Setenta Meses

 And of course you can't celebrate a baby turning 9 months unless you celebrate her brother as well.  Joaquin wrote his sign himself. However I was doing something else while he was writing.  So he came to ask me how to spell month and somewhere between me and the table it became mom.  So he is 70 mom old apparently. :)

Suéter Azul

 This is an old sweater of Joaquin's.  For some reason we still have it, so when I found it, I put it on Eliana.  Admittedly people in the grocery store probably wouldn't know she was a girl, but it does prove one thing.  Blue is her color.  Despite the fact that she's darker than me, she does look good in all the colors I look good in.  Which makes the experience I had the other day all the more inexplicable.  The check-out lady at Marshalls was admiring Eliana and then asked me, "So her dad must be dark, right?"  I was both intrigued that she actually could tell and somewhat amazed at her chutzpah. I mean couldn't be a sensitive subject to take a guess at?  Of course now that Eliana's eyes are actually a distinct brown she does have different coloring then me, but then again, so does my mother.

Leer

 Eliana's become quite literary lately.  And apparently theological since all these books are from Daddy's seminary stash.  One of her new favorite activities is pulling books from Daniel's shelf (it's perfect since it sits right on the floor).  Then she occasionally flips through them, for all the world looking like she's reading.  And of course when she seems Mommy has pulled the camera out she has to come investigate!

Nueve Meses

 Eliana is now nine months.  At the doctor's office she weighed 20 lbs 3 oz and was 28 and 3/4 inches long.  (Which is a huge increase since her last appointment!)  Which puts her still in the 90th percentile for height but only the 75th for weight.  I've never had a baby like that before! I think it's due to all the crawling.  This little girl is on the move.  She's much more content now that she's mobile and she spends much of her free time crawling around exploring.  When Joaquin is home we tag team to make sure we know where she is and what she's playing with.  When he's at school I have to be extra vigilant!   This of course makes getting the nine month picture a little difficult.  I think my favorite picture is where she's apparently reading the sign.  "Hmmmm, nine months, where does the time go?" Notice the pic with a lopsided smile.  This is due to teething.  It feels like we've been teething forever!  And this is unfortunate because she is not a happy teether.  Having raised 2 other babies I can definitely say she's suffered the most.  Still we've cut through 3 bottom and the 2 front top teeth so we're almost done for awhile.  She's started talking, mostly just a lot of baby babble, but a few words that seem to mean something.  She says "I", and it's usually when she's greeting you or trying to get your attention.  And she screams "Mamamamamama" whenever she's upset about something which I'm guessing is probably a pretty solid clue she means Ma-ma! She also kept calling Joaquin "Buda" one morning, but since it hasn't been repeated I don't know if it counts! Not much progress on the growing hair front and she's now almost impossible to give a diaper change to, but still maturity continues.  Such a big girl who can do so many things!

Fiesta de los Globos

 Balloon Fiesta! I got a little choked up this year when I realized that this is Eliana's first, and only for a long time, Balloon Fiesta.  Next year Joaquin will be in school so we probably won't be able to come down for it.  How do you grow up without the Balloon Fiesta?  Do you come out warped or something? Fortunately despite some bad weather we had a good one.  Several days saw balloons landing in our neighborhood, one on Sunday so Joaquin got to see them.  Friday night the glow didn't go because of wind, but since parking and admitting were thus free, we went and watched the fireworks from close up.  Joaquin and Daniel bought a little shooting LED-thingy and had a great time watching it shoot into the air.  Eliana set a record as the most relaxed baby about fireworks.  She enjoyed them at first, calmly watching the sky explode into fiery bits and then decided to go to sleep.  (This from a baby who wakes up when Joaquin plays with Legos)  The next morning was COLD but the only morning we could go that had a good chance at lift-off.  We bundled the kids up ridiculously (here's Eliana as the world's cutest sausage.  She had some underthings, a sleeper, a cute sweater jumper and a fuzzy lined sweatshirt. Plus she got to snuggle up next to Mommy in the sling.)  Fortunately there were a lot of people there so we just warmed up by wandering through the crowds.  We had a great time as usual playing with the balloons and then Joaquin got to play inside a giant bubble.  Basically they fill up these giant plastic bubbles with air and a small child and let them loose on a pool of water.  Joaquin bobbled around and bounced his bubble and apparently it was great fun.  Show the child hundreds of giant hot air filled balloons floating through the sky and all he wants to do is bob around in a shallow pool.  Maybe he's a little blase about this event.  Eliana had fun watching the flying balloons, even saying, "ba, ba, ba" at them.  Then she decided to (you guessed it) go to sleep.  I hadn't realized the sling was still so soporific for her.  A few minutes at the chainsaw cutting contest and an almost purchased horse head carving later and our last (for a few years at least) Balloon Fiesta was over.  

