All About Elena

Elena is my sweetheart. She just finished her first year of preschool. She will be doing 3 weeks of the summer program at preschool, though, because she loves playing with other kids. When she had 3 weeks off for winter break she was so anxious to go back and play with everyone, so I thought that 3 months off would be too much. 

She is kind and loving, cuddly, funny, creative, imaginative, and always likes to try her best. She loves to laugh, and she loves her daddy.

She cares about other people and animals, and she asks at bedtime who she can pray for.

The other day when we were outside Jorge got rid of an ant (Elena is scared of bugs, including ants!) and she asked where it was. Jorge told her it was gone, that it had died. "It died?" she asked. "Don't worry," Jorge said, "it probably just went to heaven." She replied, "No, it's not supposed to die. God is supposed to take us to heaven when it's time, but it's not time for the ant to die." I'm amazed by the conversations we have with her sometimes.

She loves to color, and is a bit of a perfectionist. Every time she comes out of the lines she has to inform me. 

Sometimes she's willing to smile for a picture. 

She's silly.

Here she's trying to get some dinosaurs out of ice eggs I made for her. She used salt and water. This age is so fun; she gets such pleasure out of simple things. The word "activity" brings such wonder and joy to her. I'll tell her "We're gonna do an activity," and she gets so excited and anxious to start whatever I have planned for her. A lot of these activities are done during Samuel's naptime because they're a little too advanced for a one-year-old. Sometimes they'll do them together, but he'll start wandering off after a little while.

She loved the tunnels that the salt made in the ice.

She loves playing with her toys, and she liked playing with the dinosaur babies and making sure they were taken care of. She put me on babysitter-duty a few times.

And of course she had to show them to her daddy.

I'm so thankful to be caring for such a thoughtful, loving, fun little girl. And she's growing so fast, I'm amazed.

Backyard Fun

Have I said yet that I love spring? We've been outside so much, and the kids love it. I've been trying to do fun stuff to keep them amused. We've been playing a lot with water. The water table is filled up every day. They love to play with it, and it keeps them cool.

And they've been playing with the water ball. Samuel mostly just stands next to it trying to catch the water in his mouth.

 

And we've been playing with ice lately, too. I froze a bunch of "treasures" in a container. I made one for each of the kids, but it kept Elena busy for a lot longer. Samuel wandered off after awhile, and then he came back occasionally. Here's Elena trying to dig out some treasure. There were buttons, beads, bracelets, gold coins, etc. 

I gave them salt and squirt bottles with water. We've done a few ice projects since this time, and we've learned that ice cream salt works better than table salt and is a lot more fun. 

Elena was so excited every time she got something out of the ice, and she's been carrying all the trinkets around for days now. Her jewelry box is now her treasure box.

One day I put mud in containers for them to play with.

 

The table looks pretty messy here, but the kids stayed surprisingly clean. Elena had no mud on her, and Samuel just had some smeared on his clothes, but I just stripped him down before going inside.

 And they play on the wiggle car. Elena loves it.

 

Our outdoor space has been great for them this year. Not long ago we had no lawn back there, and I can't imagine going back to that.

 

Auntie Amy's

Things have been a little busier than usual. The kids and I stayed at Amy's house for several days while we had people working on our house. The kids had a blast. Samuel loved the big dogs, and Elena especially liked having other kids in the house to play with. Samuel did pretty good with his naps while we were there; I was pleasantly surprised. He's still an amazing sleeper, but usually he has a hard time the first couple of naps when we're away from home. I didn't manage to get any pictures of the kids with Amy. Usually Jorge and I travel together, so I take a bunch of pictures while he's watching the kids. I realized when I was leaving we didn't take a lot of pictures and Amy didn't want to take any since she was still in her pajamas and without make-up. Next time . . . Here are some pictures of the kids that I managed to take.

Samuel loved this little chair in the kids' room.

 Elena found Mikayla's dress-up stuff and put on a ballerina outfit. So here she's a ballerina.

Luckily the kids did okay during the drive. I did stop on the way home because Samuel wasn't sleeping and he was super fussy and hungry. But it was okay. And it was so nice to have a long visit with Amy. Elena was looking forward to it for a long time.

All about Samuel

This little guy is 18 months old now. I can't believe it! He's soooo big! And totally not like a baby anymore. He's super active, curious, agile, and likes to experiment and see how things work. 

He likes to sleep with his butt up in the air.

He always seeks us out to help him feel better when he gets hurt. In this picture, he wasn't hurt; he just got himself wet and didn't like it. 

He loves pretend play now.

And he's a thoughtful child. Even though he gets frustrated easily, as any toddler does, he shares things with Elena, and always takes her water cup to her, even when she doesn't want it. 

He loves playing with water and sand right now. He plays with the water table, filling a teapot to water the plants. 

Sometimes when we tell him to do something he looks off in the distance and ignores us. That's what was going on here. Jorge had been telling him to sit down because it was windy and he was pouring sand, but he started looking at a tree in the neighbor's yard. In this picture Jorge was walking over to him since he wasn't sitting down. Notice that he's not worried at all.

He's a happy boy. Also a loud one. Most of what he says, he yells, no matter what his mood is. It's taken a little getting used to for me.

He can be fussy and irritable, then I take him in the backyard and he's totally content. He'll sit and play with sand for a long time, then get out and run around. And luckily the weather has been awesome.

 

He likes to run and jump and yell. He loves teddy grahams, goldfish crackers, and ice cream. He hasn't had a haircut yet. He sleeps through the night; in fact, he puts himself to sleep for his naps and at bedtime. In the morning, he still wakes up and plays with his stuffed animals in his crib, allowing me to stay in bed for awhile longer. I'm so thankful that he's such an amazing sleeper! He's kind of transitioning to one nap right now, but he still gets tired in the afternoon so he'll go lay down even though he doesn't fall asleep.

He uses so many words, and repeats a lot of what we say. He's always handing us things, and says, "Here you go." The other day he said "Here you go, Mommy," and I was amazed. He likes to fall on purpose, then say "fell," and waits for me to give him sympathy and comfort. So today during his second naptime, when he didn't sleep, I kept hearing, "Uh oh, fell, ow, fell." (He wasn't hurt, I was watching him on the monitor). He says things like "doggie," "sister," "bear," "water," "ball," "here," "outside," etc. He's also still pretty tall for his age, in the 99th percentile. He's filling out more, which we noticed in his face.

 He's my baby boy.

Easter 2014

I'm pretty behind and just now getting up our Easter photos. We had a really good Easter, with beautiful weather. Of course, we colored eggs. We did it during Samuel's nap so it was pretty easy.

 We did an egg hunt with my mom's group at the park. The kids had fun.

 And they got some yummy chocolate in their baskets.

We went to church on Saturday, and on Easter we went to my mother-in-law's. The kids love running around in her backyard and playing with their cousins.

Elena loves being chased.

Samuel and Nana.

Jorge tickling Elena.

It was a pretty awesome day.