Fever Baby

Poor little Gabriela has been feeling clingy and hasn't had her regular appetite for a few days now. I was just commenting on this to Lane on Friday evening, while Gabriela napped in the early evening - very strange for her.

She woke up from her little rest and was burning hot. We stripped her down, gave her fever medication, put her in a lukewarm bath, gave her a cold smoothie to drink and after all that her temperature was.... 104.5!! We were extremely worried, and as expected, the nurse recommended we take Gabriela to the ER.

When we got there, they recorded Gabriela's temp at 105.3. scary. Poor little thing just wanted to be cuddled. Since her temp was so high, they took a urine sample (with a catheter) to test for kidney infection. They also swabbed her nose to test for H1N1. But of course, they just say for "the flu" like it's worse if you actually say H1N1. I say call it as it is. And, they did chest x-rays for pneumonia. The urine test results were fine, and the x-rays were fine too. The H1N1 test came back negative, but they say the test is extremely inaccurate. The CDC recommends that anyone under 2 with symptoms should be treated with tamiflu, so after 4 hours of waiting for her temp to go down, we left with at prescription for tamiflu and hopped into bed at 3 am.

Saturday night Gabriela had a fever again. And she still has a big cough. I'm staying home with her today. It's a good thing too because at 9:30 am she got all cuddly and fell asleep for a nap after a full night's rest. poor baby.

E I E I O

Gabriela Helps Herself to a Snack

Caught in the act!

Picnic at the Park

After a serious run to Trader Joe's, we took a walk to the water to have a picnic lunch with Auntie Cynthia and her lovely friend Jamie.

Gabriela and Auntie Cynthia are both crazy for puppies. Here they are after visiting with a cutie puppy dog.

It was a great way to end our long weekend in Boston. We were so glad to spend time with Cynthia and can't wait to see her for a whole WEEK at Christmas time! Yippee!!!!

16 months old!

Today Gabriela is 16 months old. Her language has really taken off this month. At the beginning, I thought I’d make a list of all the new words she has said or signed in the last month. It turned out to be quite the list!

Signs
flower
lotion
help
chair
hot
bath
Made up signs
harmonica
English words
whoa
flower
eyes
toes
mouth
broom
mommy (instead of mama)
apple
shoe
door
bean
necklace
go
night-night
sock
hot
elbow
bath
auntie
two
shiny
bee
goose
mouse
spoon
poo-poo
Spanish Words
pies (feet)
abre (open)
manos (hands)
boca (mouth)
dos (two)
libro (book)

Just this month Gabriela has started to show frustration and using the word NO quite liberally. Just this morning, she did not want me to put her down, and wrapped her legs around one of mine and nearly slid down it like a fireman’s pole.

Gabriela sings and still loves to read books. Some of her newest hobbies include playing the harmonica and recorder and banging on the computer keyboard. She is quite the little monkey now and climbs up onto chairs and coffee tables and her little kitchen without any problems.
She can point to her hair, cheeks, teeth, shoulders, and elbows now too.

Boston Children's Museum

Auntie Cynthia had the fabulous idea of taking us to the Boston Children's Museum. We all had a blast!

Gabriela and I played chess.

She sat in Bobcat in the Construction Zone

This is a little weird, guys.

crawling through the tunnel

Taking Daddy for a car ride

Playing a Haitian drum

There were several slides at the museum. Gabriela found them all.

And rode down them many, many times

Bubble time!

Gabriela played ball and even shot some hoops with her Auntie.

Not only this, the museum had an entire real Japanese house on display for us to walk through. There were some giant screens in another section that responded to shadows. One had butterflies flying around that would land on your shadow. Gabriela played in the store area, where she was able to "buy" lots of pretend produce and groceries. We went to a special play area that had cars to drive, houses to play in, books to read, blocks to stack, and more. We also visited a tree exhibit that had a treehouse playground, and some musical chairs that played different beats and sounds when you sat in them. There was so much more! We took a lunch/nap break and went back until they closed. Such a fun place! Thank you, Auntie Cynthia for thinking of the perfect way to spend our day!

Brunch with Auntie Cynthia

Before heading to the children's museum on Sunday, we had a nice leisurely breakfast next door to Sweet.

Our Little Cupcake

Auntie Cynthia took us to Sweet - a cute cupcake shop just down the block from her apartment. Let me just say that it was a total hit.


Just look at this goodness!

Pretty please, may I have a cupcake?

Huge fan of the frosting

We got Gabriela a mini-cupcake and she ate every last bite.

