Bed Head

I walked into El's room this morning and cracked up when I saw her bed head. Her hair doesn't usually get so crazy overnight. Must have been a good night of sleep. :)

I was trying to get a pic of El, but as soon as the camera came out, Ev had to stick his head in. What a clown.

Nervous Elly

Yesterday at the doctor's office, I was amazed to see Ellena's response to being in an unfamiliar place with strangers. She hated being poked and prodded and being naked except for her diaper. She was nervous! So here are all the physiological responses she had:

* serious face - no smiles
* when the Dr. was talking, El started crying
* when sitting, she was hunched over, as if trying to curl into a protective shell
* sweaty feet, hands and armpits - clammy!
* when sitting, she would look at me and say, "mama" in a pleading voice

The Simple Things

Trying to get the two monkeys to look at the camera and smile is the hardest thing to do! Ev will smile while El chases the camera or gets distracted playing with the chair. Then, Ev gets tired of smiling so he leaves just when El looks at the camera. This is today's best effort.

Here's El with Evan's dragon friend. She doesn't get to snuggle with his toys too often, so she's really liking this.

Here's Evan in a box. He said it's his new home. Nice.

Twitter This

Seeing how addicted Pops is to Twitter, I thought I should join in the fun. By "join", I mean having Pops set up my account... hee hee. So if there's anyone out there on Twitter, let me know so I can follow you! :)

The Land of No-Naps

It's official, Evan has given up naps during the day. Last week was our trial run and it seems to be working out for everyone. We were having major bedtime battles (he had a hard time falling asleep before 10 PM when we put him down at 8:30 and was waking at 6:30 instead of 7 AM), so finally I said, let's cut the nap and see what happens. He will play quietly (cause it's still Ellena's naptime) by himself and watch one show at 2:30 (he's gotten into Wonder Pets. Ming-Ming, your speech impediment KILLS me!) We sometimes will run an errand in the afternoon if Ellena takes a short nap, so that has been nice. He loves going to the library and picking out books. :) And he zonks out at 8:30 PM and sleeps soundly til 7:30 AM. Sweet!

The picture above is of Evan making a silly face after macking down a cupcake.

9!

Ellena is 9 months old today! And wow, she is developing so quickly! Tooth number 5 is completely out and she's currently working on #6. The rest of her gums looks like there will be a tooth explosion in the next few months - ouch.

Ellena is learning sign language and Evan loves to show her the signs. She can do "more" when she's not feeling lazy or sassy. She is also very expressive and gives a lot of non-verbal cues. Like if she wants something, she really reaches out for it.

A few days ago, Ellena started saying, "Momma". Yay! "Poppa" is not far off. She definitely understands who everyone is and when we ask her to find someone, she will look at that person. She is also waving hello and goodbye. It's a wild, side-to-side arm swing, but still a wave. But she remains very leary of strangers. She gets really serious and refuses to smile or wave to strangers. But hams it up for the people she knows and trusts.

Evan has had to learn the "distraction technique" now that Ellena is mobile. She is always interested in the toys that he plays with, so I told him he needs to give her something else to distract her. He likes this much more than having Ellena take away his toy.

Here's Ellena and Poppa doing their slow dance. She gets such a kick out of that.

Sunshine

Today's weather is not so nice, but the last few days were simply glorious. Here are my two rays of sunshine enjoying the sunshine. :) Evan is hamming it up for the camera and Ellena is trying to explore Evan's bandaid.

Remember to do your part for Earth Day!

Ellena's Kitty Friends

Ellena has been intrigued by Piko and Poki and now that she is mobile, she enjoys "playing" with them. Once, she saw Piko and creeped over to him. She then let out a loud shriek of joy in his face, which scared him and he left.

Today is a sunny day and Piko has the uncanny ability to find the tiny spots of sunlight that shine in the house. I placed Ellena next to him and then Poki came to join the fun.

