The Things Kids Say...

OK, we all know that "kids say the darnedest things", but really, my kids do.  And what's maddening is trying to figure out WHERE they learned them!

We spent the day with Grandma and Grandpa Salvatore in Livermore on Thursday.  On Friday when I got Daniel up from his breakfast and started to wipe off the berries that were smeared all over his face and hands, he started to fret, saying, "Oh DEAR, my hands dirty! Oh DEAR, berries on my face!" with just the same inflection Grandma gives to "oh dear" when she's laughing at some tragedy they've invented.  The same day, Max decided that everything we did was "amazing" - "These strawberries amazing, Mommy," "Sporticus is amazing, Mommy!"

They are slowly warming up to the concept of "love", occasionally telling Daddy or me that they love us.  But more often we are not the objects of their affection.  Caroline "loves Baby" (whom she has started to call "Baby Sister" because "I not a Mommy - you the Mommy, I the Sister!") and Daniel recently admitted that he "loves raspberries".  Well, they all still have their little kid accents, so really he "wuvvs wazbewwies" - and it is so much cuter that way, don't you agree?

Speaking of accents, it is hilarious to me how differently they pronounce things even though they have all the same influences.  Max and Daniel are IDENTICAL TWINS and yet Max says a traditional, flat California "o" in "Mommy"while Daniel still pronounces it moh-mee and Caroline has a comedy voice she does to make me laugh that I cannot describe adequately in words - it's sort of a satire of a tony, Cary Grant-style upper class accent as she says, "Mommy, mommy, mommy" (think "Judy, Judy, Judy").  It's the same with their names.  Caroline gets called "Carmine", "Caremine", "Carenowine", and probably a bunch more.  Max is generally "Maks", though Caroline still favors calling him "Mass".  And while Max pronounces Daniel's name pretty perfectly, Caroline still calls him "Done-yo".

Max continues to play the magician, hiding things and asking, "Where they go?"  He will parrot things right from TV (see the previous discussion of "Sporticus right back"), but he's building his sentence structure.  Today at bath time, he wanted to take charge of the sound system.  The choices tend to be the Elmo CD or baseball on the radio.  He couldn't decide, flipping between the two and saying, "Baseball! NO! Maybe I try Elmo this time."  My favorite moment though, recently, was when I finally relented and let him watch an episode of Lazy Town.  He was sitting next to me on the couch, bolt upright with his knees bent, the soles of his feet touching each other in a beautiful yoga posture, and grinning ear to ear.  At one point, he grabbed his feet, rocked back and forth a little bit, and said, "Mommy? I happy!"  This apparently made me laugh so much that he announced, "Mommy! You happy too!"  and now he asks me from time to time, "You happy, Mommy? I happy!"

Daniel is still the most considerate of the three.  Or at least he seems to be - I'm not entirely certain he hasn't figured out that he can get away with a lot by flashing a little smile and saying, "I sowwy, moh-mee".  Tonight during his bath, he had filled up a cup and was balancing little Elmos in it like they were lounging in a jacuzzi.  When he turned to get something, he knocked the cup over and the water spilled all over the floor.  We both said, "Oh no!" and I started to clean it up, explaining that this is why we need to be careful with the water.  He was moaning about his Elmos, which had fallen to the outside of the tub, and as I scooped them up to return, I laughed and teased him, "Oh, so that's what you're upset about? Not that Mommy has to clean up all this water you spilled?"  His face changed a bit and he looked at me very seriously and said, "I sowwy, Moh-mee. I weewee, weewee sowwy."

They trade off fighting with each other and making up.  Max's version of an apology is to pat his sibling and say, "You fine,"  but when Daniel was sobbing in the car because he didn't want to wear the clothes we'd put him in and wasn't happy with the pacifier (and was generally just NOT happy), Max turned to him and said, plain as day, "Calm down, Daniel.  It's OK!"

Caroline is still the verbal leader, but she surprises us with her really impressive recall.  Yesterday, Grandma was over to help with cupcake construction and mentioned that she had to go to Dublin this evening for a meeting and hoped she didn't get lost on the way.  Tonight at dinner, Caroline announced, "Gamma at a meeting tonight," followed by, "but Daddy's at the baseball game," and "Uncle is at Wendy's house."  Adorably, when I asked her where Wendy was, she offered that Wendy was at Uncle's house.  Not likely, since that would be here and we hadn't seen her.

With all of this discussion, Max looked at me with a big smile and said, "Mommy - you home!"  I think he's still taking in the wonder that is a teacher's unpaid summer break.  That's right, Max, with a few interruptions for school board meetings and Giants games, Mommy gets to be home until August 14th!