Bigness

I don't know if it's the start of school or the change of seasons, but our kids seem to have hit a growth spurt.  Tali seems taller and Mateo seems heavier.  I weighed them tonight and their tried-and-true ten pound weight gaps still holds true:  Tali is 23.6 pounds and Mateo is 33.6!   Given their relative smallness for their ages, they'd probably make great gymnasts if they ever had the inclination.

Anyway, they've been doing all these new things!  I thought I'd make a list of things I've noticed recently.

1.  Tali can climb into her crib when the side is down, and can also climb up onto all sorts of other things.  I didn't realize this until I found her in her crib several times and couldn't remember if I had put her there or not (hello, long-term sleep deprivation).

2.  Mateo can climb up onto the counter in our kitchen.  He just steps on the bottom drawer when it's pulled out and gets himself up there.  It wasn't long ago that he couldn't even reach the top drawer and now he can unload the silverware from the dishwasher without even a stool.

3.  Everyone is commenting that Natalia is taller, which she is.  Also, she usually submits to having her hair done as best as I can do it, which isn't very well.  This is the part I always dreaded about having a girl - how to do their hair?  Especially because I never really figured it out for myself.  But, our little barrettes and pigtails are working for now and she actually seems to like them sometimes.

4.  Mateo has formed strong opinions about his hair and he wants it short.  Really short.  Today, he requested and got a hair cut, despite the fact that his hair was barely touching his ears!  It turned out really well for our whole family, because Apa had stopped by to help me bring up a heavy Ikea box from the basement (I'm going to try it for organizing our pantry) and out of the blue offered to take the kids for Mateo's haircut so Sacha and I could go out to coffee!  As my mom later commented, what a great guy!  We went and checked out some of the food carts nearby and the kids had some fun time with their dad.  Thanks, Apa!

5.  Mateo has mastered the firepole at the park!  He can do it all by himself.  It's rather amazing - both that he can do it and that I can lay off the helicopter parenting long enough to let him. 

6.  Mateo has been initiating conversations daily about two specific dangerous things:  motorcycles and cigarettes.  He always wants to know why those things are dangerous and why people ride them or smoke them.  I used to have a motorcycle, so I definitely understand the fun of them, but obviously I know how dangerous they can be.  It seems like a fine line to walk between explaining the dangers but also not coming down too hard and making motorcycles or cigarettes forbidden, and therefore attractive, items.  I don't know what he's wrestling with in there, but probably the contradiction between the obvious danger of motorcycling and smoking and the reality that a lot of people do both and have fun/get addicted with/to them.  He seriously asks me every day, and it's only that infrequent because I had to set a limit when he wanted to ask about it several times a day!

6.  I don't know, they just seem like such big kids these days.  We met some friends' three-week-old baby the other day (so cute!) and Tali, who never seems big compared to anybody, seemed like SUCH a big girl all of the sudden.  I love the kid they're growing into being, if that makes any grammatical sense.

Here are some photos from dinner tonight.  First, Teo in his new shorter 'do.  Then, my lovely wife.  Then, the kids with their new pirate tattoos that I impulse-bought them at the grocery store this afternoon.  They are so proud of their tattoos.  SO PROUD!  They can't get enough of them.  Mateo has a cannon and Tali has a shark.

Finally, two shout-outs:  first, to my parents and sister, who are flying to Europe tonight and tomorrow!  Hopefully their 9/11 flights will go smoothly and they'll have a great trip.  And, secondly, to Megan, for finishing her last day of work and heading off for some vacation time before starting grad school.  Congrats!

Photo wall

Inspired by our friend, Wendy, and some advice she gave me in a semi-recent post, I decided to follow through on a long-held idea and consolidate most of our family photos on one wall.  I've taken about a zillion photos with my new digital SLR (thanks again, Mom and Dad!) and I had asked Wendy how she chooses the photos she prints, since she's an amazing photographer. 

She suggested picking one or two photos and getting them in large sizes (ie, 16x20) and then designing the rest of the wall around them.  It took some sorting, but in the end it wasn't hard to come up with my current favorite photos of each of our kids.  I then took my second and third choices and ordered those as 5x7s. 

Then, Apa and I went to Ikea and bought a bunch of frames.  Simultaneously, I reorganized our other wall hangings so that my other favorites kid photos (of the kids as babies) are on the same wall but on the other side of the archway to the kitchen.  I absolutely LOVE the way it turned out.  It highlights our kiddos and the nature of our family right now, while also letting the rest of our main living area have more simple, kid-free decorations. 

I took some photos tonight of the new arrangement, and they didn't come out so well, but I'm going to post them anyway.  Yay for new pictures!  And thanks again to Wendy for her advice.  It really helped me get things together in a way that our family will enjoy for a long time to come.

Here's what I came up with:

Here's Teo's section, although it looks much more orange than it really is because I had to turn off the flash...

Here's Tali's section - same thing with the overdone orange effect!

