Saturday, June 23, 2012

The Art of Salvateenie-Fu

As the Salvateenies continue to develop their interpersonal skills, they have also begun to master their own form of martial art, dubbed "Salvateenie-fu".  This form is characterized by frequent shoves in the back, occasional dog piles, and lots of giggling.


The good student cannot take his progress for granted, and thus Daniel sits here, going over the art of the dog pile with his practice partners.


And nothing soothes the nerves of a Salvateenie-fu practitioner better than a big bowl of apple sauce!


Thursday, June 21, 2012

Play Dates in June

Now that I'm out of school for the summer (I won't say "on vacation", since I'm still going to school board meetings and other union meetings and fielding emails and phone calls), I have more time for play dates with the kiddos.

Last Saturday, Uncle Kelly and I took them out to the playground to meet up with two other families from the Parents of Multiples group.  While the other families were meeting on the big teeter totter (see-saw),

Here are the other families meeting


we were exploring the sandbox:



 Then it was off to explore the big pirate ship structure, including a slide.



Caroline is getting so tall!

"Look over here!"



The pirate ship has a long ramp that leads up to the top level and a slide to come down the other side.  I was quite impressed that Caroline ran around, went up the ramp, ran over to the top of the slide, and slid down all by herself.  Uncle Kelly was impressed that the next time around she decided to climb the little hill at the side of the ramp to cut down on her travel time, identifying that the shortest distance between herself and the top was that straight line.

On Sunday, Joe had to work at the US Open the whole day and our friend Junior's dad was working all day, too, so we got together to go shopping.  Junior's mom is such a fan of the Salvateenies that she actually bought a second hand double stroller so the two of us can take the four of them out easily:

Caroline and Junior
Sam kept commenting on how difficult it is to steer the double stroller and make it through the stores.  He he he...

To avoid a complete meltdown, we let the kids out to run around the play area outside of Target.  It was a sea of kids and Sam and I kept scanning and making sure we had an eye on all four - I would count to myself, "1, 2, 3...4 - whew!", while Sam focused on the color of their clothing, "dark blue (Jr.), light blue (Daniel), green (Max), pink (Caroline)".  This worked well, except for the two times Max bolted.  The first time, I was looking at the other end of the play area for Daniel when a nice dad came up and said, "um...excuse me, I think one of your kids got away", and sure enough, there was Max sitting right outside the entrance.  The second time I saw him and called, "I'm on it!" as I noticed the same dad nervously start to get up to follow him.

Because Tanforan shopping center used to be a racetrack, the climby/tunnely things are all racing-themed, including a jockey's hat, a winner's garland, a pace truck (I guess), binoculars, and horses.

Max and Daniel emerge from the jockey's cap while Caroline meets a horse

Caroline was really jealous of the big kids who could climb on top of the car.


Max stuck to the flowers after being caught the first time

I stuck him on a horse after the second time

Caroline sat on the saddle and announced it was time to go.
A handful of other cute pictures from the past week:

Caroline reading on the couch

Striking a pose

Max in his cool Linus shirt (we have since gotten a Charlie Brown for Daniel and are working on Caroline's Lucy shirt)

Daddy's caption was "How we roll"

We had to hide the boys' rain boots from Caroline

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Gymnastics

When I was a kid, the local tv station ran a kids' program called Buster and Me.  It was a show about a puppet/muppet monkey, named Vanilla, her big brother Buster, and their "friend" Robin.  I remember two episodes distinctly.  In one, Buster is attempting to make some money for something by selling forged Ron Cey autographed baseballs - he gets found out when the real Ron Cey shows up and questions the spelling on the ball - "S-A-Y".  The other involves Buster's best friend, Russell, an orangutan who has a crush on Vanilla.  Russell becomes very jealous when Vanilla announces that she "LOVES Jim!" and it's a little while before she let's him know that the "Jim" she loves is "Jim-nastics!"

