April 2011 - solid food for Eliza

Wow - it's been a busy month! I meant to do a posting the day Eliza ate her first food from a spoon (back on 4/13), and it's taken until today to actually make time to upload pictures and videos.

I'll start this post with a cute picture, with no particular story to tell about it:

A couple weeks ago, Rosa was doing a lot of talking about "the forest" and often "the tigers that live in the forest." So I decided we should all go to Muir Woods before the summer tourist season starts and it becomes impossible to park within miles of the park. When we arrived, I settled in to nurse Eliza. Jeff just missed a picture of Rosa and I sitting at opposite ends of this bench, both nursing our babies.

But he did manage to catch us both carrying our babies on our tummies!

Jeff and Rosa by the slice of redwood that began it's life in 900AD and fell down in the 1930s.

Beautiful, huge trees.

Rosa and Jeff lay down on the path and looked up at the patterns of the branches. Several people stopped and took pictures of them. I think they wanted to lay down and gaze up at the branches too!


Here's the littlest Miss on the ride home, clutching her Sophie the Giraffe. It reminded me of a picture I had taken of Rosa, what seems like so long ago!

(Rosa: 12/7/08)

Back to the present, Eliza has started solids! (Well, they're still pretty soupy, but it's the first step in the process!) We started with rice cereal, then last week she had avocado. I think tomorrow we'll start banana. She seems to like eating from a spoon!

Here's the girls doing a tandem ride in the swing! Probably won't be able to do this too much longer.
Miss Rosa Bosa at a birthday party... yummy chocolate cupcake!

A classic Rosa self-shot. You have no idea how many photos like this now populate my iPhoto. Someday I'll make a collage of them...

Last weekend we took a trip up to Sacramento. Our first stop was visiting Jeff's friends Catherine and Anthony. Catherine is a great bedtime story reader!

Rosa - in motion - at the playground right across the street from Catherine's house.

The next day we took a ride on an excursion train for Rosa's friend Peter's 3rd birthday.

Back at home, the next night two of Rosa's buddies had dinner at our house. It was an exciting night! It is pretty much impossible to get three 3-yr olds to look at a camera at the same time.

A timeless classic - kids jumping on Mom and Dad's bed! I was sort of floored to hear Jeff telling them to do that!

Thanks for the candy necklaces, Uncle Greg!

Two more videos of my adorable children:

Eliza has discovered the other baby in the mirror...

These two have started a band!

My big girl!

Rosa has suddenly taken one of her bigger developmental jumps in recent memory. The biggest one is definitely the potty. She pretty much hasn't used a diaper except for sleeping in the last two weeks. I'm still finding her (clean) diapers tucked into pockets of random tote bags from weeks ago, and now it seems so strange to think of her wearing them. Funny how (my) perceptions of what's normal can change so fast. She still asks to wear a diaper occasionally, but so far I've always been able to talk her out of it without too much trouble.

Other "biggirl" (all one word to Rosa) things that she's doing all of a sudden are: not using a pacifier, not using a sippy cup at meals, doing much better at feeding herself (she's been able to do this for a long time, but getting her to stay focused has always been a challenge), dressing herself (she almost won't let me put clothes on her), buckling her own buckles in the carseat (with a safety check from mom of course), doing (toddler-level) jigsaw puzzles, recognizing lots of letters and numbers, and then, the thing that made me realize all of this stuff was happening at once, was when she showed me this picture that she drew on her chalkboard:


In the upper left corner is a picture of "Grandma." It's totally recognizable as a person! There's the round head on top with eyes and a mouth, two arms, and two legs! It blew me away! After months of seeing scratchy, scrawly lines and having her say, "This is an airplane," or "This is a tiger," with no recognizable features, all of a sudden this was a drawing of a person! Almost more than using the potty or stopping the pacifiers, when I looked at this drawing I felt like I saw her transform in front of my eyes. Pretty amazing stuff!

What a couple of weeks!

Two weeks ago ended with a super fun birthday party... 3 hours of jumpy castle with breaks only to suck down apple juice - 4 boxes worth in the end. Then in the car on the way home, we all got to see that apple juice again, if you know what I mean.

Then, after a relatively uneventful week, Rosa got the croup last Saturday at 12:30 in the morning. She didn't have any signs of any sickness when she went to bed, then woke up coughing like a barking seal and couldn't draw in a breath in between coughs. She was scared and we were scared, so Jeff took her to the hospital. Once she got the steroid and started breathing easier, I dare say she enjoyed her ER visit! Here she is playing "Rosa astronaut."

When she got home at 2:30am, she was feeling much better, although still wheezy. She said, "Mommy, is it morning? Can I go play in the playroom?" Thankfully she did fall asleep eventually. And that night was the only really bad one. She's been much better since, but still has the runniest nose this side of the the Mississippi.

And then this week, Rosa has started wearing panties! She has made ALL her #1s and #2s in the potty, with practically NO resistance! Hooray! I will spare you all the pictures of her proud moments.

And finally, our most recent family picture, taken by Making Dinner drummer, Zarah Gamaldi!
It was out at Ocean Beach after a day of filming for the band's next video (not finished yet). For a good chuckle, check out our two most recent videos at http://makingdinnertheband.com.

The Lineup

Can you pick out Eliza from the line-up?

I put Eliza down to get dinner on the table and Rosa proceeded to line up everybody else next to her. Pretty funny. Eliza wasn't so happy about it, but I still took the extra 30 seconds to run and get my camera because it was so cute.

