Story from Ruth

This post is courtesy of Baba Ruth, an anecdote from the kids recent visit to see their paternal grandparents.

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Renee asked me (Ruth) 'Why don't you work, Baba?"  I said I did have work now but I stayed home with Conor and Rachael while they were growing up.  Renee asked "So you'd rather do dishes than have a job?".  Wisdom from the mouths of babes.

One night before bed time

Renee is wearing pajamas that were once Eduardo's (Regi bought matching "I Love Mom" pajamas for her then only grandsons, Eduardo was 4, Samuel was 1 1/2).

Samuel doing his mad face in the "Michael" game (they pretend their name is Michael), "my name is michael, and i have a green sword that spits fire out and then I have something that cuts stuff and makes fire cuttings"

Matthew, in his Harry Potter glasses, doing "lightening destroy tornadoes".

Chimuelo!!!

Tooth #3 fell out at soccer camp.

"Los 4"

Celebrando el dia que los otros "los cuatro" llegaron a Canada.

My parents 4 grandchildren having dinner together on the 31st anniversary of our arrival in Canada.

Mother Son Night

Samuel went to a week long basket ball camp followed by a week long soccer camp.  He came home from day 1 of soccer camp wanting cleats.  So we went to a near by mall  after dinner, part for the cleats and part for 1-1 time.  

He didn't want the cleats afterall but we did buy a basketball which he dribbled all over the near-empty mall.   he acquired pretty good skills at camp.

We left the mall at sunset and right after a thundestorm.   The entire sky was pink, unlike anything I've ever seen before.  These pictures don't do it justice.  and although the thunder storm was over, there were still bolts of lightening visible inside the clouds.

July 1 = 4

Renee woke up first " Mami, wake up", I openned my eyes "I"m awake", "No Mami, wake up and get up", I raise my hand, "No Mami, wake up with your whole body".  We went into the room Matthew, Samuel and Marc were sleeping in. 

We openned presents right away.  We gave matthew a set of architectural building blocks, Renee a "Hello Kitty" bead kit, and Samuel got a you-have-been-a-big-brother-for-four-years Harry Potter Lego game.

When Matthew woke up and we wished him a happy birthday, he responded "It's not my birthday until I have cake".  Good thing I was ready to continue the Lulka Mazal familiy tradition of waking up the birthday person with a cake and candle and had cake at the ready downstairs (hard to wake up the birthday person with cake when they wake up before you do).  Samuel decorated Matthew's cake with a Harry Potter, and I wrote Renee's name on hers.  After blowing out their candles, they ate the icing and re-recorated their cakes a few times.  Grandma and grandpa got Matthew and Renee hooded towels - a princess and an octopus - and skipping ropes, and Samuel got a pen with his name on it.

We had more birthday celebrations that evening with Bubba and Zaida, complete with balloons, cupcakes and cake.  Cars, the original movie for Matthew and a doll for Renee.  Cupcakes for the birthday gild and boy and cake for the rest of us.  Again, they only ate the icing.

Birthdays

Matthew and Renee ALMOST share birthdays with 2 of their grandmothers who have birthdays at the very end of June. Both grandmothers thought it would have been nice to share their birthday with the twins, but Matthew and Renee choose to be born on their own day. And that makes for plenty of candles and birthday cake within 4 days.

Regi's Birthday - June 28

Tocayo thought that the best way to celebrate Regi's birthday was the way he celebrated his birthday this year - with all 4 grandchildren sleeping over the night before in order to wake up the birthday grandparent the day of their birthday with cake, candle and boisterousness. Grandparents and kids had a great time. Here are some pictures of dinner the night of the 28th. The candles are for Regi whose birthday it was and an early celebration of Matthew and Renee's birthday because we were going out of town for their actual birthday.

Matthew was very excited about his Mario motorcyle lego and his Tinker Toys, and Renee about her kitchen pots, pans and tea set as well as her musical bells.

Grandma Heather's Birthday - June 30

Two days later we celebrated Grandma Heather's birthday with her and Grandpa Paul with an ice cream cake for Grandma, Matthew and Renee.  Samuel wanted a piece of cake with Matthew's name and only the vanilla, Matthew wanted letters and for the ice cream to turn to juice (i.e. melt), Renee wanted icing and sparkles only.  Grandma, Grandpa, Marc and I enjoyed the cake as it was, no special requests except some of us adults did ask for seconds.

