Sienna Marie

During Semana S anta (Holy Week), Sienna and I drove to Panajanchel to pick up a former co-worker from Mexico, Danna, and her daughter, Becky. We left around 6:30 am on Tuesday and arrived in Pana three hours later after a fairly nice, but foggy drive from the city. The highlight was when it started to rain up in the mountains and a man in a beat-up pickup truck had a wire attached to the only wiper on the truck to manually clear the windshield! In Pana, the weather was sunny and gorgeous. Danna and Becky checked out of their hotel and we headed back up the mountain to the highway and on to San Marcos, a village just west of Pana on Lake Atitlan. It took a good hour to get there and it would have been much easier to reach via boat, but I wasn't sure how that'd work with Sienna and all her stuf f. San Marcos is known as a hangout for those intere sted in yoga and meditation - this I did not know until after we had booked our accommodation at Hotel Aaculaax , an eco-friendly hote

S ienna had her 8 month checkup today and she weighed in at exactly 20 pou nds (80th percentile) and is just over 23 inches long (90th percentile). Dr. Blanco said she's continuing to grow beautifully and we chatted a bit about what she's eating and what she should not eat until she's a year old due to prevention of future allergies (dairy, egg whites, wheat at 9 months, etc). Sienna has sta rted to love tummy time - finally! She crawled backwards for the first time yesterday, so it will be just a matter of time before she's cruising around forward. She's still a huge fan of her walker and loves playing pee k-a-boo with the curtains and being tickled. Another new development is she likes to play with stuffed animals and she loves the ones that talk to her or, the bear in the photo from the Broder family that laughs - so cute! Cori Frieler gave her an angel and when you squeeze it, it says a bedtime prayer. She gets a huge smile on her face when she hears it and st