Adam has always been beyond a climber. If I had to say what his past life was, I'd imagine he was a rock-climbing, thrill seeking mountain man who lived his daytime life as a doctor. He frequently tells me how to treat and injury or illness, he tells us to call him "Doctor Adam," and he has a natural bedside manner. He looked at my face one day and said, "you don't feel good, momma?" I didn't. He got some lotion and rubbed it on my legs and feet while he watched one of his shows, then told me I would feel better. Today he couldn't wait to grab one of the hot muffins and barely burned his hand... as in, it was hot and he dropped it and his fingers got pink for 5 minutes. I said, "oh no, what should we do?" Without a beat he said, "Put cold water on it, that will help." And I'm not quite sure where he would have picked something like that up.
We call Claire the Adam Apprentice, and have been since she was teeny teeny tiny. She doesn't want to go to bed at night (screams as if you might well be banishing her forever), and likes to sleep in in the morning. She is active and coordinated and smiley... stubborn and dramatic and demanding and adorable. And now she watches Adam's every move and copies it. From jumping on the couch to climbing every obstacle to trying to balance on top of toys that are not meant for standing on. She barks at the dog and makes the sign for milk to indicate everything... "pick me up," "give me that," "move over," "move faster," "that's mine," "WHY AREN'T YOU LISTENING TO ME?!" These signs are also coupled with urgency. I had trying to figure out why she had taken to screaming whenever she wanted anything that was well within her own capability to retrieve on her own, especially since Shannon and my parenting styles are not exactly catering to their every whim, even if we had the time for that. Then I saw her look at Adam, who was playing with a toy, scream, and he stood up, gave her his toy, made a silly face and a silly noise until she smiled, and he picked something else to play with. Mystery solved. The girl is good. And we're going to have to watch that.
Colin is an independent soul. He hates being away from Adam and Claire but he has plans of his own and delights in being naughty. If you hear crashes and Colin giggling to himself, you know he knows he's being devious and ornery, even if no one is watching him do it. When you tell him "no," it's the highlight of his day, if you physically make him stop you might as well have tried to take away every joy that ever existed for him.
He's got a funny little walk, and he's fast, but when he's excited he walks with his hands up in the air and grinning like the dimples are going to jump right off of his face. He's a bigger climber than the other two combined, but he's a little accident prone. He's already got a chipped tooth from the crawling phase when he was going fast on the tile floor and his arm slipped out from under him and he landed face first on the tile... earlier this week, in the bathtub, he stood up, and as I reached down to correct him and sit him back down, he slipped, hit his chin on the edge of the bathtub, and bit his tongue so hard that I had to dislodge his tongue from his bottom teeth. He cried for 30 seconds, sat in my lap while it bled, and then went on with his life as if nothing happened. The kid is TOUGH.
Two days later, he tried to swing on a bar at school while his teacher was changing a diaper, slipped and busted his lip. He was pretty pissed about that one though. Between the sheer level of activity from Adam and Claire, and the high activity from Colin plus the accident prone-ness, we should probably try to live next door to an Emergency Room... like within walking distance.
But here are some pictures of typical playtime around our house, and the little balls of energy that follow each other around all day long.
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