Here's the other side of the archway, with Mateo's one-year-old photos on the left and Tali's cute baby chub on the right

Summer

On the last day of summer, we were coming home from getting ice cream and the kids were racing each other to the park.  It was not too much of a contest in the end, but they both crashed out on the grass for a break before a barbeque, which came right before bedtime and before the first day of school tomorrow.

There was hugging...

conspiratorially smiling....

and, finally, dashing off again.  Just like summer is doing. 

 
Here's to a great 2010/11 school year!

PS: Yes, they are wearing Halloween shirts.  I found them on sale at Fred Meyer and I just couldn't pass them up.  Something about having a Halloween baby has made me a sucker for all fall-related clothing!

Comparisons

When I was going through photos for the hiking post, I found one of us all eating at a picnic table.  We took a photo of this same group (us and Sacha's parents) picnicking a little over a year ago, in Beaverton on Mother's Day weekend 2009.  I dug up the old photo and thought it might be interesting to compare the two.  Here they are!

This year:

Last year:

Hiking

We rarely make it out to the Columbia Gorge, even though it's pretty close by, so we thought we'd try a hike out there while Sacha's parents were visiting recently.  We didn't end up quite at the trail we thought we were heading to, but it turned out great.  We did a little walk for the kids and then had a nice picnic lunch before heading home.  Here are some photos of what was a beautiful summer day!

Here's Poppa carrying Tali

Here are a few of our adventurers...

The main attraction

Fading fast before lunch

Much happier after eating!

The fam

On the bridge on our walk back to the car

Zonked

Just a few minutes ago, I accused my wife of trying to commandeer our daughter as her teddy bear for the night.  She was getting ready to put Mateo down for the night, but had also gotten Tali tucked in next to her and the three of them were preparing to sleep in one big pile.  We are all zonked - we had a big day! 

We started out by going to Sacha's school to do final prep work this morning, followed by a quick bakery trip.  Then, I took the kids out to my grandma's house to watch her new deck being built (and to play and catch up) and then Talia fell asleep on the way home.  After getting her into her bed, Mateo and I set out to the library.  Naptime has been a long struggle with him this week and I was just sick of it, so I took advantage of Sacha being home to get out of the house. 

He rode his balance bike all the way to the library and back!  He did have one big wipeout, but recovered pretty quickly with the promise of bandaids when we got home.   Then, we had a brief visit from Sacha's parents, who were on their way through town, and then swimming lessons, and then a meet the teacher thing at Mateo's preschool, and then burritos as a quick dinner on the way home!  A great end of summer day, but it wiped us all out.  Here are the three hibernators planning their long winter sleep:

 Plus, as an added bonus, here's a photo of Apa and the kids as we left for date night on Wednesday.  They were going around with Mateo "carrying" his sister on his shoulders and Apa making the whole thing work.  He is really great with them and they practically knock each other over trying to get to the door when he gets there.  Thanks again for our weekly date night, Apa!

PS:  As I was uploading photos, I found a whole bunch from a hike we took with Bubby and Poppa when they were here last month.  Note to self:  next post should be about that.

Chilly

Thinking the last weeks of August would be warm, I signed the kids up for a two-week swimming class.  The weather hasn't quite cooperated.  The first few days were hot, but now we're back to slightly chilly and sometimes rainy weather.

None the less, they have lessons for half an hour every day for two weeks, ending on Friday.  Mateo is now such a big boy that he goes in by himself with his teacher and the other kids, which has gone surprisingly well.  He's bounced like a bunny, blown bubbles, and taken some wild rides on a big floaty thing pulled by his teacher, who is a young man with a rather shocking amount of energy! 

Tali's still in the baby classes, obviously, so I've been going in with her.  The fact that I'm willing to do this really says something about what one is willing to do for one's children. Normally, I would never enter a pool unless it was over 90 degrees outside or I was going swimming specifically to work out.  Getting into a lukewarm pool when it's in the mid-60s to low-70s outside and then being able to do almost nothing to warm up other than bounce around in circles with the other people in the class, singing songs and practicing splashing and kicking...well, it makes for one very cold mama.  Tali actually seems to take after me in this regard and will get cold in the water if it's too chilly out, but Mateo, like Sacha, is happy to get in no matter what the temperature outside. 

All of this is to say that I've learned that I can be cold in the pool for half an hour every day for two weeks and live to tell the tale!  And, that I actually go in happily, because I know Talia loves her lessons.  Getting out is also interesting, because getting the kids both out of their suits and into the showers (or just dried off) means that I'm cold and wet for a long time before I finally get my clothes on. 

I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, just marveling that it really is worth it to me to be a little uncomfortable so that the kids can have a good time and get comfortable in the water.  And, I'm more than a little bit happy that our next set of lessons, should we choose to sign up for them, will be at a very warm indoor pool just down the street.  It's been great to have a way to get some of their energy out between naptime and dinner, so it's pretty likely that we'll sign up again.  Ah, warm water.  I'm looking forward to it already!