Abuela

This past weekend we made a trip down to see my Grandma Helen. She's been in a nursing home for a number of years and we try to visit her whenever we are down there. Since Carina has been born we've been to see her quite a few times. Just recently she fell and broke both of her knees. The doctors gave her only a few weeks to live. We were planning a trip down on Veteran's Day weekend, but decided we needed to go sooner. So, this past Saturday we drove down and had a nice visit. She seemed in fairly good spirits and was doing much better than she had been the past week when Crystal and Liam were there visiting. Here is Great Grandma with Carina:I'm very glad we decided to go visit earlier, because today we got the sad news that my Grandma passed away. Apparently Sunday she took a turn for the worse and was just barely hanging on. My dad got the call today that she had passed.

(Just had to take a break from blogging to have an earthquake! A 5.6 just hit San Jose...that was crazy!)

OK - back to the blog...Tomorrow my dad and aunt will make the arrangements for the funeral so we will probably be traveling back down for that soon.

Abuela....we'll miss you!!

Houston, We Have Liftoff

Looking for trouble...
Here's an action shot...Yep, our little Carina has started crawling. She doesn't go very far yet (usually just far enough to get whatever it is that was beyond her reach), but it's pretty darn cute. Her little knees are all red, but she doesn't seem to care. I think Dave and I will spend some time this weekend investigating some more serious childproofing ;-)

Poor Baby

We noticed Carina had the beginnings of a cold on Friday morning. She was congested and had a slightly elevated temperature. She had a good day at Michelle's but by Friday night she seemed to be getting worse. She was so sad! She sept alright Friday night but her stuffy nose must have been keeping her from very restful sleep. Saturday was not a good day. She was very sleepy all day, but would only sleep if she was being held - so Mommy & Daddy did a lot of rocking! She was still congested and her poor little nose was red and crusty. We ran the humidifier pretty much constantly, took her in the steamy bathroom, and gave her Vaseline for her raw nose. I also tried to use the bulb syringe to get her nose cleared up as often as she would stand for it. She wasn't really hungry all day, but we gave her milk as often as she would drink it. Thinking she was feeling a little better, we went out to look at Halloween costumes Saturday evening and luckily we were outside the store when she had the largest spit-up ever. It can't even be categorized as a spit-up really - it was vomit! She's had two other episodes like this a while back when she wasn't sick, so I don't think it was necessarily related, but it was pretty disgusting anyway! We got home, gave her a quick rinse off in the bath (which she was not happy about), and put her to bed. Luckily, she slept pretty well and woke up this morning in good spirits and feeling better. She was back to her old self - smiling, laughing, being cute, and of course - hungry!

Joy!

Carina has this laugh, giggle, smile combination she does these days that just fills my heart with pure joy every time she does it. The smile is gummy, the cheeks are dimpled, and the sound is the sweetest thing you'll ever hear. I spend my time doing every silly thing I can just to get a little bit of it and every time she does it I can't help but giving her the biggest smile back. This picture doesn't quite do it justice, but hopefully it makes you smile!