FORE!

The kids like to go to N&B's (Nanna and Buppa's). Besides swimming they take the golf cart out with my parents and go out to putt or just for a drive. Yesterday my parents took Ale & Annah as Samuel played with his Razor scooter in the front yard. They came back and we all had a good laugh. They had one of those moments where you wish you had a camera with you.

They gave Annah her little putter and were on one of the greens. Everyone got out of the cart and Annah had this shiny little black purse with her. She reached her hand inside and got out a golf ball (she had several stashed inside). A perfect way to carry golf balls around for such a little lady. One of the balls she had had an "eye" on it so she held it up to her eye and walked around saying "eye, eye, eye" (my father has a machine that instead of dispensing bubble gum dispenses golf balls and the kids enjoy putting a quarter in and getting a ball out in return; that is where she got the ball). Onto putting...Annah was going to putt. She held the putter sideways so was hitting the ball with the edge of the club instead of the side. One time, okay. Two times, okay. Enough is enough! Annah will be two in just under a week. She thought it through....this is taking too much time! The next stroke she decided to not use the club at all but instead kicked the ball. The perfect solution for such a delicate game!

A little of this and a little of that!

Ale likes his water warm when he bathes. He also likes his food warm. But warm does not exist in his vocabulary...yet. Right now, according to Ale, he likes his food (and water) "a little bit of cold and a little bit of hot". Another thing that makes me chuckle.

I'm dook!

Children's language ability amazes me. The amount of rules that they learn and then the acceptions to them. And then if they are learning more than one language....

Samuel was a very clear speaker from the beginning. He had little/no trouble distinguishing Spanish from English. I remember he used to play with this little train set and their was a mummy. He would call it a "mami-O" instead of a momia. He'd do the same thing (flip a word) when we'd read "The Hungry Little Caterpillar". It was a "pater-killer". Samuel picked up this habit somewhere along the way and he'd also add an /s/ to anything that began with a /th/. Oh, "sthank you". It was just that, a habit. When he was four it took little effort for it to be corrected.

Now Ale is four. You can tell he has a worldwind of information moving around in that little head of his. There are sounds that he cannot pronounce yet like the /s/ and there are others like the /l/ that he can but by the same habit that Samuel had with the /sth/ he will correct soon enough. One of the cutest things he does is when someone asks him how he is doing he replies "DOOK" which is "good". The logic is astounding. When I listen to myself and others speak from here many substitute a /d/ at the end of the work with a /k/ so that makes complete sense.

Of course, now we have two little monsters that say "dook" as Annah is all monkey-see-monkey-do. And now if we ask Annah what she is doing she says "I'm doinK". It makes me chuckle.

Paulino

So, who is Paulino? The children's cousin is PaulinA. Yes, with an "a" at the end as in she is a little girl. When we found out we were expecting we told the kids the names we had picked out. Andrea if we had a girl and Joaquin if we had a boy. Ale wanted the baby to be a boy and wanted to call him Paulino. We couldn't figure out why but then it came to us. Alejandro's cousin was born a week after he was and her name is AlejandrA. So naturally since his cousin's name was PaulinA there needed to be a PaulinO.

The kids now have added a 7th member to the family. You guessed it, PaulinO. They carry him around the house and even took him to the outdoor theatre with us last night to watch a movie. Here is a picture of Paulino. He was made for us as a gift (adopted, I guess) from a family friend in Mexico when she found out we were expecting Alejandro four years ago.

Four little ducklings and a dog

Yesterday I decided to go for a walk. I left the house with the 4 kids. Andrea just turned 3 weeks old and I had her in a wrap (wearing her). Samuel was on his bike and Ale on training wheels. Annah was in the stroller. And we were off.

Well, almost. I grabbed the house key and checked it to make sure it worked on the inside garage door. Great. Then I exicted through the garage as the kids waited for me in the driveway. The door closed behind me and I noticed my sister's dog was sitting in the driveway. Since I thought taking the 4 kids would be more than enough I wanted to put the dog back inside the house (I was dog sitting). I use the key and it doesn't work! No way! So I ended up putting the dog in the storage compartment on the stroller.

I noticed as we walked people would stare a bit. Sometime after Ale was born, however, I had learned to semi-ignore people otherwise I don't get things accomplished that I need to because if my attention was distracted one of the kids would need my attention or the baby would need to be nursed or whatever. Anyhow, there seems to be some sort of shift from having 3 children to having the 4th. I sort of feel like the mama duck with her baby ducklings wadling behind her. I also noticed that people watching probably get that same image...oh, look...there is one more! And the dog, of course.

We walked to the office which is just a mile away from the house and AJ was there (so we got the house key). It was a fun adventure on the way. Ale does what Samuel does. Samuel learned to ride his bike earlier this year but we are still working on the rules and crossing streets. Between making sure the dog didn't jump out of the compartment and making sure the kids didn't get too far ahead (it only happened once but thankfully they stopped at the train tracks) or waited before crossing the street, there was plenty of entertainment if anyone was watching. When we got to the office I took Andrea out to nurse her and there must have been a marshmallow from a box of Lucky Charms that one of the kids had eaten near the wrap. I had a rainbow of colors in the middle of my shirt but it came out with a little of water. Oh well, that is life, I guess. There always seems to be more moments after you have just given birth where you are able to live in the moment and see the small details. That is what life is about.

On our way back to the house we stopped at a nearby school that had a playground and the kids had fun even though it was scorching heat outside. We made it back to the house with smiles on faces and to a very cool, air conditioned home. And maybe every Wednesday should be like yesterday without the worries of what needs to be done at home and just enjoying the day with the kids.