The Salvateenies: Dank-chu, Mommy!

I keep thinking I should catch up with the posts, and then I don't, and then there's so much more to post, and it gets overwhelming.

So this will be a series of vignettes, and not terribly well-written, I suspect.

The children are all talking now, though Caroline is definitely way in the lead and slowly working from parrotting everything she hears to interpreting it and putting together her own statements. Daniel has a more limited vernacular, but his grammar is punctuated with sentence-terminal, and particularly adorable, "Mommy". When I do something for him (like give him his milk cup or scoop his poop out of the bathtub, say), he smiles and says, "Dank-chu, Mommy" (for the uninitiated, that's "Thank you, Mommy"). When I ask him to do something, it's, "OK, Mommy!" When I get frustrated that he's thrown his milk or dropped a fork, he says, "Sorry, Mommy!" The other night, when I put everyone down in their cribs and said my nightie-nights, Daniel protested as I walked toward the door, "Mommy! Good-night-kiss!" As my heart melted and I gave him a kiss, he smiled and said, "Dank-chu, Mommy!"

All the children have adopted a menagerie of stuffed friends who must come to bed with them every night and who must emerge with them as well, just to be deposited on the floor around the high chairs and be ignored until it's time to go back to bed. For Daniel, it's a monkey, a huge carrot, and a horse. For Caroline, it's a tiger, a strawberry, and an identical horse. Max has a dog in pajamas, a huge broccoli, and a third, identical horse. In fact, they once only had two of these bed time buddies, but one night Caroline insisted on a "Horsie!" and then they all had to have them - luckily, we had three! At bedtime, Daniel has put himself in charge of collecting the stuffed friends and bringing them to his siblings to cart off to bed. He calls them by name - we're not too inventive with names - Monkey, Puppy, Tigey, etc. And then he leads the parade to the door and into the hall. He gets annoyed when Caroline (and it is usually Caroline) dawdles and he calls to her, "Come on, Care-mine!" and it is so cute that I almost want to make that her new name!

Caroline has continued to be the group empath. For some reason, she has taken to calling Max by name ("Mass"), but Daniel is now nearly always "Baby". When he's upset, she says, "Oh no, Baby sad. Baby cry." When she finds a blue water bottle or cup, she says, "Oh! Baby's water! Here you go, Baby!" She can follow directions, which is super helpful when she brings things to her brothers. But the progress isn't all easy. She has decided she needs to was her hands at the sink at least six times a day, necessitating a trip to the kitchen or bathroom and balancing her over the sink. Often, this is just an excuse to get into the kitchen where she can practice her horsie gallop on the linoleum (I guess it just doesn't sound as good on the carpet). She also has learned to try going pee-pee in the potty - though she hasn't actually GONE pee-pee yet. She's just asked to go, held my hand to walk down the hall to the bathroom, stripped down, climbed up and balanced on the seat, waited a moment, grabbed some toilet paper - most recently to wipe her knees off, for some reason, jumped down, put the paper in the toilet, pressed the handle to flush - "bye, bye, potty!" and then ask to wash her hands. So, I'm not fooling myself that potty training is around the corner, but she's at least leaning in the right direction. And she can tell us when she's gone poop and doesn't fight as much when she needs a diaper change, so it's all, as they say, baby steps.

Max's conversational skills sort of ebb and flow. There will be days that he barely talks at all, and then all of a sudden he spits out long sentences involving all sorts of pronouns. He is incredibly proud of himself that he knows every character's name on all the various cartoons they watch and he makes his toys have extensive arguments and discussions when he plays. Recently, he and Caroline have discovered and Eric Carle book they really like. It shows a progression of animals who each can do a different activity with a different part of their body (the penguin turns his head, the buffalo raises his shoulders, etc.). They act out all the different moves, until they get to "the crocodile wiggles his hips". For whatever reason, they can't quite wrap their minds around hips or wiggling (or both). After a few reads, Max decided to settle the dilemma by eating the crocodile - he literally puts his hand out to the picture, grabs at the middle of the crocodile belly, brings his fist back up to his mouth, and says, "yum, yum, yum, yum" much in the way that Cookie Monster devours a plate of cookies. It is a little disturbing, and entirely hilarious.

There is much more that has happened, but I'll have to browse through my Facebook statuses to remember it all. Which will probably take weeks. So until then, here are some pictures to tide you over.

Caroline loves her hand-me-down sparkle shoes. Thanks, Hartley!

Too cool to drool!

Doing Daddy's hair

Doing her own hair

Mommy helped out a tiny bit.

Couch potato in training

This year at Boo at the Zoo, we didn't wear costumes and spent most of our time at the petting zoo.

Caroline checks out the miniature donkey and becomes one with the stubbornness.

Daniel was really good at feeding the goats

Max is raking the paddock, while Uncle Kelly pushes Caroline around on a tractor

Daniel and Wendy exchange ideas about the chores

Cutest wheelbarrow around

And, of course, the carousel.

Caroline continues her climb to the top:

Wendy bought Caroline a little tea set. The tea pot sings songs about manners and makes a real water-pouring noise when you tip it over. Plus, there's a fun little plate of tea cakes to practice your shapes!