Bañera Grande

 Now we're big enough to use the real tub! It's very exciting; Eliana loves being able reach the faucet especially.  She's not terribly afraid of water, so she splashes happily while the faucet is on and crawls around the tub when it's done.  She's even pulling herself up to her knees using the tub edge.  Eek, all of a sudden she's growing up too fast!

Recreo

Nowadays the best moments and the best photographs for me are of my kiddoes playing together.  Eliana loves Joaquin's room and now that she can crawl she can get there whenever she's down on the ground.  (Yeah, in a week she went from slowly crawling a few feet, to prowling around the house.)  This would be fine, but sometimes Joaquin's room has some dangerous stuff  (for babies anyway) on the floor.  So if they're playing around in there I usually try to watch. On this day they were super cute, playing tug-of-war with some used up glow sticks (Eliana loves these for some reasons) and giggling hysterically.  Joaquin was being quite nice to his little, little sister and she loves anytime he's paying attention to her.  Still I got a little worried when Joaquin crawled under his blanket and started being a blanket monster.  I mean, Eliana is really little and easily scared.  But apparently she's not easily fooled.  She just laughed and took that monster one, poking it wildly with her spear/glowstick.  A little sister's gotta be tough, ya know?

Balluminaria

 Joaquin's school has a cute little event to celebrate the Balloon Fiesta.  All the students decorate a paper bag with a balloon and then they set them out around the field and playground as luminarias.  They call it Balluminaria (I have a hard time saying that for some reason).  There's hot dogs and chips and a couple of balloon gondolas shooting propane flames into the air - fun for the whole family!  Joaquin was very proud of his balluminaria and we got a chance to meet some of the kids in his class.   I love the community this school tries to make.

Frambuesas

Grandma listens to all of the news, even the special interest stuff so she found out about Salman Ranch where you can pick your own raspberries.  Even though it was north of Las Vegas, therefore over two hours away, we decided it sounded like fun.  Joaquin was very excited although he persisted in saying we were going to pick strawberries (despite repeated corrections). Eliana bore with the drive quite well, only a few fits.  It was beautiful! They had these pretty gardens around some ruined adobe walls.  We played around them while waiting for Grandma and Grandpa to meet us.  Joaquin found a cool bug, here he's showing it to Eliana.  Then we went and picked raspberries.  Surprisingly labor intensive, but fun when you only have to do it voluntarily. Joaquin, Grandpa and Daniel picked conscientiously and we ended up with 4 1/2 lbs of raspberries! (And that's just for our family, my parents have their own.)  Here's some photographic evidence of Joaquin's industry and the fact that some of the raspberries he picked did not end up in the bin.  We finished our raspberry binge with dinner in Santa Fe on the plaza.  Eliana ate calabacitas happily, but cried most of the way home from there.  Other than that it was a wonderful day.

Que Linda

 I'm not a good photographer, but some days just make you want to take photos.  Eliana was so cute and happy playing and then I noticed her pajamas and toys matched. It's like we planned it, but no, happy accident.  These funny, lopsided, crinkly faces are her happy, busy faces.

Gateando

And we have a crawler! As of 9/28/12 Eliana is officially mobile! This particular video is actually her first real crawling moment, I noticed she was looking like she was about to crawl and called for a camera, and magic happened.  So here it is, Eliana's first forward crawl.  She's been doing it a lot since then, although never really farther than two feet.  Still, forward motion yee-haw!