Mas Visitantes

Another weekend and more visitors!  We had Sule & Patience and their kiddoes come as well as a flying visit from Mi-mo and Billpa-pa.  Despite the fact that we only saw Bill for a short time he managed to get in some quality holding Eliana time.  Which means of course that he's the only person we got a picture of with her.  (Honestly my children are going to grow up believing no one ever came to see them because we never took pictures.)  Regardless of the lack of pictoral evidence, we did have a great time with all our guests.  The craziness of four children under five was a bit much, but it was worth it to be with our friends.  Sule even helped Daniel put together our new bed.  (Don't worry I kept the "How many engineers does it take...." jokes to a minimum)  Now this weekend will seem so flat without any out of town guests to entertain us.

Comida para Eliana

A baby's life is full of firsts, and here's one more from last week... first food!  A nice mix of rice, apples and pears.  She liked it!  Didn't eat a huge amount, but enjoyed what she did.  She's eaten twice since then so we're still working on making it a part of our day to day life.  Unfortunately bottle introduction has not gone so well.  She hated it passionately with Mommy milk inside.  (I mean crying and trying to get away from it, etc.)  The next day I let her play with it with a little juice and some water inside.  She liked the taste okay and thought the nipple was fun to chew on, but only a little sucking went on.  I tried one more time with plain water and she sort of played with it again.  So Mommy is re-thinking strategy.  Convincing Eliana of something is always a difficult process.  Still she's growing up fast!

Dedos de los Pies

Eliana has discovered her toes!  Yay for fun new body parts.  It was actually really funny, I bought her some gold gladiator sandals (yes, she has fabulous shoes, she's my baby!) with little flowers on them and they caught her eye.  After a day of watching her flashy feet, she started reaching for them and discovered - toes!  Now grabbing her cute tootsies is her new hobby.

Mentores

I say thankful prayers every day that my boy has so many lovely men in his life.  It's even better that most of them will take time to hang out with him.  Lately Joaquin and Daddy have been enjoying reading together.  They tackled The Hobbit which was a bit above Joaquin's head.  He caught the plot and had fun with it, but asked questions about every half second.  (Very frustrating, not just for Daddy but listening Mommy as well.)  So I went looking for a book that would be easier to conquer.  I got Mr. Popper's Penguins, which turned out to be quite the hit.  Joaquin has been a penguin for several days now.  Now that they've finished, they're moving on to the Chronicles of Narnia.  Don't worry boys, that should occupy you for awhile and Mommy has a prodigous repetoire of favorite children's literature.  This other picture is with Grandpa.  He and Grandma dropped by on Memorial Day and he introduced Joaquin to Notepad on the computer.  You would think it wouldn't be interesting to a kid who's quickly mastering Word, but Joaquin is interested in new computer information always.  He really just likes knowing how things work on the computer.  Turned it on, typed in my password and opened up Word the other day.  Totally shocked me!  Anyway now he's discovered that Grandpa likes computers too and I think my Dad is going to be on call for more computer lessons.

El Eclipse

Last weekend Daniel's Aunt Meredith and Uncle Jerry came to visit on the heels their tour of historic Route 66.  Daniel and Joaquin took them up the tram (I declined to imprison other folks in a small area with a crabby Eliana and we got some beauty rest) and then on Sunday, they were lucky enough to be in Albuquerque for the eclipse!  We took them up to our friends' new house in the mountains and watched the eclipse through our homemade pinhole camera and some old tinted camera lenses.  It was very interesting and the pinhole camera (ingeniously designed out of some old diaper boxes by Daniel and Jerry) worked very well.  Both Joaquin and toddler Luke (he used to be baby Luke to Joaquin, but as he's grown and gained a baby sister, we had to upgrade him) enjoyed the pinhole camera and Joaquin had a great time exploring their new nature-scaped yard.  The adults had a good time too, especially since there were numerous adults to help keep the baby happy.  Especially sweet Aunty M who is a experienced grandma. It was a short but lovely visit.

Graduación para Joaquin

Joaquin graduated from pre-school! I say it like that because I'm trying to be happy about it.  I am super proud of him, he's learned a ton and grown up so much. But it's hard not to be scared about my little guy growing up.  He really has changed so much this year, finally becoming a little boy and leaving toddler-hood completely behind.  

Of course they had a graduation ceremony, that's not silly at all.  It was actually very sweet, the kids wore matching t-shirts and had little felt mortarboards.  Each class performed their own little song and then each student had their name called and received their 'diploma'.  I'm admittedly biased, but Joaquin's class did the best job on their song.  They obviously knew their words and their actions.  And Joaquin was obviously having a great time participating.  Sometimes he can be such a stinker about joining in, this was really fun to see.  And to top off a lovely evening, Eliana was an absolute angel baby all night.  Fabulous!  Afterwards, we met up with Joaquin and because everyone else was doing it, he insisted we take photos with him on the edge of the stage.  And since it was his initiation, he really smiled.  Look at these charming, no grimace smiles.  He's a little sad because he tells me he's going to miss his friends, but fortunately Caleb, Caleb and Joshua will still be at Sunday school!

Cuatro Meses

Eliana is four months old! (And apparently not terribly thrilled about it, I had already taken several pics with Joaquin's camera and she was done with the photo session.)

While now very active and kicky we haven't achieved rolling over yet (probably because we don't do enough tummy time). The biggest milestone we've achieved is our first tooth.  Actually just part of a tooth, but a bicuspid rather than a front tooth so she still looks all cute, baby-like and gummy.  She makes adorable noises thinking they're conversation and loves it when you repeat them back to her.  She's a bright little cookie, which is cute but frustrating because she notices when you're trying to put her to sleep and protests - vigorously!  And while she's a definite mommy's girl, she loves her Daddy.  He's the perfect chest to snuggle to sleep on.

I love you my little bug-eyed baby doll!