Three Quarters

Grandma and Calvin share a birthday, and it was Eliana's 3/4ths Day.


Eliana is nine months old, and I've missed a bunch in blogging due to general lunacy. On the same day that Eliana became 3/4 of a year, Calvin became 3/4ths of 50.7. Yeah, figure that one out. Horrific math problems aside, we are well.

Hey, wait! Actually, I'm exhausted, but it's all my own fault. I somehow have not yet given up the idea that I can get something done. I keep trying to accomplish tasks, see people, and go places. Not even like I used to before kids, just somethings, sometimes. And it's still too much. It stresses all of us out. I used to think (like last week) that I could plan well, have everybody nap on schedule and for just the right amount of time, and then still DO lots of things. Apparently, after much anguish and soul searching, and attempt after attempt to prove myself wrong, I cannot. I like to blame the non-nappers, but it's all part of what I cannot control, and therefore I have to stop expecting that I can, which is where the internal distress happens for me. I can't push it/them, it just doesn't ever work out very well, and I don't like myself when I'm in the mode of prolonged trying: trying to get somewhere on time, trying to get to just one more store, trying to stay just five minutes longer, etc.


Okay, they're sweet.


Adessa stomping in the ample rain puddles. She's even figured out that mud is just as fun when the puddles dry up.


Snuggly and warm in Daddy's fleece.


Eliana's all over the place, she keeps popping up in new nooks and crannies.




In the span of a week she started: crawling, pulling herself up onto furniture, drinking from a sippy cup, saying "Mama", clapping her hands, got her first bed-head, and this week she is waving and saying "Haaaaa" for hi. Blast-off age, here she goes!

I kept trying to get a picture of the side of Eliana's head, to showcase the sweet potato she'd massaged into it. But every time I put the camera up, she turned to smile or bestow one of these amusing expressions.






All cleaned up!


Gwennie came over to play, and the toy-tubs became boats.






Eliana wanted in on the tub-action.

Eight Months of Eliana

Eight months old, 1/5! Little banana face. (No, really- there's banana on her face.)


Figuring out her sippy cup.


At our annual 7pm countdown New Years Party with the mom's group. It was held at Stacy's this year, a break from tradition because our normal host, Kim, was having her second daughter Julie! Welcome to the crew, Julie! Gwennie's a big sister, but we missed her for the picture. Some would argue that all of our kids missed the picture, but hey, it's a record.


Enjoying the jumperoo. Everybody jump now!


Eliana's getting ready to move, which means mostly that she scoots around on her bunners (that's the official term at our house) and gets herself tangled up in her toys. She hangs out for, oh, about 30 seconds on her tummy before getting cranky about it, so crawling may take a while. Meanwhile, she pulls herself to her knees on the toy basket and otherwise freaks me out. She cut a tooth (did I tell you?) and seems to gnaw on everything, so we are expecting the arrival of more. She is delightful. She really prefers being with me, will cry if she sees me walk by if she's in anyone else's arms, or even playing on the ground. But from my arms, she is babbling, giggling, playful, engaging sweet delight. What fun it is to get her up from a nap, she rewards you with the most adoring expressions and noises. She's starting to grab at everything, which doesn't delight Adessa, who thinks she's trying to take her toys away or pull her hair. Is this the beginning of them being at odds? I hope not with all my heart, I aspire for them to be best of friends and peaceful playmates. (Well, I can hope, right?)


Adessa, while still dependent on her binky for comfort and to sleep, while still preferring to do most of her #2s in her diaper at nap-time, while still sometimes throwing terrific fits when she's tired or hungry or just plain ornery, said this to me yesterday on a walk: "When Eliana gets bigger, like my age, she will stomp in puddles in her raincoat." I was pretty impressed. I am her mom and everything, so I'm supposed to look for signs of spectacularity in my children, and I think that was a pretty spectacular sentence for my girlie. Another one she does, she'll cry holding my legs, looking up at me for comfort and say: "I just want to be held." For some reason, her using the past tense of "hold" at 2 1/2 just makes me laugh. 8) She also has started drawing faces, recognizable smiley faces. I'm not sure when kids do that developmentally, but I'm sure she's waaaaay ahead. Right? Hopefully she won't be like me, though, I always took to things quickly and then was kind of bewildered when everyone else caught up and then passed me.

So Much Fun... (but not too much!)

