusing to have any barrettes, clips, rubber bands, or anything else in her hair, last week Eliana asked for "hair bands". Emily put them in, Ellie pulled them out, Emily put them in again (at Eliana's request) and she left them in! She has then asked for them everyday, and wants to "show people" wherever we go. Now, whenever anyone comments on her hair, Ellie reaches up and checks her "ponytails". It makes her look a lot different...and a bit older, too!

Ellie has also mastered (finally) throwing a ball! She really likes to "play ball", always with a certain purple ball. Her favorite part is throwing it so we can't catch it, and then "reaching" for it, proclaiming it "too far away" and running to go get it. You can see her playing it...as well as just doing the things she does...

Repeating what she hears...

Eliana constantly entertains us with her silliness. To be fair - she is just copying what she has heard us say, but with her own almost-2-year-old spin on it, based on her understanding of the world. We are realizing just how much of what we say is going to be repeated...and we need to be more and more careful! Today, after Elvin expressed frustration with the birds eating his berry crop, Ellie announced: "Eliana kill all the birds" - which was a pretty close copy of what Elvin had said, although she personalized it.

Eliana is also picking up on tunes and lyrics. She likes to have Emily play the ABC song on the piano, while they sing along. Here, she is doing the playing and the singing...

Trip to the Coast...

Since Elvin has a break from classes, we decided to take an overnight trip to Newport, a town on the Oregon coast about 2.5 hours from where we live. But we, of course, leave only on Eliana's timing. We can no longer just put her in her car seat, she must climb in herself, or as she puts it: "Eliana do self!!!" And she needs to hang onto the handlebar for a few seconds before settling in. Eliana actually does pretty well on long car rides now. After we got there and checked into our hotel, we visited a state park that had one of the best tide pools we've ever been to. We saw sea anemones, purple sea urchins, small fish, and star fish of various colors. Although Eliana knows about star fish from books, the real ones are all scrunched up and she didn't recognize them in their natural state.
At night, we ate dinner at a Rogue Ales pub house. While Elvin is downing his order of sampler beers, Eliana entertains herself with the Lego set. While playing, it became obvious that she is a "sorter." Without prompting, she took out the pieces from the mesh sack and categorized each one according to color.

The next day we visited the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which is a small but well designed aquarium. It has a great hands-on tide pool, with even more animals than we saw yesterday. It has tiny little crabs, sea cucumbers, and other critters.

The Aquarium also has a tunnel in a large tank filled with shark and other fish. Eliana was satisfactorily amazed, but also kept asking to see dolphins.

The only dolphin was a cement one at the playground. I guess one day we'll have to make our way to Sea World so she can see live ones.

Overall, we had a good time and drove home in time to host a Mother's Day dinner at our house.

Growing up...

Ever since we came back from Hawaii, we have noticed that Eliana has become much more independent and opiniated. So in our minds, she has officially changed from a baby to a little girl.

Even though she has strong opinions about some things, she is still a relatively easy going kid that obeys the rules 90% of the time. One such rule is that she is not allowed to touch knives--any knife. One day, she happened to find a knife from Ikea laying around, which she picked up, brought to us, and triumphantly declared, "Eliana KNIFE!" Which we immediately took away.

She has taken to playing with her dolls a lot. She will grab a tub, take off all the doll's clothes, and pretend to give the dolls a bath, using a wash cloth and empty bottle of shampoo. Then she'll take a bigger tub and pretend that she's taking a bath as well.

She also enjoys to cook on the play stove that she inherited from her cousin Lena. She dumps toy cookies into the pot and stirs them around. She also has an oven mitt, which she uses when putting the pot into the oven compartment.

Every Saturday morning, Emily leaves the house to tutor. So Elvin takes Eliana to the farmer's market in downtown Vancouver. Eliana enjoys looking at all the dogs and says she wants to pet them. But when she gets close to them, she'll refuse to touch them. Now that the weather has warmed up a little, Eliana can play outside more. She continues to be obsessed with water...


Eliana got a new pair of sunglasses at the dollar store. The first day she had them, she wore them all the time, both outside and inside the house.

Trip to Hawaii

Last week we went to Hawaii (Kauai) for a vacation with Emily's parents. We did lots of sightseeing, a little bit of swimming, and enjoyed a break from everything! Elvin also enjoyed eating 8 days worth of papaya, pineapple, raw ahi poke, laulau pork (pork steamed in taro leaves) and Hawaiian sweet bread. Eliana LOVED having her grandparents around 24/7, and experienced a bit of Grandma-withdrawal upon our return. The flights went amazing well with Ellie - no crying! - and she held up pretty well with all the driving. So, a successful "last" vacation with just one little girl!

Being silly...

Eliana is in the "let's try on Mommy's shoes" phase. This time, however, she put on Emily's fake Ugg boots, which go up to Eliana's thighs. Even though it is very awkward, she seems to like walking around in them...





You may not hear from us for a while... As you can see below we are packing (and Eliana is un-packing) for a trip. We are going to Hawaii! We will be spending a week at a time share in Kauai with Emily's parents. We hear Kauai has a lot of feral chickens running around everywhere. We expect that they will be a hit with Eliana--we'll let you know.

Happy Easter!

We had a full and eventful weekend. Spring is here. Even though a cold and windy storm passed through our area this weekend, we had a chance to go into the back yard.

Eliana, ever aware of tiny little things on the ground, spotted a "lady buh". Daddy picked it up and she loved looking at it. But she refused to let it crawl on her hand.

Elvin was putting in asparagus plants into the backyard. But from the picture below, we're not sure who was actually in charge.

At the local farmer's market, there were (Easter) bunnies for sale. The last thing we need is a pet bunny, but I guess the next best thing is being able to look at them for 10 minutes straight. She would reach into the cage and pet the rabbits with her index finger.

She got her second haircut on Saturday evening. The haircutting lady had a 17 month old herself and was very good with Eliana. Eliana has never been squirted with a spray bottle before.

On Sunday after church, we held an Easter egg hunt in our living room. We hid about a dozen eggs. This being her first egg hunt, she needed a lot of coaching on how to do this activity. She found one under the piano bench.

Elvin put a Reese's peanut butter cup into each egg. When she realized that with egg #1, the hunt came to a screeching halt--she needed to "eat cahn-dy".

But for some reason, she would only take a nibble then drop them on the floor. (Elvin dispatched them later so they wouldn't go to waste.)

On Sunday evening, we drove 20 minutes to Emily's parents' for dinner. Eliana's cousins, who she loves to spend time with, were there as well. We walked to the creek in the backyard to look for frogs.

No frogs were to be found, but Eliana had a great time playing with her cousins Abby and Millie.