Personality Snapshots

Max
Max loves his Daddy.  One weekend morning, I went into the kids' room in the morning to get them up at 9, a half hour after Joe had left for the ballpark.  Max looked past me at the door for a moment, then back at me.  With a puzzled look on his face, he asked, "What about Daddy?" I said, "Sorry, Max, Daddy's not here right now.  Daddy had to go to work."  Another moment as it sunk in and it was like he remembered something he'd known before - "Oh, yeah!  Daddy WOOOOK, Daddy WOOOK."

Yesterday, when I came home, Max was holding a little pink play phone.  When you press the numbers, the phone rings.  And when the phone rings, Max puts it to his ear to answer it.  "He-whoah? Oh! Hi, Daddy!"  So I asked him, "Do you want to tell Daddy 'I love you'?"  And Max nodded his head and gave the phone a big kiss with an audible "muh-wah!"

Max loves to kiss.  When he's in a kissy mood, he will kiss me on the mouth and every time he does, he starts to grin ear-to-ear in the most adorable nose-scrunchy/eye-crinkly way and giggles infectiously.  He also likes to kiss Caroline, who gets equally giggly when he does.  She leans in for the kiss and then turns her cheek to him at the last minute, though she still smacks her lips and says "mwah".  Tonight, he grabbed her with both hands around her shoulders in a big hug and kissed her on the cheek as she smiled and giggled and then they both fell over laughing.  It is just so much fun watching them interact now.

While he is still active and can be found running around like a madman, crashing into things and doing donkey kicks, he also has amazing focus when he decides to play with something.  He likes tv and wants to share it with his Caillou dolls - he's taken to inverting the tunnels of a couple of Thomas the Train sets they got for their birthday and setting them up in front of the tv as seats for his Caillou dolls so they can watch with him.  His new favorite show is Fireman Sam and he gets really concerned when the plot takes a dangerous turn.

Caroline
Caroline still loves to climb, but now that climbing up the slide and onto a chair are old hat, she looks for new challenges.  Her favorite of late is to climb me - she holds onto both my hands and places her feet just above my knees, one by one, and then proceeds to climb up my front until her feet are almost at my shoulders.  She then wants to be somersaulted back to the floor so she can start over.

She's also progressed to doing full forward rolls on her own, both over the side of the couch onto the couch cushions and on flat ground.  (The boys haven't mastered these yet, perhaps because their giant noggins are getting in the way.)  When she watches Angelina Ballerina, she climbs up on the couch so she can hold onto the arm rest and practice her arabesques - with pointed toes, of course.

She loves to dance.  When I come home from work, she runs to me saying, "Mommy! Dancing!" and then proceeds to march around, stomping her right foot and turning in circles in what resembles a stereotypical Native American rain dance.  "Dancing" also involves a lot of spinning in circles and falling over.  But mostly stomping.

Caroline also loves to talk.  She hasn't mastered the "m" sound in a lot of words, though yummy is one of her favorites.  To Caroline, cats say "now" and drink "neelk".  But she has been adding words at a really good pace, especially colors (she refers to her cup as the "pink neelk" and her brothers' as "boo neelk" and "geen neelk" and she is very clear with me when I give her the wrong crayon, telling me, "No, no poorpull / back / owange".  Coloring is one of her favorite pastimes and she draws vibrant circles in many colors.  She also makes good associations between colors and the things she knows - looking at a picture of Thomas the Train (and a variety of his brethren), I asked her what color Thomas is (she calls him "Tommy").  Her answer was a confident, "Cookie!"  And, of course, she was right.  He is Cookie Monster colored.

She also loves pretty dresses and clothes and shoes, though she hates having her diaper changed.  Today I fooled her into it by bringing out clothes for her and waiting for her to notice them ("Elmo clothes! Pretty pants!") and ask to put them on.  At bed time, it was the puppy pajamas that sealed the deal.  At a family wedding last week, she was able to keep her party dress spotless while somehow smearing her face, arms, and hair with blackberries, chocolate cake, peaches, and dirt.

Daniel
Daniel has come out of his shell a bit, enjoying the rough and tumble side of playing with his siblings and often instigating the wrestling matches.  Like Max, he can get really focussed on games that involve his imagination, especially his new Sesame Street play set, where the little molded characters and their building and stoop can keep his attention for what seems like hours.  (Max also gets absorbed by this toy in a way that Caroline somehow doesn't.)  He can name all of the little Sesame Street characters, though "Bert" and "Bird" are sometimes close enough together to confuse me.

