Emerging Personalities

Our living room is crammed full of baby things.  There are three bouncy chairs, two exersaucers, a jump-eroo, a "baby jail" activity area, two activity mats that they've outgrown but we still keep around "just in case", a changing table layered with diapers, bibs, burp cloths, ointments, wipes, and changes of clothes, and a WIDE assortment of stuffed animals, toys, and blankets.

And yet, when the Salvateenies got fussy this evening, where did 2/3 of them want to play?  On the floor!  Max rolled around, finding his toys spread around the room and playing with them a bit.  But mostly he rolled onto his tummy and pushed up, looking over at Daniel, still standing in the exersaucer, or over at Caroline, lying on her back on the floor.  Caroline, for her part, would occasionally roll onto her belly, whine a bit, and then flop back.  She mostly scoots around - looking for things to read, apparently.  She fished an old Fine Arts Museum magazine out from beneath the tv stand and promptly opened it up, rolled onto her tummy and stared (sadly, by the time I got the camera, she'd flopped back and lost interest).  Then she went for a paper bag from the pharmacy.  She emptied it of its eye droppers and big box of infant ibuprofen (unopened) and grabbed for the squeezy bottle of saline nose drops, rolling the bottle around and around in her hands as she held it above her head and squinted at the label.

I wondered if Daniel felt like he was missing out on all the fun on the carpet, but he merrily watched his brother and sister at play, giggling away at their exploits as if they were putting on a little show just for him.  Perhaps he has a future as a director (though his first fortune cookie fortune did portend that he would become a community organizer, which could also work with his cheery demeanor).

And, come to think of it, Max did enough drooling while propped up on his elbows that he might have a future as a lawn watering device!

I was enjoying playing with them and watching them play with each other so much, these are the only pictures I got:

Caroline taking a break from her article on Pablo Picasso

 It's a shame I didn't get a picture of Max at the computer.  I'd been watching 127 Hours on the computer, on and off (as the babies provided a good distraction from the more gruesome scenes).  When it was over, I set my computer on the carpet and switched over to Facebook.  As everyone started to melt down around 8:00, I set Max up to sit and watch Caroline on the carpet.  Then I went into the kitchen to quickly pour out some bottles and put them in the warmers.  When I came back, Max had pivoted and was sitting bolt upright in front of the computer.  He then reached forward and tapped around on the keyboard, switching from the web browser to the DVD player and re-starting the movie (which was on the credits and had music that he enjoyed).  When I picked Max up to change, Caroline was about five feet away from the computer, lying on her back.  She scooted her way over to it, rolled over on her tummy, and switched back to the browser to check out Facebook!

"No, Mommy, I'm not changing your Facebook status! "

"I was just checking to see if Daddy was online so we could chat!"

I think we need to get these guys set up with Skype soon!  Who wants to chat with them?