She then burried her face in Piko's fur for snuggles. He left soon after.

Here's Evan at the neighborhood park. He is loving the nice weather. If it's just a little sunny he says, "It looks like a nice day for playing at the park!"

Celeb in the Techie World

Stressful times in our household. Pops's company was bought and thankfully he still has a job.

Pops has been tweeting and check this out.

Our little tech celebrity. I guess his tweet has been popping up on other tech sites, too.

Say What?!

Today Evan came home from school and told me, "Someone at school told me they wanted to take me to their house."

I asked him, "Who was that?" I try to keep a straight face, but inside I am screaming, "Who is this sicko???"

He thought it over and said, "Andrea." Ok, phew, she's a girl in his class. Not some bad stranger lurking around the school. He went on to say, "Andrea wants to take me home and feed me chocolate chip cookies. But I don't like chocolate chip cookies. I like cookies with sprinkles on them." Ahh, to be so young and innocent. :)

What a Week

The good:
Evan is back in school. Yay!
We are having some nice weather!

The bad:
Evan got sick after Easter dinner - too rich? Threw up all night. Ick.
Ellena has been a little more difficult than usual to put down for a nap. She cried for an hour and a half yesterday before finally passing out. Stamina.

The ugly:
With the rough nights and days, I've slacked off on the workout. But here're some cutie pie pics to end this post on a happy note. :) See, smiley face, too.

Top Evanisms for the Week

Thought I would switch it up a bit this week and put up some classic quotes from the 3-year old sass-itude.

* "Duh, Momma!" He was trying to tell me something and he kept saying it over and over and I couldn't understand what he was talking about. "Huh? Candy flower? What is that, Evan?" And he replied, "Duh, Momma! A candy flower!" Turns out, he meant to say dandelion. So I call shenanigans on that. He doesn't get to say 'duh' when he's not even saying the right word.

* "Jeez, Lady. ONE chip?!" Evan and Pops asked for more chips with their lunch. I put one chip on Ev's plate and a small handful on Pops. Ev then got all incredulous with the previous quote. Nice.

* "Momma, you are so drama!" This one was random. Ev just was feeling plucky and started spouting off phrases he thought was funny. Same with the next phrase:

* "Momma, cool yo jets!" Pops loves this line.

* "I macked it down." He picked this up from Pops, referring to eating something all up.

* "That's tight." Also a gem from Pops.

* "Aunty, you're a dum-dum." Ouch. Aunty's magic thumb trick failed to impress this 3-year old and he was not shy about saying so.

Egg Hunts

We had a leisurely breakfast at Sweet Addition in Gilman Village, which happened to be their last day in business. Here are Pops and Ellena getting ready for the "egg hunt". I love her little smirk.

We then were ready for the "egg hunt" at Gilman Village. I keep putting "egg hunt" in quotations cause it was NOT an egg hunt! It was our first time there, but I guess they changed the format this year. So instead of a hunt, they had participating stores hand out eggs at their doorways. So, very similar to our experience at Bellevue Square at Halloween time. That works for a large mall with wide walkways. Not so much at Gilman. It was a big, ugly, disorganized mess. After getting a few eggs, we decided to bail and hit another hunt. You know, one where they actually hunt for eggs.

So we left and went to Eastridge Christian Assembly. What a nice change! They were organized into four age groups and their respective hunting areas. Tons of eggs for the kiddos and Evan had a great time! Definitely a do-again next year.

After all of the eggs were gathered, we went back to the starting point and emptied the goodies so that they could recycle the eggs. Besides the candy treats, Evan also was lucky to get a slip of paper that said to claim a special prize. Score! Turned out to be a Dora whistle/bubble blower. He made a comment like, "I don't want that. I'm not a girl." But I told him either he gets that prize or none at all and he decided the prize was fine.

So all in all, a fun egg-hunting day. Next year will be interesting with Ellena in the mix!

