Suzy's smile!

Some pics of Suzy practicing her new smile...she loves smiling at her daddy when he comes home from work!! Hope she still smiles at us after she gets her vaccines today...

"Guinness world record baby", written by a humble mom.

This was a big weekend for Suzy. First of all, in the developmental area, Suzy has amazed us with her new skills. She has started to smile at us with this big, gorgeous grin, whereas before she would only smile when she was asleep and dreaming (what could she possibly be dreaming of that made her so happy?) and when she was passing gas. A note to all those out there who are not parents yet: When your baby looks at you and gives you a big, adoring, I-know-who-you-are-now smile, this gives all kinds of warm, fuzzy feelings to new parents.

Also, we have been amazed by her hand-eye coordination this weekend. She has started to hit hanging objects, and not in an accidental, random hitting sort of way, but with dead on accuracy. She has a new pinata hanging toy, and we blindfold her and give her a big stick, and she hits it everytime. Ok, just kidding about the blindfold and stick, but she does love hitting it. She'll be a star at little kids pinata parties one day. Here she is, getting ready to hit her pinata, and checking out her other target, the hanging lamb in her vibrating seat (by the way, i reallly want a chair like hers one day)
Last night, we were amazed again by her obviously gifted hand-eye-coordination when she grabbed her pacifier, pulled it out of her mouth, waved it around her head like a cowboy waving his lasso, and put it right back into her mouth all by herself, with mom and dad cheering along the sidelines in shock! I'm totally serious. Somehow she was able to put it back in her mouth by herself. She is also trying reallly hard to roll over. We are obviously convinced that she is not only the most beautiful baby ever, but the most intelligent and gifted, due to the evidence you have already read. And I'm sure we are the first parents who have ever thought this...

When Suzy was not busy breaking baby Guinness world records this weekend, she was very busy socially. She had many visitors, both family and friends, including a visit from Elvis's cousin and her 4 month old baby. This was technically Suzy's first playdate, because even though baby Joey has come over a few times, she has been playing hard to get and has slept through his visits. Papi is really proud of her for playing hard to get. Anyways, baby Nathaly came over, and lots of pictures were taken. As you can tell from these pictures below, they were both seemingly all smiles and rainbows, but when they thought the cameras werent around, they were actually trying to sabotage the other. You can see in the picture how Suzy is very slyly trying to grab Nathaly's ear, and so for revenge, Nathaly reached up under Suzy's shirt, apparently trying to give her a titty-twister. All while smiling at the camera.
Suzy was a pretty tired girl yesterday, after all those amazing stunts and all those visitors. So here she is, napping with Papi.

up close and personal

Suzy...up close and personal. I'm not sure why blogger turned some of the pictures around when i uploaded them...oh well...

I think that Suzy is actually going to have at least wavy hair b/c after a bath, it always looks curly. However, nobody believes me b/c it's always laying down so perfectly straight when it's dry! Here is proof for those who don't believe....

suzy's many daily activities...

For those of you that think that Suzy only eats, sleeps, and poops, oh, you are quite mistaken! She has many activities, including:

Reading with Mami (in english) and Papi (in Spanish). This week we finally got to "Z" in her Dr Seuss ABC book!

Hanging out with her cousins...

And aunt....

and Abuelita....
Chillin' out....
Extreme chillin' out...

Drooling instead of burping...Being amazed by her play gym...

In particular, being amazed by her giraffe friend (which, by the way, my dad insists is an orange cow...can someone please back me up here???!)

She also does lots of stretching, talking on Skype with the fam, passing gas, peeing right when i take her diaper off to change it, and just being cute. So, I hope you now realize what a tough, busy life it is being a little girl!

Of course that means Mommy is really busy too, which is why it was such a treat for me when two sweet friends offered to come over on Friday and straighten my hair for a fun treat (see first pic). And today I decided to make my life even easier, and chop my hair off! So i went to my neighbor who has a beauty salon in her living room, paid her $3 and got a much needed hair cut. Elvis hasn't seen me yet....I just told him i was getting my hair cut like Suzy's! Here is the final result:

Good news, bad news

So the bad news of this week is that ENanny had to go home =( but we had a great 6 weeks together, and i don't know what we would have done without her help!! Grandaddy left on New Year's Day, but he has kept in touch with Suzy on Skype. Here she is talking to him on the telephone:
The good news is that we went to the doctor yesterday, and Suzy now weighs 8 pounds 6 ounces! she gained 4 much-needed pounds this month! Here are some new pictures of her, some of them are just random, and some are from a photo shoot we did trying to get some pics for a birth announcement. None of these made the cut, but they're cute anyway =)

go heels!

Or maybe she takes after her daddy??

Elvis 1983....................................Suzy 2010

Both of them are 1 month old in this picture, whereas in my picture, i was only a couple days old, and Suzy was 1 month (too bad my little outfit didnt fit her right at birth!)

Like mother like daughter??

Ashley 1983..................................Suzy 2009

Recognize the outfit????

Christmas fun!

We really enjoyed our first Christmas here in El Salvador, celebrating salvadorean style on Christmas Eve, then Baldwin style on Christmas day. You see, Christmas is celebrated here on the 24th with a family dinner, and so all of Elvis's family came over christmas eve and we had a great meal. elvis's mom made hens with the traditional christmas sauce on top, and some incredible chocolate/plum tamales. mmmmmm! my family contributed the silly christmas headwear. luckily, elvis's family were good sports about it. =) then on christmas day, we celebrated baldwin style. the only tradition that was broken was that we didnt wake up until 10:00am, whereas i am usually waking everybody up at 6am that day. however, we had already been up at 1am, 3am, 5am, and 7am feeding suzy, so i think its acceptable. here is mom, waiting for our traditional baldwin breakfast (country ham, grits, eggs, biscuits, moravian sugarcake, and grapefruit). thanks mom and dad for bringing all of the christmas staple foods!

we didnt eat breakfast until about 1 pm however because we were too busy opening presents! (read: opening suzy's presents for her!) here she is with her new books and toys. i think her shirt is appropriate for the occasion (it says "i love presents")

opening up the fun box of gifts that tio marty and tia sara sent!

checking out (suspiciously) her new flamingo symphony friend:the precious outfit tia tyler and tio chris sent:

uh oh, silly headwear runs in the family i guess...

people celebrate christmas here by shooting fireworks all night long, so here is a video of what it sounds like. its sideways and too dark to see anyway, but you get the idea of what the night was like . it was a little stressful when you have a newborn, since it was soo loud all night, and smoke just filled the house because all of the fireworks!