Possibly too many pictures, though.

We essentially had two Christmases, because Calvin had to work on Christmas Day. Christmas Eve was with his parents and sister and her family, and Christmas Day was with my family. The girls did great with all the hullaballo. I had to take down the Christmas tree the day after Christmas to fit the new toys into our small house. ( Which lead to fits of internal dialogue for me about materialism and teaching the girls about giving and how Christmas isn't about shopping, and about the tremendous amounts of junk you can get for pretty cheap these days, and how at the same time that I wanted to teach them valuable lessons, I also wanted there to be a lot of fun stuff for them to open. I'll be mulling all that over)

But, yes, our Christmas: I'll let the photos tell the story...

The weekend before Christmas, we feasted at Mt. Hermon's Christmas Banquet/Concert series with Grandma and Grandpa Lewis and Auntie Evie and Uncle Randy and the cousins. Adessa LOVES her cousins. Thank you, cousins, for being so attentive to my girls.



This shot is pre-banquet. These pictures kinda make me wish I'd waited until after the banquet to do the Christmas cards.


Monday, 12/21 my merry mom's group decorated gingerbread houses.


All this fun done near tuckered 'em out!


Eliana and our tree, on Christmas Eve eve. I love pictures with the tree, they are instantly interesting and magical. I think this means I should get more houseplants.


Christmas Eve morning, we opened our little family's presents. Say cheese!


Hey, this is fun!


Opening presents with the Lewis Clan after our delicious Christmas Eve feast and revelry.


Opening presents with the Beck clan, Christmas morning. What Calvin missed was...

Adessa's first and favorite present. After opening a trunk full of dress-up gowns and accessories, Adessa was interested only in prancing and curtseying and sashaying around. She had to be talked into opening her other wonderful gifts. And now, post Christmas, she has to be talked out of wearing only princess gowns in the cold, in the rain, to the grocery store, etc.


Pausing to rest for a moment after the present-opening frenzy.


Ben and I with the gorgeous sign that he made for our family. This thing is beautiful and will feature prominently in our house.


Adessa snuggled with Auntie Lolo before our Christmas dinner at church, which was the end of the Christmas fun. Also which, lucky for you, I didn't get any pictures of. 8) Happy Holidays!

Jingle Bells

We tried to get a fall picture with our tree, based soley on my determination to have a seasonal picture every year with the fall colors and our little tree. We waited too long, I think, and when all were awake and semi-cheerful, it was too bright. But we got a picture! Good thing, too, that afternoon it rained and the tree lost all its leaves.


This is Adessa playing with her cousins at Aunt Deborah's a few days after Thanksgiving. What fun to watch her be a part of the kid action, albeit a little behind the older kids.


I was so excited for Thanksgiving to be over so I could get the Christmas decorations up. I think the girls aren't sharing my enthusiasm in this pic. Thanks for the great stockings, Mom!



Going on a weekday, we had the whole Christmas Tree Farm to ourselves. Which meant we had to use our self-timer to get this shot. I then posed the girls to best display their cute Christmas clothes, with Adessa holding up a standing Eliana by the armpits. They were adorable, laughing and happy, but the self-timer was still on. So the seconds ticked by, and I didn't want to rescue the teetering Eliana in case the picture was going to take at the last moment. Well...


...she fell, face first, thud, into the mud. We didn't get the picture, and her cute clothes, head, and hands got muddy. Poor babe.


Here she is happy, though, at Grandma and Grandpa Lewis's, getting some support from Carson while she plays.


Adessa shows off the BEAR sausage she's sampling. A student brought it to our class Thanksgiving feast. Adessa made no mention of it tasting like chicken.


Hello!? I just love this one.


Adessa and her first celebrity crush. She tells almost everyone she meets (who have no idea what she's talking about) what Lightning McQueen says: "Ketchow". *A note about her eyebrow: she tripped on her towel after a bath into an open dresser drawer. Luckily Grandma Edna brought her nurse's bag over and put on a butterfly bandaid.

20 Minutes A Day

Adessa and Elijah playing dress up.


Egg on my face... how embarrassing.


Wild and crazy cutie.


With Auntie Lolo somewhere in the East Bay. We had a lovely visit to see her new place and hang out.


