Hey shorties, it's your birthdays...

So both girls had their birthdays this past week (Marielle's was today!) and merriment was had by all at Nammy's house in Los Altos.

A friend's son had his 4th birthday recently and to commemorate it, she wrote him a letter and talked about their life together and how much she loved him.  I love that idea so much, I'm going to steal it.

Without further ado:

Dearest, dearest, Elianna,

Your third birthday came and went with a flash; there was so much going on with our joint cousin birthday party, there was scarcely time to savor the moment of YOUR day.  

We’ve been a team for 3  years now and while it was a little one-sided at first, you’re finally starting to shoulder a little bit of the load.  

Kidding!  But seriously, you are starting to become this little person with your own thoughts, desires, dare I say, agenda and it’s ridiculously entertaining being a part of it.  Everyone tells us you are rather verbal for your age and your ability to wrap your mind around ideas and tell us what you’re thinking is amazing, at least to me.  I love how you can make these leaps in logic that turn our rules into something that works for you.  Example:  Us:  Elianna, you can’t use our phones without us being there, understand?

You:  Okay, mommy!

Upon finding you playing with the phone:Us: Elianna!  We said you can’t play with our phones unless we’re there. You:  But you’re in the house!

There are many, many examples of this and while it’s massively frustrating it’s also quite amusing and sometimes it’s very difficult not to laugh.

You are your father’s daughter when it comes to climbing and while I know all kids this age climb, it’s easy to attach a certain significance to it.  It makes me want to climb again so we can do this as a family.  You are in gymnastics and seem to love it as well.  The coach frequently has to redirect you off the bar, where you have pulled your feet over your head and are swinging upside down, to whatever the rest of the group is doing.  We have a pull up bar at home and you are always asking to 'hang'.

You alternately love and love to torture your sister.   Sometimes you try and calm her down if she’s crying, others, you’ll scream at to make her cry!  Either way, you both enjoy each other immensely and it’s so fun to watch.

Elianna, I love being your mommy.  I hope you never doubt how much you bring to our lives and how much we want wonderful things for you.  Three years old is going to be a wonderful year for you.

Love you forever,

Mommy

And for your baby sister:

Oh, my Marielle.  It’s such a cliche but I can’t believe you’re one year old. I’m so in love with you, it’s hard to remember the first few months of your life when I was so depressed and not in a good place at all.  I hope beyond all hope that that period when I was in survival mode and had nothing extra to give you won’t adversely affect you.  

We really have come out the other side though.  I love being around you and learning the world through your eyes.  As recently as 2 months ago (and yes, I’m ashamed that it took so long), I still thought your cries were just cries with no meaning or intention behind them.  You would think that being a second time around mom, I’d be less dense but no it took you getting extremely upset when I took a toy away for me to finally realize that A) you knew what that toy was and B) you wanted it!  Once that realization took place I started seeing your ‘becoming’ in so many places.

 You’ve been communicating for a long time whether it’s from your piercing screams (any soprano opera singer would be proud) or your insistent grunts when something displeases you but now you have become a talker and although it’s totally unintelligible,  it’s so adorable.  You babble and jabber constantly and some of them are starting to sound like words.  Pretty sure you’ve said mamamama and meant it.  Your only consistent sign is for milk and you use it frequently.  Guess weaning isn’t in our immediate future!

You’re on the move; we’ve blocked the stairs because when we don’t it’s the first place you head to.  You’re very good at them but I’m just not comfortable risking a fall.  Yesterday, however, you figured out the 3 steps into the lower room all by yourself.  So proud!  You’ve started cruising and pulling up so I’m sure walking isn’t far behind.

You’re more of a snuggler than Elianna was at this age but you both still would rather be upright, looking around, than hiding from the world.  You are also one of the happiest babies I’ve seen.  As Nana says, if you’re awake you’re smiling.  Love that about you.

I love the relationship between you and your sister.  She’s always been able to make you laugh or smile, even when you were at your grumpiest and now that you can do more things, Elianna is really starting to have fun with you as a sibling.

Happy Birthday, my love.  I love you, love being your mommy.  

And what you all really came here for...

Milestones...

This is going to be a bit of a bittersweet post.  Our Nikki, who has been a loving friend to our girls for over 2 years is moving on and moving back to Seattle to refresh her cosmetology training.  She has watched them grow up, helped us become a family of 4 and it is so sad to see her go.  We are looking for a replacement but she has left very big shoes to fill.  I almost feel bad for whomever we hire.
So that's one milestone down; the loss of a caregiver.  I hope Elianna does alright.  My guess is she will.  She seems to be very resilient but I predict a lot of, "Is Nikki coming today?"in our future.

In other E news, she's graduated to the next level in gymnastics.  In this level, Mommy and Daddy are banished to the upstairs viewing area while she works with her class and coaches alone.  She's a bit young ( the cut off is 3 years) but so far she seems to be doing well.   She tends to wander off anytime there's a bar she can swing on ( the girl loves to be upside down) but with a bit of redirection, she's back in the game.
Also, this girl is a climber.  Anything with rungs or something similar means she's going to be up it on the quick.  She's very surefooted and keeps her head about her.  She has her father's genes in that department for sure.  We are going to be buying her a full body harness really soon so we can go to the climbing wall..just not sure if she's big enough for one.  I hope so because I think she's going to love it!

And Marielle.  For awhile, she seemed like she was a little to the left of the bell shaped curve; not behind by any stretch of the imagination but not a prodigy either.  She wasn't much of a talker,  took awhile to roll, let alone crawl and generally just seemed content to just hangout.