Arco iris

I meant to post this yesterday, but someone didn't want to fall asleep last night. Sigh.

Yesterday was an interesting day. (With Rosa at daycare) Eliza took a 3-hour nap in the morning! Unheard of. Then, when she woke up, she had her tongue sticking out for most of the rest of the day. Cute, but a little strange.

That same morning, I awoke to a crash. Rosa was helping herself to a glass of apple juice from the fridge - from the gallon-size glass bottle. Luckily, it didn't break when she dropped it.

This morning, Rosa got to see her first rainbow.

March 2011 - the catch up

So let's see. What happened between August 2010 and March 2011? I spent a couple more months being pregnant and exhausted.

Rosa was the cutest chicken for Halloween, Mommy was an egg, and Daddy was a farmer.

Then Rosa's baby sister Eliza was born the next day!

Then I spent a few months desperately trying to figure out how to be the mom of two kids. At the same time.

I see now that it is impossible for me to just skip to the present. A lot happened in between - a new being came into existence! So here's the catch-up, as concisely as I can do it.

My last bit of commentary - as of now, this blog is officially about Rosa AND Eliza. I didn't have the foresight to name it something that would work if we ever had a second kid. And I'm not going to rename it at this point. So Eliza, my sweet, I apologize for this first, and probably not last, time that you may feel overlooked by being the second child. But know that you're in good company. Just today I asked my mom and dad for a picture of me when I was between 2 and 3 years old, to see if my hair was as blond as Rosa's is. They found one of me at 18 months, but couldn't come up with any photos of me between ages 2 and 3! They said maybe there were some slides...

Anyway, now, without further ado:

Thankfully, Grandma Lois came out and spent a whole month with us! What a godsend she was - it was always great to have that extra pair of loving arms to hold one of the girls when they needed it.

It was a wild ride sometimes!

But there were many, many sweet moments...



Papa Misha came out to spend Thanksgiving with us.

And then they both went back to Ohio. And suddenly real life started. They left on a Tuesday around noon, and then Rosa napped, and then when she got up, there we all sat on the couch, me nursing Eliza and Rosa trying to get onto my lap at the same time. I remember I felt paralyzed - like I should hold this position for as long as I could since I couldn't fathom doing anything else until Jeff got home from work.

But eventually, I learned how to do other things, and life carried on (I can say that now that Eliza is almost 5 months old!), and we actually did a lot of fun and special things in December.

We took Rosa ice skating for the first time at an outdoor rink they put up for the holidays.

We also took Rosa for her first sled ride! They had a "snow day" at City Hall one Saturday in December where they trucked in snow and made a sled run. Rosa LOVED it! I think she was the only kid in snow pants!

After sledding we went into City Hall, which was just beautiful with its glowing white marble and glowing white Christmas tree. I don't think this video does justice to the look of wonder in Rosa's eyes as she took it all in.

Tanti Kira came to visit us from Christmas to just before New Years. Just as she had with baby Rosa, she had a magic way of calming Eliza down and getting her to fall asleep.

Rosa made out like a bandit for Christmas, but probably the best gift was a rocking horse! It was sent to us by a friend of Tanti Kira's whose kids had outgrown it. Rosa is a most enthusiastic rider and has since named the horse "Cinnamon."

Here's a family portrait timer shot.

About a month after Eliza was born, Rosa started refusing naps, which almost killed me (and I almost killed her!). We tried "quiet time" every day for several weeks, with Rosa alone in her room, but she would scream and scream until I would give up. We tried napping all together (Rosa, Eliza, and me), but Rosa wouldn't settle down at first. But eventually, this is what worked - the three of us have been napping together (on a twin bed in Rosa's room!) for several months now. Not sure how long this will last, but at least I get some rest. I often wake up before them though, and sneak out to get s few things done. Here are my sleeping girls!

I'm trying to be good about taking a picture or two of Eliza every now and then!

This perfect line-up deserved a picture.

Rosa swinging with her friend Ember.

In February, we made our first big airplane trip as a family of four. We went to Ohio for Eliza's baptism.

Eliza with her godparents - Auntie Aly and Uncle Dan.

Some pictures just tug at your heartstrings!

It was wonderful to see everyone from both sides of the family despite some pretty rough Ohio winter weather. The kids enjoyed it though!

Grandma Judy holding the sleeping babe.
Eliza gets passed to Papa Chuck!
Nana Anita and Papa Frank
The Pilats
The Clines
Uncle Greg reading to his god-daughter
Everyone in the snow
They built a snowman - Rosa told us she made the ears!

Little angels making snow angels!

So many cousins! I think they're all being monsters in this picture.

Music time with Tanti Kira

Back at home (a month later), here's a great Eliza smile - good job catching it on the camera Daddy!

Here are the girls in their Valentine's Day dresses. Thanks Nana Anita and Papa Frank!

In the last week or two, I really feel like life has gotten a bit lighter and easier. We've all grown more accustomed to the new ways things work and are finally developing some routines. But also, Rosa and Eliza have really been interacting more and more. Eliza's eyes just light up and follow Rosa around the room, and in addition to entertaining Eliza, Rosa has finally started understanding that it's good to be quiet when Eliza is sleeping, and that she can entertain herself for a little while when Eliza needs to nurse, etc. I know there are many more stages of growing up with a sibling to tackle (Mom! Eliza took my dolly!), but it felt good to notice that things are feeling easier. One night at dinner when the two of them were making each other giggle and giggle, I saw my first little glimpse into a lifetime of sisterly shenanigans!