Superheros
Davis seems to already have graduated from adoring Thomas the Train to adoring Superheroes. I think we can attribute the majority of this to our visiting with my colleagues older sons who are right in the middle of Spiderman and Batman phases. Just before I left on a business trip, I ordered new superhero underwear for Davis. The superheroes are plastered across the backside of the underwear and the front side is partly white. John thought it might be helpful to give Davis a bit of a "pneumonic" for putting his underwear on the right way. It goes something like this "Davis, the superhero goes on your butt, so when you are being chased and running really fast they will see the superhero". Earlier today, when I walked into our living room, Davis had his shorts pulled down and was effectively flashing his underwear at our neighborhood through the living room windows. "Davis, what are you doing?". "I'm showing my underwear to the mamma bear outside". "Ah, well carry on then".
Alex cares a lot about Evan's feelings, kind of
Evan is an amazingly contented kid. He has been laughing since he was only a few weeks old. It took me a while to figure out that machine-gun chuckle was his laugh, but indeed it is and he uses it liberally. When he's not laughing he is typically looking happy or even serene. However, when he is upset, he is UPSET. There seems to be no middle ground with Evan. So you can imagine, whenever he cries, everyone takes notice. Davis has jumped into helping by patting him and saying "It's alright Evan" and even Alex will pat Evan when he's upset. I remember looking over one day during the middle of dinner prep and seeing Davis on one side and Alex on the other patting Evan, who was in the middle of a meltdown. I think it's fantastic how much his brothers care about his feelings. However, recently, Evan was screaming because Alex had taken the toy that Evan was playing with. Alex noticed how upset his brother was and holding the toy in one hand, he used his other to pat and console his twin brother. I'm sure you can imagine, it did little to stem the flood of emotions.
As an addition to that, I don't believe we've ever blogged about the progression of Alex's toy stealing. You can summarize it easily by referencing a note that Nanny Lynn left for Grammie once when she was here taking care of the kids "Evan likes to play with books and Alex likes to play with whatever Evan has". Alex began crawling about a month before Evan did. He also started pulling up to a stand not long after. So for awhile Alex would steal Evan's toy and crawl off with it, leaving Evan in a heap of crying baby. Once Evan started crawling we noticed that Alex would take the toy and then stand up, waving it over Evan's head (which would be sagged in a heap of crying baby). Alex and Evan are on more even footing now and I've noticed toy stealing seems to be a little more equilateral. However, I have to watch myself as a parent of twins. I am taking them to music class on Saturday mornings, trading off each week with who I take so that I can have one-on-one time with each baby. The first Saturday Evan took another kid's musical instrument and I just sat there until I noticed the parent was looking at me funny and then I diligently said "No, no Evan don't take someone else's toy" (Yeah, right, that kid should just figure out how to take it back, it's kill or be killed sometimes in this world).
I don't have anymore complete stories, but here are some tidbits about the ongoings with Alex and Evan:
- Evan loves clapping. He'll stop whatever he's doing (for example, walking through the living room with his cart) to clap. After music class this morning he continued to clap for at least two minutes.
- Alex has developed a habit of just laying down on the ground. He'll flatten his entire body with his head to one side and just smile. We can't figure out how it started, or why he does it, other than we think it's ridiculously cute and he knows it.
- Both Alex and Evan love music. Neither can help themselves from grooving to music when it's on and John has a great video of them listening to "MIT Gangnam style", which I hope he will post soon.
- Alex and Evan are both itching to be independent feeders. Dinner goes a little something like this: after a few spoonfuls of food Alex will start chomping on the spoon and grabbing it. Evan sees that Alex is holding his spoon so he HAS TO hold his spoon too. Dinner quickly degenerates into food throwing and parent exasperation until we pull out the finger foods and then Evan makes a happy sound. Evan gets his finger food first typically because he's the louder screamer, but don't worry Alex doesn't let us get away with finger food disparity.
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