After Tuesday, I think the Teenies have also fallen for Jim.

Because Caroline is such a climber, we looked into gymnastics classes for the summer.  Unfortunately, the gym clubs near us had limited availability for toddler-level classes and most of them were right around breakfast time.  Another snag is that in this age group, you need to have an adult for each kid.  Lucky for me, my friend Pam owns her very own gymnastics club with tons of tiny kid classes (Gold Star Gymnastics, if you're in the market) - AND she was willing to volunteer her 10 year old as an additional "adult".  The only downside is that the club is in Mountain View, about an hour drive from our house.  But by getting the babes up just a bit before 9, we can feed them, change them into tshirts and shorts, and be in the car by 9:30, so it works out just right.

Yesterday was the first class, and our 10 year old adult was still in school, so Pam stood in as a surrogate parent.  The class starts out with warm-ups, which includes the teeny tinies as well as the next age group up.  There are a series of passes across the floor, running, skipping, tip-toes, etc.  For our guys, that meant just running like mad and trying to stay going the right direction.  Then they do some stretching in a circle - again, a little less structured for us, since it involved following directions.  Then we had to guide them through a couple of circuits involving running down a trampoline and jumping or rolling over mats.  At one point they got to slide into a foam pit, but only Max seemed to really enjoy that.

All in all it was 45 minutes of non-stop activity after which we poured them into the van and hit the road.  About 10 minutes into the drive home, they were all OUT.  When we got home, we put them directly to bed and after 10 minutes of yelping, they were out again.  Until 4pm.  They slept 4.5 hours OR MORE!

Can we do this EVERY DAY?

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

RIBS!

Uncle Kelly babysat today and at the end of nap time, he had to explain that there would be NO MORE MONKEYS JUMPING ON THE BED!



When I got home, they decided to play Men In Black.  Since none of them have black suits and skinny ties, they had to go for the dark glasses:

(Max is in the corner, holding his glasses)


Tonight, Uncle Kelly and Grandpa (aka Boppy) came over for dinner with the Salvateenies and we had BBQ.

Caroline really liked the ribs:





(her grandmother would be so proud!)


So did Max:






In fact, Max stripped the bone pretty well for his first try!

Daniel was not as keen on the ribs, but to be fair, he hadn't been that keen on much of what we'd offered him today, even tossing his favorite Chinese green beans on the floor.  That is, until we got to corn on the cob!




Caroline tried to show him how to eat it, but she wasn't entirely sure herself:




Monday, June 4, 2012

Uncle Kelly Babysits

During the baseball season, we've been lucky to have my brother, Uncle Kelly, come by to babysit during the time between when Joe leaves for the ballpark and I get home from work.  On those days when I have late meetings, my brother texts me updates - and since teaching him how to send picture texts, I have been getting to see all sorts of interesting things that the kids are up to, including the excellent photos of Caroline scaling the changing table.

This week, I've gotten the following series:

Playing with cars on the couch:


"Mine! All mine!"

"Pay attention to ME!"



Getting ready for bed:




Daniel's fashion show:

(This is an outfit Grandma Kelly brought back from her cruise)
Caroline teaching Daniel how to climb:








Max's Adventure with hats:






More Adventures with Headgear:

Caroline thinks Max needs a helmet.

"Ooh! Static electricity makes my hair act funny!"

Max shows Caroline how to properly wear your helmet.


Daniel's got it!


They love playing with (and piling on) their Uncle:



As you can see, Daniel is breaking out of his sweet boy shell - he's climbing and talking and just the other day in response to my asking for a kiss, he head butted me in the nose and gave me two black eyes!

Caroline continues to try to strip out of her clothes when she gets hot, but Saturday she refused to put on any clothes at all unless they were "pizza" ("pretty"):


Don't be fooled by her cuteness - later that night she got in trouble at bath time for deciding her favorite game was poking Daniel in the eye.  Repeatedly.