Feliz Cumpleaños Bisi!

We went to El Paso this weekend for Daniel's grandma's 80th birthday.  I wasn't terribly excited about traveling with a new baby, but Eliana was really a champ.  She slept for most of the trip there and back.  She even slept well at night.  And I was impressed to see Joaquin sleep through her waking up and demanding food even though he was in the same room.  Eliana stayed with me most of the time, but did manage some cuddle time with Billpa-pa and Bisi since it was their first time meeting her.  Joaquin had fun with his cousins, both the Perches girls and Gina's little boy Emilio.  Joaquin and Emilio have never had much time together, and never really clicked when they did.  On Saturday they spent a good chunk of the day together and the first half was ugly.  Daniel was going a little crazy.  Then they found a common interest in searching for some old signs in Bisi's yard.  After that, they had a great time.  You can see them digging looking for them.  They also had fun comparing the weight of various rocks with Bisi's antique scale.  The competition for the heaviest got a bit heated (you can see that Joaquin's last rock is actually a log.....) but when we tried to go and get ready for the birthday party they were both reluctant to part.  Nice to have them bond.  Joaquin enjoyed the party, even dancing with Mi-mo and listening to some mariachis.  Then we raced back home for our storytime (bug theme this week!)  Whew! I'd be exhausted even if I was sleeping through the night.

Zapatos Chulos

So this was supposed to be a blog on Eliana's cute new shoes.  And they are super cute, but Eliana trumped the photo session with her funny faces.  So here are the many expressions of Eliana.  Apparently here she's about to tell us something that she's an expert on and we don't know squat about.  There's also boredom/tired, a face I see frequently.  And then we're already working on raising our hand apparently.  And finally blase, also a face I see regularly.  But for comparison, here's Joaquin at the same age.  If you ignore the fact that he was already significantly chubbier they look soooo similar!  I didn't think they looked this much alike, but the pictures don't lie.  They are also both entranced by our headboard.  Or rather Eliana is and Joaquin was.  However Eliana is her own girl.  A few Eliana traits; she likes to hold my finger while she nurses.  She will even grab out for it... how heart melting is that?  She also makes this high-pitched squeak/choke right as she's falling asleep.  Scared the bejeebers out of me the first couple times, but now it's cute.  She loves her warm snow suits so much that she will occasionally fall asleep just from being zipped in.  And of course, she has really cute shoes. :)

La Hora del Baño para Dos

So here's our new bathing arrangement.  Efficient isn't it? Actually it's become our family together time since frequently we split off, boys together and girls together.  But at bathtime we have both kids in the bath and both parents washing them.  Eliana has become more acustomed to baths now that she's realized she can see me simply by tilting her head at an angle.  This picture demonstrates it admirably.  It looks horribly uncomfortable but she doesn't seem to mind.  I wish I could show these pictures to all the folks at church who keep saying, "She's always asleep, I don't even know if she has eyes."  Well they should hang out with her in the middle of the night!  JK.  But see, in these pictures she's nothing but eyes.  It's funny to me that both our children have ridiculously large eyes considering Daniel and I have small eyes, but it's adorable.  Eliana in particular has a very pensive bug-eyed stare that makes her eyes hard to miss.  And once Eliana has had enough of bathing (usually after hair-washing, she still hates that), her bathtub can function as an additional bathtoy for Joaquin!

Un Mes y Sesenta y dos Meses

 Yay! Eliana is one month old!  Seems kind of incredible actually, Joaquin didn't believe me when I told him that.  We had a fun time making Eliana's sign and photographing her, although she seems a little bored with the whole process. :)  Afterwards I put her on her tummy on the bed (starting tummy time early on this kiddo, see if we can get her to crawl and walk earlier - save Mommy's back some) and look at her trying to put her head up and lift up her little feet.  Go Eliana go!  Joaquin so enjoyed the whole session with Eliana that he wanted one of his own.  We calculated he was 62 months or 5 years old.  He made the two signs (part of the advantage of being 62 months old is that you can write your own sign) and then insisted on being photographed with them.  So here's Joaquin at 62 months, quite a difference from 61, no?