Ode to 3

Letters to the 3 kids on Matthew and Renee's last night of being 3.

Dear Samuel,

You are an incredibly sweet boy.  You continue to be very empathetic, nurturing and creative.  You love Star Wars, in which you are ObiWan, and Harry Potter, in which you are Hagrid.  You have beautiful cursive hand writing and are starting to read nicely.  You matured tremendously at school this year and I think keeping you in Casa for 4 years was a good decision.  You are friends with everyone at school, kids, teachers and even parents alike.  You continue to love lego and make some pretty fantastic structures.  You've also started to understand more how your creations work and need to be balanced.  You also continue to love "science experiments" in the kitchen and thankfully are showing a bit more restraint when i ask you to limit the number of ingredients.

You had a great time at the water park today.  This is you jumping "through the umbrella" as you so aptly put it.  And you loving the bucket of water falling on your head after waiting patiently for it to fill up when the water stopped running.  You also loved the water cannons, and tried desperately to get me with them (i was game, but they stopped working when you pointed them out of the main water area).  You made friends with several kids, and of course played beautifully with Matthew and Renee.

We've recently started to do a later bedtime with you, and you are loving that. It seems to have given you a sense of pride and a differentiation from Matthew and Renee that we think you needed. You are an amazing big brother to them. You get along so well with both of them independently and together. With Matthew, your interaction is very physical - you guys jump on everything, wrestle, do TaeKwonDo moves, rearrange the furniture. You talk to Renee, and do more calm activities like puzzles, reading, drawing. Both love doing Lego with you.

Te quiero con todo mi corazon mi amor Samuelito.

Dear Renee,

You are all girl, incredibly precocious, and a true chatter box.  On your own volition, you learned how to write your name in cursive, you recognize many print and cursive letters, you colour within the lines pretty easily.  You adore puzzles.  You are prolific in the world of arts and crafts, in particular you love cutting little pieces of paper into even smaller pieces of paper and then putting them in envelopes.  You have used almost an entire box of old business cards.  You came home from school with big folders of work every week, work that impressed your teachers, Regi, Andy and us.  Your work includes lots of metal insterts, tracings, multi-page books.  We bought you a pink lego set and you are really getting into it.  A few weeks back, you built  the little house pretty independently following the instructions.  At one point in the booklet, I asked you how many bricks the picture had, you counted and said "four".  I asked you how many you already had and you said "one", the next question was "so how many more do you need" and you took a couple seconds and said "three" and kept working as if it was normal for a girl your age to do subrtaction. 

You are incredibly strong willed and vocal about what you want.  This has always been who you are.  I remember saying at your baby naming that my wish for you was for you to always have the voice you had then, and indeed you do.  You get very hurt and need lots of hugs and kisses for reassurance when things don't go your way.  we think this may be because you have such a strong need to be in control of things around you, when things don't go your way the dissonance is too much for you.  Sometimes, when you don't get what you want, one of your brothers will step in and help you get whatever it was.  This often happens with the blue car seat which both you and Matthew prefer - when you want it, and he gets it, you ask him for it with a sweet smile and he often acquiesces.  You are a chatter box (in Spanish, I would say "arguendera"), we get a constant running commentary of everything you do, your brothers do, kids at school do, we do. 

I would be remiss if I didn't mention your physical appearance,  You are strikingly beautiful.  People stop us on the street to comment on your looks.  You hair has stayed blonde, your eyes blue, your skin porcelain, your features refined.  Photogenic though, you are not and so no picture comes close to giving you justice.  You ask for lipstick, nail polish and earnings.  Pink continues to be your favourite colour, and you choose to wear it pretty much daily. 

You still love tugging our ears at bedtime and during the night.  And when i tell you that you can't because my ears hurt, you siply explain "no they don't Mami, you went to the doctor and now they don't hurt. 

Te adoro mi chiquita preciosa.

