We went to visit the Linerts on Wednesday for our final holiday get-together of the season. The 'teenies really enjoyed hanging out with Anjali and Ajay and playing with all their cool toys (giving Mommy great ideas of things to ask Grandma and Grandpa for!)
Luckily, Chris and Jayanthi took pictures, so I'll let them speak for themselves.
Jayanthi set up a card table and we strapped their little booster chairs to the toddler chairs she has.
Daniel enjoying his spinach, squash, and wheat
"What? No more?"
Anjali helps Caroline out
Pretty girls!
Max enjoying his food
And feeding himself
After a big dinner of chicken, red beans, Cheerios, and the spinach/squash/wheat concoction, Caroline was still hungry, it seemed.
Trying to chomp down on a "gear"
Max was a little fussy, which called for a little tummy tickle!
And Caroline was still hungry! Enter the treat cup...
Hanging in the kitchen with Anjali, Caroline has adopted her perma-pout.
Meanwhile, Daniel was still in his high chair, double-fisting the treat cups:
Caroline finally figured out what those gears were really for - and she LOVED the game!
"Can we ask Grandma and Grandpa to get us this for Chinese New Years???"
But she still practiced her sharing:
The past few days, the boys have been wrestling a lot and we were wondering where they learned. Now that I look at the pictures, I think I know...
Get her, Daniel!
Max's turn for a pin!
No hard feelings!
Luckily, Ajay was there to help clean up!
Oh no! Anjali the Tickle Monster!
Caroline actually tried to sneak this phone home in our bag
Magnet letters are, apparently, yummy.
Max isn't sure the milk is yummy
Then it was present time!
"Cool! I got a new book!"
"Phone call for Caroline!"
Anjali might steal Daniel's new slippers
Everyone loved the tissue paper:
Trying to make the fancy Santa bag laugh.
Anjali is reading to Max while Ajay explains other toys to Caroline
Max's new Elmo slippers are yummy, too!
Chris posed with Daniel
But everyone was all smiles when we got both boys in the picture
The Salvateenies have been around dogs exactly three times - at Jonah's birthday party, where they played with the incredibly sweet Chewie, when Lynne and Stretch came to visit just before Christmas, and this past weekend when I took them down to see my friend Pam's family and their two new(ish) dogs, Charley and Milo. I was a bit concerned letting them loose to play with Charley and Milo, since when they play together, they sometimes forget the concept of "gentle. Each time they've been around a dog, though, they are suprisingly soft and not at all grabby.
And while they all really liked the dogs and were really good with them, Caroline was in love. Pam gave Caroline a little bag of goldfish crackers to snack on and Caroline immediately started offering them to Charley, who nibbled them right off her fingers to her delighted giggles. She walked around following him and by the end of the few hours we'd spent there, she'd already added the word "doggy" to her vocabulary.
Today, after breakfast, I put some Cheerios out on their high chair trays to keep them busy while I changed diapers. I changed Daniel first, and then put him down on the floor. He crawled over to Caroline's chair and pulled himself up, reaching for some of the Cheerios on her tray.
And Caroline promptly grabbed a Cheerio and reached down to feed it to him!
I think it might be a sign she wants a dog.
In other news, Max has mastered his "HI!" greeting (probably because he sees how much attention Caroline gets when she says hi). As I was typing this, he walked up to me and said, "Hi, Edith!" -- still need to break him of THAT! The other night, he was screaming in protest to having been put to bed. The screams turned to sobs and I was at the door about to go in when he gulped out, "Waaaa..MOOOM...MEEE" just as I went in the room. I was a little worried he'd put together the cause and effect and think I'd been waiting outside his room for him to say Mommy so I could go in. But now that I hear he still calls me "eeedit", I won't worry anymore.