Hecho a Mano

 So a brief post in honor of hand-made kids clothes. And I'm not just tooting my own horn here, this lovely hat was crocheted by Mi-mo.  We actually have many beautiful hand-made blankets (I know a lot of sweet crafty people), but fewer hand-made items of clothing.  We do have a knitted monkey hat (don't have a picture of that one yet) from a close friend as well.  This little dress of Eliana's was knitted by me, and I'm super jazzed as to how it turned out.  The little turbanesque hat might be my favorite part of the outfit.  And I finally finished Joaquin's bug sweater.  I started this well before Eliana was born, but Christmas projects and the birth kind of slowed me down!  But I finally finished and Joaquin looks great in it.  My first attempt at 'fair isle' patterning, it's supposed to look like bugs crawling.  There are quite a few errors (I didn't have a pattern, everything was an attempt and improv), but Joaquin likes it so success!

Feliz día de los Enamorados 2012

Happy Valentine's Day! Here's a few outtakes from our Valentine's card photo session.  We ended up with this cute one, but the ones where Joaquin is holding Eliana are my favorite. (Example below)  Unfortunately Eliana was still upset from getting dressed and wailed through them.  Joaquin however is smiling (albeit goofily) in all of them, while gamely holding on to a screaming little sister.  I have many pictures of me as a little girl desperately holding a squirming/screaming/moping little brother or sister while attempting to smile sweetly.  Ahhh, the plight of the eldest.  We had a nice family Valentine's day.  Joaquin had a party at school with ice cream floats and valentines covered with candy.  He gave out some that were scratch cards of dinosaurs - woohoo! Although of course we added a lollipop.  Joaquin and I had made cards for Daddy the day before and Joaquin had decided on his own that he needed to make me one and made me sit on the couch and close my eyes while he made it. Then we got a heart-shaped pizza from Papa Murphy's and made heart-shaped brownies for dessert.  My card from Joaquin was beautiful, a multicolored crayon heart on the front and "i love u" on the inside.  Joaquin asked how to spell love, but apparently decided you was just u.  Then he made the u a heart. :)  He's a cutey-patootie.  (He comes by it honestly, Daniel got me some beautiful earrings.) Eliana did nothing special for Valentine's Day except poop through her cute outfit around noon.  But we forgave her cause she's so adorable and sweet!  Joaquin even made her a card as well.  It was very entertaining because he based it off of the card I made Daniel, but he didn't understand the concept very well.  For Daniel I drew some tamale candies and an actual tamale and then said, "Honey, you are one hot tamale".  I'm sooooooooo clever, JK! Joaquin wanted to know what it said and then what it meant.  My explanation that it was a joke inspired him to try his own joke card.  His card for Eliana is a picture of blue jolly rancher candy and the phrase "You are a glass of water".  Made it up himself!  (Although I of course had to spell everything.)  Fun times in the Headley casa.

Hermanos

So the fun of having children 5 years apart is that the oldest is semi-responsible.  I can leave Eliana on the floor of Joaquin's room while I run to the bathroom without fear of what might happen.  What happened in this instance is that Joaquin started explaining to Eliana what a pulley is.  Seriously.  She was totally into it too.  So a few Joaquin stories from lately.  We've been reading a lot of Dr. Seuss lately, Joaquin's current favorite being "If I ran the Circus".  So Joaquin's take on Dr. Seuss..... "I think he took some true imaginings and put them in a bag and shook them up."  I found that very apropo actually.  He's also decided that Eliana is charming enough that we need another one (which I find odd, because her crying bothers him).  He wants me to get pregnant again, now. Hmm...... maybe not.  He's also having more fun pretending with other children.  Lately he comes home from school with stories of their adventures at recess.  Apparently he and the boys are the bad guys on one ship while the girls are the good guys on the other.  And this recess he and a few other friends were a family of dragons so they had to go around making dragon noises.  I love that he's learning new imaginative pretends from his friends.  