Daniel likes doing his downward dog yoga position.  I think he's really trying to do a forward roll but not making it over.  He starts out with his hands on the floor and then pulls them off as he walks his feet in to the point that he's almost entirely on his head.  And then he falls over and giggles.

Daniel has joined Caroline in a desire to bring his stuffed animals to bed (he has not gone as far as she has, insisting on a tooth brush, toy vacuum, and set of utensils).  Each of the kids has a huge stuffed fruit or vegetable that they got for their birthday, and Daniel relishes in carrying his carrot around with him and dragging it to bed.  He feeds it strawberries and cheerios in the morning and makes sure to tuck it in at night.  Sometimes when we go in in the morning, we find that he has lent it to Caroline in the middle of the night, but more often than not he insists it be returned before he'll get out of bed.

He's also talking a lot - the boys seem to go back and forth having spurts in talking.  For a long time, Daniel was quiet and Max was talking, then it switched.  Daniel can have little mini conversations and, in a move that always amazes me, all of them can follow directions to pick things up or give them to other people.  Caroline is the best at sharing, which is good because she and Daniel often want the same thing.  When he cries, Caroline will give the item back.  Sometimes, though, she'll steal something from him just so she can give it back.  He sees through this.  He's more hesitant to share with Max for some reason, so there are some toys we haven't brought out lately because the two of them fight over them too much.

Overall, they're all growing and showing new parts of their personalities.  This age is so much fun and so frustrating at the same time, but it's definitely never boring!

2 Year Olds and a Teenie Day at the Ballpark

A lot has happened in the past few weeks - the Teenies' 2nd birthday and birthday party, the 2 year doctor's check up, a visit to the Giants game, and countless truly adorable little anecdotes.

I'll get to the birthday party when I organize the pictures (I haven't even gotten to thank you notes yet!), but here's the update from the doctor.  We were greeted by a brand new waiting room, decorated in a Fisherman's Wharf theme (upstairs they were putting together a Chinatown/Cable Car theme) which was a big hit with the kids, who we chose to walk in rather than using the stroller.  We were called back promptly, and Max and Daniel promptly decided they were unhappy and commenced wailing.  The traditional march down the hall to get weighed was a bit different now that they can walk - I stripped Caroline down for the weigh-in and Max insisted on following behind.  When we went back to get Daniel, at some point, I'm pretty sure at least one child ran down the hall naked.  No body images in that generation of the Salvatore clan, for sure.

The results of the two year exam are:  Max is the biggest at 27lbs 8oz (44th percentile) and tallest of the bunch with a height of 2 feet 10.5 inches (finally breaking the half-way mark at 53%).  Daniel is a bit smaller at 27lbs 2oz (39%) and he must've been squatting on the height component as he measured 2 feet 9.5 inches, which would be the 26th percentile, but he is definitely not an inch shorter than Max in real life.  Both boys continue to overshadow their age peers in the head circumference, coming in at 50.5 and 50 cms (82nd and 90th percentiles).  Caroline continues to be on the teenier side of the Teenies at 2 feet 9.25 inches (36%) and 24lbs (19%), and her head is a more reserved 20%.

They all checked out well on the physical examination, though Daniel never really did calm down until we got his shoes back on.  They need to eat more vegetables and watch less TV, but what else is new? Me too.  We went upstairs for our flu vaccines and everyone was no officially old enough for the flumist nasal spray instead of a short.  The kids all tolerated it well, but I had a pretty terrible reaction, getting sick as a dog all of the next day.  All things considered, better for me to get sick than them, though.

After the appointment, we raced home to let the kids take a nap and then after lunch time we got them ready for the Giants game.  It was labor night, and Grandpa's union had a group of tickets.  We bought some, knowing that most likely we would enjoy the pre-game festivities and leave before the first pitch, but we wanted to give the kids one chance at the ballpark during the 2012 season, so this was the plan. Get there early, visit the mini ballpark in left field, the cable car in right center, my usher friends along the way, and some folks in the press box, and then head home.  (Max is the one in the gray sleeves, Daniel in the black sleeves.)

No strollers

Heading to the fan lot - "Come on, Mommy!"

The boys were really into batting, while Caroline was more focussed on pitching.

After a few minutes, a few other kids came in and rather than deal with the kids' frustration over sharing, we told them it was time to go.  They cried for about 100 feet and then got distracted by the crowd and were back in the swing of things.  On to the cable car!

And then on to the press box.

Good San Franciscans, recycling AND composting!

Waiting for the elevator

Then we went upstairs to the "view" level to find our seats and collect Grandma to go back home.  We missed her at the seats, so we played by the elevators while she found us.