Ahhh, I Love 3 Day Weekends!

I am so thankful we have a 3 day weekend! We really needed it. Elena Rose is all over the place right now, she keeps me chasing after her all day long. It can be really exhausting. She loves being around the dogs and chasing after them, too. She is growing so super-fast. She's found her favorite food, yogurt, and that's pretty much all she wants to eat now. Yogurt and puffs (not cheerios, but the puffs that disintegrate). She could eat those all day long. And all the veggies and fruit and cereal that she used to eat before? She's not so much a fan now, but I try to get her to eat a little bit each day, to make sure she's getting fiber and iron. Hopefully this phase doesn't last long. She loves her bathtime more and more each day. And around bathtime she'll crawl into the bathroom, so then we start getting her ready. We've got the bedtime routine down now, too. After her bath, I'll brush her teeth and Jorge will love on her and say goodnight. I take her to the nursery with lullaby music and read her a bedtime story in the rocking chair, then nurse her if she's hungry. Now when she's hungry she'll turn around and face me when I'm in the middle of the book, then she'll look and my chest and whine. So then I know she wants to eat. She's so precious.

She's so tall now, and wants to climb everything. She pulls herself up and wants to stand all the time.
Helping mommy do laundry Everybody loves bubbles at bathtime, even Charlie!Jorge, with help, demolished our old, yellowish bathtub today and installed a new, white, porcelain tub. I love it! And it's deeper than our old tub, so it will be way better to soak in. No pictures yet though, because the rest of the bathroom is being ripped apart. I will post pictures of the final product. Amy came to visit today and we had a good time. She was originally going to come yesterday, and I'm soooo glad she came today instead, because we had to stay out of the house a lot since they were tearing everything out, and I knew that napping would be a challenge for the baby. So it was nice to have company and help, and it's been a long time since she came out so we were due for a visit anyway. First we went to church, then got lunch for the guys, then my mother-in-law came for a short visit. After that we ran errands and sat in the car for awhile to let the baby nap, since sleeping in the nursery today wasn't an option. I miss my sister already!

Auntie Amy & Elena RoseNew sunglasses, just in time for summerAnd the weekend's still not over. Tomorrow all 3 of us are going to have lunch at a friend's house (the baby's playmate, Alana), and then Jorge is going to try to tackle one more task in the bathroom, tiling the floor. I can't believe the bathroom is finally getting done! And when I post pictures of the hideous wallpaper that we've tolerated for almost 2 years now, you'll understand why.

I know my baby's sweet because . . .

-She leaned over and puckered up to kiss Jorge when he got home from work
-Whenever she's holding a doll and I sing "Rock-a-bye Baby" she starts rocking
-She waves goodbye to me
-She likes to sit in my lap and play
-She runs her fingers through my hair when she's tired
-She likes to cuddle at night
-She cuddles with her blanket in her face to fall asleep

And here's a picture of my sweet baby

Isn't she Precious?

A Busy Week, with a Busy Baby

Things have been a little hectic over the last week, even though it seems like not much is going on. Maybe it's just that the baby is so active now that she's keeping us on our toes. Now that she's able to crawl all over the place, she's more interested in standing and climbing. She always wants to stand in the bathtub, while I'm leaning over with my hands on her in case she slips or lets go. It's becoming more and more difficult to get ready for work in the mornings because I need to keep her amused while also making sure she doesn't pull herself up to standing then fall, and when she doesn't want to do something, or doesn't want to stop what she's doing, she lets us know. So I think we're just busy trying to keep up with her. I guess this is what it's like once they're mobile and entering the toddler stage. Not much else is going on. Jorge has been working in his new position for a little while now, and he likes it.

Elena Rose turned 10 months old on Sunday. I can't believe it. Here's one of my favorite pictures from when she was a newborn; we were still in the hospital. I like to look at her newborn pictures to remember how different and small she was then.

Happy Mother's Day to me!

I hope all the mommies out there had a wonderful Mother's Day. I am so blessed to have my baby girl in my life. We got up early to go to Santa Maria that day, and Jorge brought roses and a Mother's Day card to me when I was waking up. I got to meet my sister April's newborn baby, Destiny, and we got to spend our first Mother's Day together. Destiny is super sweet, and super small. She feels tiny compared to Elena Rose.

Myself, my mom, my sisters and nieces, and the two babies.Elena Rose, me, Grandma, Destiny, and AprilElena Rose did really well for traveling so far that day. She was in a good mood and gave my grandma lots of kisses!Elena's getting stronger every day. She's pulling herself up in her crib to stand, and then she'll suddenly let go to land on her butt. I'm glad she's figured out how to get down once she's up, and she loves to be in there and play.

Alana, another baby, had her first birthday party on Saturday, so we went to that and Elena Rose had a good time. It was at Gymboree, a play place for babies and little ones. You can see tiny bubbles stuck to Elena's hair in this picture. She liked the bubbles.
This was her first time on a rocking horse. She sat in a big girl chair and ate puffs. Plates are really useless, she just flips them over.While I'm at work, Elena Rose stays with Janice. Sometimes Janice's grandkids go over, and the baby loves to play with them. This is Ellie. She's 6 months older than Elena. Elena loves to play in one of the bedrooms there. She crawls up to the window and pulls herself up to look out, and she could pretty much spend all day looking out that window. She's so big!Also, happy birthday Amy! My sister turned 29 today. Love you!

It's the Little Things

Our church organized an event involving 12 other local churches to package 1 million meals in one day. The meals will be going to the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and countries in Africa. And we did it! The whole time I was working (standing up) I had Elena Rose in one arm, and I would pour into a funnel with the other arm, then I would grab the bag and hand it to the person who was weighing it. The weight was very important because they had to meet the airline regulations; if the weight was over, whatever they put the meals in would not be able to load. I had to change arms a lot! My biceps were burning, and now they're pretty sore. But it was worth it. All the meals I worked on will be going to Malawi, and I have no idea how many meals my team made; we had a good assembly line going and just kept moving. The meals were made of lentils, rice, chicken powder, and spices. Each meal had over 2,000 calories, so I'm guessing there was a lot in the chicken powder. I'm happy to know that there will be less empty tummies for many children out there.

I learned a little bit about the Dominican Republic. If you don't have "Dominican Republic blood," you're not allowed to go to high school and the only thing you can really do is work with sugar cane. But they told us about a boy in a small village there who was naked trying to bath in a mud puddle when a church member went and asked him where the local church was. The church worked with this little boy and watched him grow. He was somehow able to attend high school, and he just graduated from medical school and he was at our church today; amazing! God is good.

It's funny how simple things can make the baby so happy. Last night she was fussy and having a hard time. She's cutting her first top tooth and it's really bothering her. Nothing seemed to help last night, so I suggested that Jorge give her a cup of water to play with, and then she was totally happy and had a blast.

She's starting to respond to questions, especially when we ask about Ginger and Charlie. She immediately looks toward the backyard. She's starting to point, so in the picture below she's actually pointing at the dogs (and also kind of shrugging for some reason!).

She likes yogurt now! I have to give her everything several times before she actually likes it and will finish it, so this was the first time she had a good amount of yogurt. And yes, I'm feeding her on the floor, because it was the easiest thing at the time, and what difference does it make? And yes, those are baby knee pads! We just got them to cushion her poor knees on our tile, and they also have silicone on them so there's some grip.

Don't I have the cutest baby in the whole world? I think so! And she's also the sweetest baby in the whole world.