Pics Real Quick

El took a short nap and is now pushing her high chair to get my attention. (She's on the ground, pushing the wheels.) So, here are some new pics, REAL QUICK!

El in her cheerleading outfit from Aunty Kay.

Ev eating a humongous strawberry - the size of his hand - and El looking on.

I walked into the room and said "Hi" to El. I did a double take and realized Ev was in the laundry basket.

Egg Coloring

I needed to get some stuff done this morning so we planned to have Evan go to Grandma's house to color eggs. He was so excited that at 6:30, he came walking into my room to get me out of bed. He had already changed out of his pajamas and picked out his outfit... Which Pops said made him look like an egg. And I thought was the absolute worst color choice for egg coloring. But oh well.

I was planning on getting Ellena ready to go and would then drop Evan off at Grandma's. He knew that would be a while, so he asked if Poppa could take him instead. I told him he would have to ask Poppa. He goes up to Pops and says, "Can you take me to Grandma's? Momma said to ask you." It is what I said, but doesn't that make it sound like I came up with the idea for Pops to drop him?

Top 10 for the Week of March 29

* We had a scrumptious meal at our favorite Mexican restaurant - Taqueria la Venadita (Thanks Rebecca - best restaurant referral ever!) The guy we usually see there is named Jose. So Evan calls this place "Jose's". However, the last few times, we did not see Jose. Instead, we saw a gal. This time, Evan asked her what her name was and she said, "Mimi." So now, Evan calls this place, "Mimi's". :)

* Not a very good survival rate for Evan's fish tank. All fish except Princess and Sharkie died while we were gone. We got 5 new Albinos from Petsmart - one already died. Gonna see if there's anything we can do about the tank before more die. Poor fish.

* Ellena has started sitting up on her own. In just a few days, she has become an expert, with just a few tumbles backwards.

* I am almost done with the first week of the workout. Ouch. Today I'm really feeling it. All week I had the nice muscle pain. Today, I'm feeling fatigued. Day 6 - tomorrow - is supposed to be kenpo. I feel like an uncoordinated goof doing it, so I was going to do something else instead - plyometrics or repeat the cardio workout. Hmm, maybe tomorrow and Sunday will be Rest X.

* Ellena has started babbling up a storm. She will sit there and talk back and forth with us. It's the cutest thing.

* We booked our flights for this summer's HI trip. Hawaiian Air had a special, so we got a good price. And used Evan's frequent flyer miles for our interisland hop. How sick is that - our 3 1/2 year old had enough miles to cover us.

* Ellena's separation anxiety seems to have gotten better. Not as many Momma battles at night. But she was quite sassy to Pops this morning.

* Finished a little dress for our neighbor's 1st bday present. Next, gonna work on her big brother's bday present - matching aloha shirt. Then, gonna see if I bought enough material to do panties for under the dress. :)

* Had Wendy and Isabel over for a playdate. Nice to see out buddies after being away on our trip. Kids go off and play by themselves - Wendy and I can chat, and El entertains herself now that she's mobile. Love it!

* Yesterday we went across the street and played at our neighbor's house, whose kids are about the same age as Ev and El. Very fun times for all.

"Let's Take a Picture"

Evan's back to hamming it up. I put Ellena in the bouncy car and Evan mooched in and told me, "Let's take a picture." Alright, anything for my boy.

Ellena seems to enjoy bouncing around in the car. We pulled it out of storage this weekend and Evan has also climbed in and entertained himself for a while.

Self Feeding

We are trying our hardest to get Ellena interested in feeding herself. She prefers opening her mouth like a baby bird and getting a Cheerio popped in her mouth. When she has one in her hand, I try to bring her hand up to her mouth. Sometimes, she will try and pull her hand away and hide it, then open her mouth, expecting me to feed her. What a girl. But with lots of positive reinforcement, we're trying to get the message across that it's GOOD to feed yourself. Here she is with handfuls of Cheerios.

And some random pics of the kids.