Man, the past few weeks have effected quite a change in our girl.  She 'talks' all the time, tries to imitate what we say (kkikkk kkiikkk is her word for tickle, I'm just sure of it), makes animal noises and has gone crazy mobile on us.  We cannot leave her alone or she's up the stairs, giggling and going faster when we try and stop her.  She's stood alone for brief seconds, pulls up on everything (and everyone), and hates, HATES sitting still.  Mike and I have a bet as to when she'll start walking.

So yes, bittersweet.  Our girls, our fabulous girls are growing up.  

Like I said, fabulous!

For the love...

Has it really been 3 months since my last post?  Guess the girls are keeping me muy busy!

No way to catch up on everything so I'll just give a snapshot of where we are now.  Elianna is Sassy with a capital S.  Everything is 'why?, why?'  and, 'what are you doing?  Why?"  She keeps us on our toes because she sees and remembers EVERYTHING.  We've started reading sight word books with her and she is really good.
 Marielle is on the move!  She army crawls like a champ and is starting to knee crawl.  She's also pulling up on everything, be it stable or not.  The end result of that is that I'm afraid to leave the house for fear someone is going to call CPS...her head is the very epitome of 'bruises in various stages of healing'.  She's also a babbling fool and I'm pretty sure she signed, "daddy" a couple weeks ago.

Okay, I'll get to what you all really want...pictures!

And I'll try and do better.  If only I was a better writer, you'd have better content.  Oh well, I'll let the pictures of the girls do my talking for me.

Comparisons are odious...

...or so it is said but I'm not sure how to get around it when talking about your children. When Elianna came around, Mike and I, in our naiveté, thought she was a difficult baby, realizing around 10 months or so, that we probably had it easy. Marielle's arrival proved us right, making us feel like we are complete noobs at this parenting thing even though we have a 2 year old under our belt.

It's also so easy to compare because we have digital evidence of almost every milestone. If we want, we can know exactly when Marielle does something new and look back and see when Elianna did it. I just don't want to compare them and maybe find one of them lacking. I love both of them so much and I never, ever want one of them to feel like the other one is my 'favorite'. I want it to be exciting to see where Marielle's strengths are, compared (there's that word!) to Elianna's. That being said, I think it just means being proactive and knowing when we're comparing because we're going to do it; it's inevitable.

And with that, here's the pictures:

Elianna and Daddy reading:

Daddy and little girl:

Snow White and Rose Red:

So solemn, both of them!

Pretty, pretty girls

Vegas peectures!

So as promised, Vegas pictures. I will give the caveat that they are all camera phone pictures and as such, could be better.

Da goils hangin in da crib, aka Vdara:

Elianna feeding a donkey and goat at the saddest petting zoo ever. She was entertained though which was the whole point.

Great-grandma Mary, aka Gigi with the littlest grand baby

Elianna eating a monster pancake at Mozen Bistro in the Mandarin Oriental hotel. She was quite taken with the restaurant and has named one of her stuffed animals, Mozen.

Elianna had a blast riding the trams around City Centre. Trams and escalators were all a big hit with her.

I'm pretty sure there's a joke to be made about a girl swinging on a pole in Vegas. Were one not someone's mother, that is.

Elianna at her aborted park trip. We tried to get her outside for a nice park visit, only to find the park was under construction. Not to be thwarted, Elianna made do with some nice, sandy volleyball courts. Who needs slides when you can make sand angels?

And my favorite picture of all, for obvious reasons:

Sleeping beauties

I have no pictures of my children sleeping. None. I see my friends showing off their newborn pictures or of their 4 month olds asleep in their beds and I am a bit forlorn because I'm lacking in this department of parenthood. Neither Elianna nor Marielle have been what you'd call easy babies when it comes to sleep so there was no way, no how I was going to risk them being woken up by the click of a camera shutter. Thus, while other people have pictures like this:

My good friend, Aimee's new daughter, Hazel. Photo by Tabitha Ward


I have pictures like this:

Home sweet home!

We are home from our Vegas trip and what an awesome trip it was. Only a few members of my extended family didn't make it (I'm talking to you, Joe. What, you think studying for orals gives you an excuse? As if.) so everyone got to meet Marielle and re-meet Elianna who made quite the impression. We are so used to her but it must be a sight to see this little girl the size of a one year old talking in complete sentences.

Vdara was quite nice and a change of pace from the Trump where we usually stay. One thing you start to realize however: nobody really expects you to actually use the kitchen in these rooms. Basic necessities were completely absent ( dishtowels, sponge, toaster, cutting board, silverware etc.) and the bowls and plates were more artsy than functional. Eh, we made it work but I did miss my cuisinart. The rooms didn't get all that dark also which was problematic for sleep for the girls. Both of them became early birds, getting up before 6am which is NOT their norm. Mama and Daddy were quite sleepy from this.

Elianna had a blast riding the trams, going up and down escalators, seeing the Bellagio fountains and seeing her family (read: new audience). We soon realized that all the things we had planned that cost money weren't really necessary; she was loving just being outside and playing in parks. I guess we should cherish that tendency while it lasts, eh?

Oppi was there for the second half of the trip and had a ball with Elianna. She immediately appropriated his iPhone and proceeded to teach him a few things (Angry Birds, anyone?). Marielle charmed him as well with her smiles.

We ate well for the most part with meals at Botero, Michael Mina and Holstein which has a vegan burger that is so good I've tried to recreate it for us at home. I haven't succeeded yet but I shall persevere. Our last night, we tried to go to Bar + Bistro which has an extensive vegan menu. After fighting traffic for over an hour for a mere 3 miles, we made our way to the door of the restaurant and saw a line of people waiting to get in and no visible parking within half a mile. By that time it wasn't worth it for either of us so we bailed and ate at the hotel. Next time, next time.

The computer is acting up thus, there are no pictures. So sorry! I'll get them up when I can.