The week between Christmas and New Years was an eventful one. We started out with a family outing to the zoo. And when I say "family outing", I mean LOTS of family! Joe's sister, Dana, came up to visit, along with her husband, Frank, and all three of her daughters, plus two sons-in-law, and three grandchildren. Add in our five and you get the crew you see below:
As you can see, the cousins rented some wagons to tote the three "big" kids around in and we rolled along through the zoo, seeing nearly every animal there was AND riding the carousel.
We even caught the tiger out and about:
Caroline was a little fussy, but we were able to keep her focused by feeding her bits of soft pretzel.
By the end of the day, Daniel was pretty zooed out:
All fifteen of us met up at Mel's Diner, where I had my first experience as a mother questioning someone else's parenting. We had called ahead, so they had two tables set up for us, but hadn't placed the high chairs yet. We got them arranged so that we were sitting child-parent-child-parent-child, with Caroline on the end by Joe. All three babies adore amusing themselves with spoons when we go out, so we made sure we had extras and let them have at it while we waited for Dana and everyone else to make it to the restaurant.
Another family was seated in the booth down by Caroline. Their toddling two year old took a fancy to her (can you blame him?) She had dropped a spoon on the floor, and when he picked it up, I warned the parents that she'd probably licked it and maybe we should take it away. They didn't seem too worried, so I wasn't either. Until they sat down in the booth with their two older children, leaving the toddler to roam around Caroline's chair, grabbing spoons from her place at the table, sticking them in his mouth, and then offering them back to her. We tried to politely say "no thank you" a few times, but the parents didn't notice, so we eventually had to switch her seat with Joe's so she wasn't exposed at the end of the table (of course, her little suitor came up behind her chair offering her treasures he'd found on the floor) and finally the mother got the hint and went in search of a high chair to put him in. I can't imagine the looks we would have gotten if we'd allowed the Salvateenies to go "free range" in a restaurant!
After resting up from the family outing, we went out to the park on Tuesday. It was chilly, so everyone bundled up and we went in search of a playground nearby. The ones we found either did not seem to have baby swings or had no parking near enough for us to determine if there were baby swings, so we went back to Children's Playground in Golden Gate Park. After a happy ten minutes on the swings, we thought we'd let the 'Teenies walk around on the grass for a while. Caroline was not really "in to" walking on the grass, but Max seemed to enjoy it.
and Daniel enjoyed trying on my sunglasses.
On Wednesday, we all went car shopping! That's right - time to trade up to a "family vehicle". We found a listing online for a nice used minivan at a local Chevy dealership and went in for a test drive. While we waited, though, Caroline let us know she preferred the red Camaro (specifically the red one - she had no interest in the white or black models).
But she wants to see if it's possible to get a left-hand drive model (maybe I've been watching too much Top Gear with her...)
Daniel thought the Camaro was pretty spiffy, too, and promised to let Caroline ride in the passanger seat as soon as he gets his license.
We tried to put Max in the Camaro, but he preferred the Corvette hard-top - in black.
They were all very sad we ended up with this:
Friday we headed to Berkeley for a post-Xmas celebration with my aunt's family, including my cousin Jacinda's new baby, Anahita (she's 6 months old and has inherited a lot of our hand-me-downs, though she was bigger at her 6 month appointment than Caroline was at her 12 month, so there's a possibility that won't work for much longer!). The babies were really enjoying exploring my aunt's house and we were running around so much catching up with them that I got very few pictures:
Grandma is the only one who posed in this picture!
Taking Anahita off Grandma's hands
Jacinda and Anahita
Max and Caroline explore the kitchen
"No! We can't leave yet! There's more to see!"
"So this is where the big girls are playing!"
Caroline found the gifts beneath the tree and instinctively picked up the two marked with her name! And because their Xmas tree was not protected by a baby gate, Max and Daniel seemed to take an immediate interest in it, exploring the needles and even pulling off an ornament. This new-found appreciation for ornaments made its way home with us as Max finally noticed our tree and reached up on his tippy-toes to rescue a stuffed bear from it's perch on the plastic limb. He was nice enough to get Daniel into the act, too.
And with that we wish you the happiest of New Years!
