I found out recently that the CBS reality show Big Brother had a new twist for its fourth season--a 24/7 live video feed. At any given moment a viewer could plug in to watch the houseguests eat, bicker, and otherwise get on each other's nerves.
A live feed from my house would look something like this (last night, anyway):
This is a game invented by Carmen, and it goes on until Carmen can no longer stand up. Note that Matt isn't pulling her around . . . Carmen is self-propelled. The best time to play this game is right before bedtime, of course. Note David climbing up and down the Learning Tower. That game goes on until he finds something more interesting, like, for example, a basket of fruit
or a box of crackers.Those are the only pictures we've taken lately. The babes move too fast, otherwise. We are talking quite a lot, now, and signing even more. We know now how to say potty (pah-ee), hi, bye, trash truck (ta-rah ta-ruh), tractor (ta-tuhr), truck (ta-ruh), down (DOWn), cow (cow or dow), horse (hoss), shopping (poppin), diaper (peeper), poopoo (poopoo), cat (ta!), time (for Baby Signing Time and Signing Time, this is just Carmen's), duck (duh!, this is just Carmen's), zebra (be-bra, this is just Carmen's). We try to say motorcycle (da-da-da-dah, while signing), helicopter (da-da-dah, while signing), elephant (da-da-dah, while signing), book (buh), fish (fshhh). The babes call Matt Daddy, but sign Mommy. David calls me Daddy, too. Carmen tries hard to make important statements using her ASL: Daddy work car "BYE!" while David is prone to using his baby babble for making long unintelligible lectures about the nature of the universe. We can say "bzzzzzz!" like the washing machine when it buzzes.
Music is as important as ever. David prefers to partner dance, with me holding him and swinging around the living room floor. Carmen will dance anywhere, anyhow, at the slightest bit of music, even if she is in her stroller. To compensate for her confinement she will hold onto the front bar and bounce up and down, up and down. She bounces in Saks, she bounces at the grocery, she bounces to the music of the band at Central Market while she eats her dinner. In her carseat she nods her head while David kicks his foot. She tried to sing along with me once (to a Dixie Chicks song), but she hasn't again. Probably she isn't sure how to match my off-key singing.
Busy days are happy days. Trips to the grocery become expeditions. The babes know that Whole Foods and Wal-Mart have fish tanks, and Kroger does, too. We tell everyone "hi," demand to taste the merchandise, and then say "bye" on our way out. David often gives mini-lectures to anyone who will hear them, while Carmen lowers her head and tries not to smile.
We are still afraid of the bouncy, and, in fact, are afraid of anything that seems to have a life of its own, like a collapsible springed tunnel. We are no longer afraid of the trash truck, but David is afraid of thunder and Carmen is afraid of the static on the television that happens when she turns it on, maxes out the volume, and then puts on, say, channel 125 (we don't have cable).
We are addicted to Kashi TLC crackers. David thinks it's fun to soak them in juice and feed them to me. I think it's less fun, but will eat them, anyway.
We are sleeping better, although Carmen's nights have been rough, lately. No wonder--she is sprouting four molars this week.
At sight or sound, we point out every plane and helicopter we find. We take tractor rides at the farm and cry when the rides are over. We like to snort back at small steers and touch horses on the nose.
And we prefer jumping on the couch and climbing the furniture to gymnastics class. Yesterday was their second class. They liked watching the other children, especially the older gymnastics flipping and rolling at another section of the gym, but they don't like Coach Lisa. Yesterday she persuaded David to hang from the trapeze bar. Nervously swinging, he was about to crack a smile when she let him fall on the cushions below. David howled. "You aren't hurt," she said. Of course not, but he was offended and surprised, anyway, and to David, that's just the same if not worse. Then Carmen cried because David cried. The rest of the visit they didn't want to have anything to do with Coach Lisa or her gym equipment, and clung to my shirt or shorts until nearly the end of the session. Last week she tried to persuade them to do somersaults. That didn't work so well, either. I think that's as it should be. I would be extraordinarily annoyed if someone twice my height picked me up at the waist, flopped me on a pillow, and then clapped. The other children didn't mind, but at 18 and 19 months, most if not all had already taken multiple gymnastics and Gymboree classes, so they were accustomed to being bounced by complete strangers, and were not even slightly interested in what the other children were doing.
The gym class is supposed to be free play, but it turns out that since this is the summer and there are "camps" going on all day for Shannon Miller hopefuls, the baby Tumblebugs need to share the gym equipment. That means that if the babes want to spend the whole 1/2 hour at the trampoline, they can't. They have to keep moving from one area to the other as a group. And that's too bad, because that 1/2 hour at the trampoline (with a pit of foam blocks to dive into!) was the very reason I signed up, and it was the only piece of equipment that the babes immediately liked.
It isn't especially fun or cost-effective to sit in the middle of a large gymnasium with fifty pounds of baby in my arms while other children jump, flop, and tumble, so I pulled the babes out of the class. Maybe in the fall, when Coach Lisa's antics are forgotten (or will they say, "oh, that's the lady that DROPPED me, let's get out of here!"), the babes can revisit the gym on the explicit direction that if they want to do nothing but bounce on the trampoline, they can. Until then . . . there's always the couch.
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