Sisters

too tired to write, so more Barcelona pics is what you get

Barcelona how I miss thee

Windy, hot city
Gaudi houses
10% to sit outside
La Ramblas poses

Zara, yay Zara!
Hospital, clinic, farmacia
baby cereal has 8 grains?
hat & sunscreen on

Chocolate ice cream
tapas, tapas, tapas
squid, inky squid
gas or natural water

Força Barça
futebol
fireworks in the street!
who scored?

Barceloneta
fruit shop
meat shop
bottled water shop

shoe shop
sandy playground
tiny supermarket
but the chocolate cake, oh that chocolate cake

naked dude
with the slow pace
why you have no clothes?
it's a crazy place
that Barcelona

Click on this, if you dare

Passports

Lucia and Emma are officially Canadian and American. Someday we plan on applying for their Portuguese citizenship too. We sometimes encounter trouble when travelling because our family of 4 travels with passports from 3 different countries.

Here's the photo we entered in the photo Friday contest - go vote!



Emma protests "Hey, I'm only 33% Canadian! I'm American and Portuguese too! Somebody got this math wrong!"

Emma's New Skill

See for yourself ...

Photo Friday

We don't have a hope of winning this contest ... too many good entries ... so don't vote for us, just go and vote for your favourite!

Photo Contest - Help choose our submission

A friend's blog hosts a photo contest every week. The entry this week is themed on daddy.

I need to submit one of the following photos by noon tomorrow. Please leave a comment and let me know which one you think will win the contest. I'll label them by date.

Mar 15, 2006 "She always was a daddy's girl"

Sept 9, 2008 "Woah!"

Sept 11, 2008 "Causes of lost sleep"

Mar 21, 2009 "Two for one"

May 16, 2009 "Just resting my eyes"

I probably won't submit this one, because it's too near and dear, but it is one of my favourite photos of daddy. He was so happy to meet Lucas.

Mar 8, 2004 "Daddy and the little saint"

Then starting on Friday, you can vote for our photo so we win this time!

Sweet Emma, 9 months old

Emma has such a charming personality. She's a relaxed, good-natured baby. She handles her sister's loveable hugs and moody shrieks with aplomb. She is enthusiastic to try and get toys just out of her reach (or especially paper!) and she is on the verge of crawling. She can move a good 2-3 feet just by leaning way forward, then springing onto her belly, grabbing something, then pushing herself backwards back into a sitting position. She can't quite support her weight on her knees yet but she does some impressive things with her arms and by manipulating her position.

She's become quite a mommy's girl. She gives me "the look" if someone else is carrying her and makes big, sad puppy-dog eyes until I pick her up. If I'm out of the room and she's with someone else, she's fine, but if I'm around, she wants me. It's nice to be appreciated. Lucia is also in a big "mommy mood" these days, although she laments that her daddy needs to go to work and often asks when he'll be home. Then when he's home she wants me to help her with the potty, with her dinner, read her books, to help her fall asleep. But back to Emma, Lucia will have her own post soon.

Here's a glimpse of Emma at 9 months.



She's got no teeth yet (yay for me!) and she's turning out to be another kid who eats a wide variety of food. Yay for Emma!

Emma's favourite foods:
1. Mango
2. Yogurt with mango
3. Bread she can feed herself
3. Anything else she can feed herself

Favourite toys/activities:
Anything her sister gives her - she likes the Alphabet Pal and other musical toys. She likes to free-style on the floor and near boxes of toys and doesn't like the exersaucer or jumpy-jump anymore because they're too restrictive. She loves to watch the cats and she laughs the loudest when me and Lucy dance to Raffi.

Emma's developmental skills under development:
Trying to crawl!
If I ask her to say "ma ma", she answers with "da da"
I caught her sleeping on her belly last night - always makes me nervous

Emma's Developmental skills recently mastered:
She blows raspberries at us
She says "da", "ba" and bla" at us
She waves and makes complicated hand motions

Times up during the night: usually 2-3 times to nurse. I know, I know, we gotta stop the co-sleeping. She's going in her crib more and more, but not full-time yet.

Nursing: ~4 times during the waking day and 2-3 times at night.

Typical routine: She's settled into a nice 2-nap schedule (11am and 4pm), sleeping overnight from about 8:30pm until 8am (with short wake-ups to nurse). She doesn't self-soothe that well yet, but we're working on it. She eats baby food in her booster seat with us whenever we eat: baby cereal with fruit puree for breakfast, baby food meat and homemade vegetable soup for lunch, snack of yogurt with fruit puree and Cheerios, and more baby food meat with some vegetable and pasta at dinner. I sometimes blend our own food if it's suitable for her (no salt) and so far, she's eaten everything she's been offered, even olives!

We need you!

Lucia and Emma are in a cute photo contest. If you've got a minute, click through to my friend's blog and vote for them! One vote per IP address, so vote from work too!

It's the photo from the top left corner of my blog.