Ana is a happy baby. She smiles brightly, claps, and says "yay!" a lot. She does it when she gets up on the couch and again when she gets down. It's adorable. Yay! It wasn't that long ago that I wrote that Ana is mostly pretty quiet. That has changed quite dramatically. Now she "talks" lots and lots in her proto-words. Just happy talking away in rolling sounds. She also has some standard language words including: Tata (her grandma), Mama, yay, mas. But some of my favorite words are non-standard like tucka-tucka tucka-tucka. As she adds these new sounds she has graduated from others. I haven't heard in weeks the Wookiee-like yodel-cry she would sometimes make. It was cute and funny except that it happened when she wasn't quite satisfied so it only lasted long enough for a chuckle and then to pick her up.
She is maturing. I can see her changing almost before my eyes. I love to kiss her and immerse myself in a hug. I recognize these gates of experiences that we move through, familiar from our loving Enzo as he went through the same gates approximately 16 months before. A cute example is that Ana, when she wants to be picked up, will wedge herself between me and the kitchen island I am preparing food on and she will be sooo persistent; squeeze, stretch, wedge, repeat until I am a step back from the island and she is looking right up at me with her arms up ready to be held. Awesome.
With Enzo too, I see the maturing changes of his growing existence. This morning I told him I wanted and needed some hugging snuggle time and he totally accepted it. He clenched into me and I carried him around the house loving and holding him tight. I enjoy watching him teach his sister. And now he is well beyond a few words here and there; he goes into conversations. Not all that I can understand but he is clearly thinking and working to communicate ideas far more complicated than wanting a specific toy to play with that is out of reach. Now, he talks about his day and some of what happened at school or about how he played with Tata and that he will "go to a baseball game in two weeks." Yes, baseball games are always in two weeks since he heard Tata say that they would go see the A's in two weeks a while back. "Yeah, yeah, two weeks, baseball A's in two weeks, with Tata and Hun and Aunti Tia, Yeah go to baseball game- two weeks!" all said with a happy excited two year old Enzo voice.
These kids are wonderful. I really wish that I could record the full sensations of holding, hugging, and snuggling these kids. I know it would completely change the human experience if we could record in full sensory definition our experiences, but I so wish that I could.
This last weekend had my favorite elements in it. A little extra rest, a motorcycle ride, and extra time with family and my kids.
Special parts of the weekend included a visit to the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco, using a pinhole to watch the Solar Eclipse in our back yard, many glorious hours with my kids, some special time to be present with my wife (it's rare we are both awake when both kids are asleep just to share moments together), the longest ride I have made on the Norton including a visit to the Ocean, brunch with family, peace after stress, and a good mood.
If you look close you can see the the eclipse on the cardboard. "Look, the moon, the moon," Enzo said. I sent a picture of this to several people during the eclipse.
Pretty much a perfect example of a weekend.