Sooooo... I was listening to the radio the other day and there was a zen buddhist monk on, sometimes called the Happiest Man in the World. He felt sheepish about the title, (he said cheerfully,) but the name was given to him because of his writing on how to be happy. Well. He just nonchalantly asked his interviewer, and thereby us listeners, to wonder what would happen if everyone in the world spent 20 minutes a day trying to be better, more compassionate people. The whole world would profit. My girls would profit. My husband would profit. People who know me might get a little of the trickle down effect.

Somehow, I'm still not sure how it happened, this exhortation got to me. Devotions, quiet times, prayer rule, what have you, have always been a bit of a chore for me. They seem to be the first thing to go if a day is busy (or a week is busy, or a decade, you know.) But! The wording and the simplicity of what this Happy Man Monk was saying... seems so basic and do able, and it's changed my week. Hopefully its changing my life, but it has definitely changed my week. Instead of bouncing Eliana to sleep and chanting: "Go to sleep" in my head, I'm bouncing her and praying. There's plenty to pray about, and plenty of time when you're a mom to do it. Like when I'm waiting for Adessa, who's suddenly decided to start a puzzle when we're heading out the door. That's a good time to ask for more patience. And for more creativity. And less anger, and more love.

I feel better! I want to love my girls and my family so well, in just the right and helpful ways for them. I have proven in these two years of parenting, that I need supernatural help to do so. I want to be better, less disappointed, less judgemental, more compassionate. Where previous words describing meditation time failed to inspire me, ("meditation" didn't work very well in my head, either) the 20 minute idea just sidles into my life naturally and holistically without feeling chore-ish or dutiful. It is a joy instead. Yay!

And my girls are great! Eliana is a sweet, chubby, smiley, warm, dulcet dollop of goodness. She smiles and flaps her arms and blows bubbles and beams and rolls over and over and sits playing intently with toys, and chews on everything and lights up when she sees Adessa or us. She's pretty easy going and happy and its so lovely to be around her sweetness.

Adessa is fun and funny, saying all kinds of surprising things. The other day I asked her to do something and she said: "No possible way." which is from her Berenstain Bears book. Also from the BBears was her oft-repeated quote over the course of a week: "You've got moxie, spunk, nerve." She's still working on keeping her undies dry everyday, but overall is pretty potty trained. She doesn't like help to do anything she thinks she can do on her own, so went for hours the other day with her dress unzipped in the back. If she couldn't do it herself, no one was going to do it. She is wonderful with Eliana, will sing to her and dance for her and try to placate her if she's crying. Adessa sings songs in a nasal voice we've noticed before in little girls. Why do they think that's how to sing? She talks on her play phone and has realistic sounding conversations with Grandpa or Daddy or Gwennie, mostly with a lot of filler words: "Uh-huh, Okay, and after later, because, whoopsie daysie, uh-oh, I love you, bye." She does all of this chatting in a VERY loud voice, because apparently her plastic phone gets terrible reception. 8)

Mug Shots and More

Yep, she's guilty!

Maybe just of being super darn cute and of chewing on Adessa's marked up balloon. Whoops. Eliana is 6 months old and doing tricks! She turns over, eats solids, blows and spits, and sits up. She first sat up while Calvin was watching her, so when I got all excited when I saw her sitting up by herself, Calvin's response was: "Yeah, she's been doing that."

First solid food, with Adessa's help.


Her first of many sis-y-rides.


At a recent wedding, lots of female family-ness.


Getting ready to sit unassisted.


Our little couch squashes.

Recent Excitement and Halloween Hoopla

Carving pumpkins with Grandpa on patio.

Carving pumpkins with buddies in the basement. Us:

The buddies:


An cheery good morning from Daddy and Eliana.


A family walk on West Cliff. Lovely day.


The perils of sitting with Mommy while she eats. Whoops! She wears it well.


Halloween was tremendous. For an exciting excursion, Adessa and I went to visit Sleeping Beauty at her castle, which was our friends' transformed home in San Jose. Wow! Lots of college friends attended, so it was a mini-reunion for me, too. Super amazing fun, just look:

The girls in costume (The Princess and The Pea) pre-party, back at the ranch.

Here, the princess IS a pea. We then left her with Grandma and Grandpa to hand out treats.


Playing with Legos at the Schertle's, our home base for the night.

The amazing castle.

Our amazing hosts and castle creators, Eric and Michelle!

Butterfly Gerilyn met us in the middle for the fun.