Dear Matthew,

You are all boy, through and through.  You are incredibly physical, with great strength and coordination.  You run fast, you break wood boards (yes plural) at TaeKwonDo, you jump from the 5th and 6th steps and land solidly on both feet.  You go to the top of the monkey bars at school (a dome, about 6 feet tall) and ahve tried to teach me how to do the same on more than one occasion - "you put your foot here Mami, and then your hands, see it's easy".  You can almost get up the climbing wall at school unaided. You love pretending to be a dog, you bark, you lick.  You love hiding under blankets, and you love, love, love, love being tickled and when we pretend to eat you. 

You love building structures, from wooden blocks, from lego, from train sets, and you build them your own way, like the Brown Stairs vertically, or train tracks as walls for hour cars' "houses".  Playing blocks with you is really about watching you build, you are not a big fan of my building approach "Mami, that's not cool, this is cool".  And you love seeing how big and tall you can make your structures.  You are also really getting into Lego, especially the ones that are similar to Samuel's.

You are a happy, happy boy, smiling, charming and befriending everyone.  You continue to be friends with kids in daycare, a real testament to the relationships you foster since you left daycare 10 months ago.  You are incredibly social at school.  I get emails from lots of parents from the school asking for playdates with you - kids your age and older ones too.  You participate as fully as you can in the games that the older kids play and are pretty much an equal with them on the "BayBlades" front. 

You have an incredible ear for languages and music.  Your Spanish, French and Hebrew are impressive and your Enlgish diction is very strong. 

Matthew, mi tesoro, te adoro.

I'll say it even though it is cliché - I can't believe how they have grown up. When Matthew and Renee were born my standard answer to the question of how hard things were was "it will be better in 2012". I started saying it randomly "how long will your mom be here helping you" led to "until 2012"; "you must be sleep deprived" got "I'll sleep in 2012" etc. This was a marker year in my head and here we are. As much as I chose it randomly at the time, this year really had marked a milestone. We are having a lot of fun, playing, talking, doing the day to day. The kids take showers, Samuel by himself. Everyone is potty trained. They like helping in the kitchen. They can play independently and with us. We can talk at dinner time. We can stay out late. Sleep is more independent than it used to be (independent for the boys, not quite for Renee). They can buckle their car seats and are almost in boosters.

Renee recently reminded me that Matthew used to say "this is my whole life" when we got home after being out, or when the five of us where together. And so I end the ode to the 3 kids, and to Matthew and Renee being 3 by saying "this is my whole life", and how blessed is that!

Cupcakes

Samuel went to see the passage of Venus with Regi and his cousin. Marc had a work dinner.  That left Matthew, Renee and me on our own for dinner.  We went out to one of Marc and my old spots from before we go married, and stopped at the cupcake store to get our dessert before dinner.  They were great.  Asked lots of questions about the cupcakes during dinner but didn't ask to eat them - pretty impressive for "three and three quarters" (or "three and quarters" as Renee says).  After dinner, we sat on a bench to eat our cupcakes.  They tried each other's icings, a million times, didnt eat much of the cake part though.  The fixation was on the colours on top.  As we sat and ate an elderly man came by in his scooter, Matthew charmed him.  Then, we passed the same man a little while later as we walked back to the car, and he offered Matthew a ride on his scooter.  Matthew was in heaven for that block, while Renee asked a million questions about who the man was, why Matthew was with the man, why the man had a little bike.

On our way to, and at, a family playdate

Obi Wan, or Hagrid (hurray for ther versatility of the same brown robe)

No caption necessary

You can't really tell, but she was loving that her hair was "standy uppy"  thanks to the "winding in the car"

Mango anyone?

Self-application of face paint

One-on-one (x3)

Last weekend, we did a couple divide and concquer activities which let us do some 1-1 time with each kid.  And it was a treat. 

Here is Samuel climbing a tree at a bike safety event:




And Renee making a cake from the dust at a park (not sand, it was dust and dirt and twigs and pebbles)

Matthew building his new style train tracks - a house for his trains and cars.  And at the monkey bars.





Hammock

In my parent's back yard. How many people fit on the hammock?

Renee's version of a book cover

Renee decided to copy the book cover.  Have I mentioned she's not even 4?