Moda 1

 Following in Joaquin's footsteps, Eliana is growing fast.  Although her height is growing fast also, so hopefully she won't be quite so rotund.  It has it advantages though, since now we're rocking the smaller of our 0-3 clothes. That means now it's time for a blog with a few of her cuter outfits.  This sweet little bear suit is actually a size newborn, but since it runs big, she just now fills it up.  It's hysterical now that her arms actually fill up most of the sleeves because she waves them around at me.  I feel like I have my own live teddy bear.  The white outfit came from a used clothing store, but I love it because it's both pretty and practical, pants are important on chilly days!  (Plus she's rocking a very bizarre but typical Eliana expression.)  And the beautiful outfit that seems to be making her very sad (she hates being dressed) is one of the few things I bought, new and full price, for her.  Notice again the practicality of her ruffly skirt, both beautiful and warm!  And I love these bear slippers, they're the only shoe type accessories that fit her currently.  Fortunately when you're a baby these go with everything!  Anyone not interested in little girl clothes I must warn you this will be the first of many blogs devoted to the cuteness of Eliana's fashion, sorry.  It's way too much fun having a baby girl.

El Primer Baño

It only took two weeks, but the umbilical cord finally fell off!  So now we can have our first real bath.  She was enjoying it until the tub (which had been propped up on the side of the sink) got bumped and dropped a few inches suddenly.  Eek!  That was some serious upsetness.  And we haven't quite recovered.  The next bath she wasn't into it at all!  But the last one she was happy for the first 5 minutes or so, so I'm hoping we can grow back into a love for baths. Either that or keeping this kiddo clean will be a chore. 

Visite Primero de Mi-mo

And just when we thought we'd have to start figuring out real life, Mi-mo came to help!  Yay! While she came to see Eliana, and did manage to hold her quite a bit, Joaquin took it for granted that she came as entertainment for him.  This might have something to with all the cool games she brought for him.  He loved essentially all of them, especially this traffic game. He's surprisingly good at little puzzle things (like his Perplexus) for a kid who was never really into actual puzzles.  In this picture, he's doing some activity specified for the pizza game.  This is a game you play while actually eating pizza so we had a pizza night.  Obviously Joaquin enjoyed it. :)  And here's Eliana with Mi-mo, modeling a beautiful outfit Mi-mo brought her.  I like this picture of Eliana with Mi-mo because she's sticking out her little chin, something she does frequently.  It's an angle I see her at often.  Mi-mo finally left us, but she definitely helped get us over the hump between Daddy home time and the ability to cope with two small children and life.  Thanks Mi-mo!

Primero Sesión de Fotos

Our friend Emily is an amazing photographer who for some reason thimks she needs more experience as a newborn photographer. So she came over for a photo session of Eliana.  The pictures were absolutely incredible but since many of them can be accessed via facebook, I'm just putting up my 3 favorite that weren't up online.  Fortunately Joaquin got to go play with the grandparents after a little while (the photo session was not near as productive with him), but we did get some cute photos with him, including a few of him jumping from the 'burst' mode on Emily's camera.  He loved that she could capture him in midair.

Una Fiesta para el Tío Mateo

While it's important to keep a little baby away from germs, and the chance to spend lots of time snuggling and bonding with them, it can get a little claustrophobic.  Joaquin went to school and Daddy is now back at work, but I'm spending a lot of time in the house.  So to stave off cabin fever we went to a party!  At my parents for Uncle Matty's birthday.  Joaquin had actually done some planning with Grandma, so the party included these punch balloons.  As you can see, they were a hit. :)   It also gave Joaquin and Daniel a chance to work on Uncle Matty's Perplexus.  (I officially declare the Perplexus the addiction of choice for all the male members of my family under 40.)  And Uncle Matty turned 28, yeah!