Thanks for sharing this place with us, Auntie! More pics coming soon.

Gabriela the Genius

Over the weekend in Boston, Gabriela surprised us by doing all sorts of fancy things. We borrowed an Old MacDonald Had a Farm book at the library earlier in the week. I never really sang that song to her before. But over the weekend, she'd just start swaying her head and singing E-I-E-I-O. Brilliant. We pause and she tells us what Old MacDonald had on his farm. He sure has a lot of dogs, according to Gabriela.

Gabriela was a big fan of the slide in the tree house at the Boston Children's Museum. When we started couting to go down the slide, she said two and three all on her own!!! Later that night, we were joking that she probably knew how to count in Spanish and we didn't even realize. So I checked. I said uno, and immediately Gabriela replied with DOS.

When we got home, I read her Tails book from the Sylvesters to her and was shocked when Gabriela chimed in to "read" with her mama. I read, "tails rainbow-hued and".... Gabriela lifted the flap and exclaimed, "NIIIIINEY!" before I could say shiny. She was so proud of herself, it was about the cutest thing in the universe.

more on the rest of our trip to Boston coming soon.

Boston - Girl Time

I went to Boston for work and spent my first two nights ever away from Baby Gabriela since she was in my belly. Good thing I was with my baby sister the scientist. We had good times together.

Yeah, this didn't make me nervous.

This is what I saw at Cynthia's lab.

Cynthia took me to a super cozy cute restaurant where we caught up. It was "ladies night". So check out my five dollah make you hollah filet mignon dinner.
That's right, five bucks. Cynthia got a salmon fillet with a risotto cake and honeydew melon salsa. mmm.

I couldn't NOT take a picture of our dessert that cost $2 more than the dinner.

Friday night, Cynthia took me to her hot yoga class. Hot as in like 95 degree room temperature. I didn't know my body was capable of sweating that much. It was intense. So intense, it reminded me of labor. The intensity and mental work out of remaining focused, staying with my breath, and sticking it through. It wasn't painful. I felt so euphoric afterwards, and soaking wet sweaty. Afterwards, we went to the lab.

This is where Cynthia spends all her time. Just checking the radioactivity of the specimens, you know, a normal day at the lab.

I'm not gonna lie. This was just for the pure fun of photo-documenting.

I had a total blast just talking and laughing with Cynthia and meeting her friends. We had a slumber party and just talked late into the night snuggled up in our jammies in bed. Good sister times.

More coming soon on the rest of our trip.

Our Day Off Together

Gabriela and I had a really nice day together before the chocolate fiasco. We went to the Natural History Museum in the morning. Gabriela always loves to ride the metro, so she was having fun before we even arrived anywhere. Once we got there, we checked out the mammals exhibit. Gabriela also loves the huge elephant at the entrance, and tried doing her fancy elephant sound.

Take a look at that porcupine!
At the live insect zoo, Gabriela was very intrigued by the giant cockroach. eww!! She even reached out and touched it! Although, I think I startled her when I kind of jumped as the cockroach wiggled in response to Gabriela touching it. Not many things creep me out but cockroaches are nasty.

On the run.

We also visited the live butterfly exhibit. Gabriela was pointing at all the butterflies and flowers. I think she enjoyed it.

She was the helper of the day at home too. We put on her apron and she helped me do dishes, empty and load the washing machine and she even swept the floor. This was all after a very loooong nap in her mommy's arms. Gotta love those extra snuggles.

but I NEED chocolate!!!!

Gabriela just has this internal radar for stuff she's not supposed to have. Last night, I caught her on her tippy-tip toes just helping herself to some goodies. I'm sure you're wondering what she's scarfing down....

Why, chocolate covered sunflower seeds, of course.

This is what Gabriela looked like when I took them away. Candy coated slobber, and all.
Yeah, not too thrilled the chocolate went bye-bye.

I moved them up to the counter so they were even further out of her reach. She begged and pleaded for me to give them back to her, or at least to pick her up so she could grab some more.

I NEED CHOCOLATE!

p.s. can you see some of her lower molar teeth have made their appearance?

Realizing this would not work, Gabriela took matters into her own hands. I wish I had caught a photo of her scaling the dishwasher. She nearly climbed half way up. That little monkey!

Sunny Afternoon on the Mall

I'm ready to go, Mom. How do you get this thing on?! Let's get outta here!

Did you see that airplane, Dad?

Bravo!!

Love you, Daddy.