Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

Alex: Can you look in my room for the duckies? Don’t look between the Dora sofa and the blue pillow because that’s where they’re hiding.
Nick: Alex, do you understand the concept of “hiding”?
Alex: No.
Nick: OK then.

As previously mentioned, Arianna is currently addicted to her duck toys (rubber, wooden, etc.)

1. She oddly understood that the duck we were cooking for Christmas was… well… duck… she was excited to watch it cook, and she was excited to eat it… she ate more of it than Alex did.

2. Now she’s getting all of her ducks in a row:

From Varacalli Kids 2010

Our kids (like any other kids) go through their “addictions”. Among other things, Alex has been addicted to Dora (we would want to kill anyone that mentioned the football-shaped headed girl’s name), Disney fairies (that girl/guy has a bun like Tinkerbell!), and now Charmed, season 8 (that girl/guy has long blond hair like Billie). Arianna is currently in love with her rubber duckies (in fact, she absconded with a pink one from Toys’R'Us a couple of weeks ago).

I now regret not having blogged about each of their addictions… I oddly miss Alex’s Dora addiction.

We learned from our 4 days in Stockholm this summer that the Swedes say “Hey hey” for “Hi”. Unfortunately this means that Alex still sometimes says “Hey!” when he’s greeting someone… the way he says it sounds oddly rude.

Most frequently heard phrase over our 5-day weekend vacation:

Alex: That {girl|boy|lady|man} has a {braid|bun|pony tail} like {Faun, Tinkerbell, Vidia}.

Background: Nearly half a million protest French retirement change plans.

[We're in Dijon, coming out of the mustard shop (really) and a bunch of protesters are walking by, making a lot of noise].
Alex: Dad, why are these people making so much noise?
Nick: They’re complaining because they don’t know how to do math. You should make sure you’re good at math.
Alex: OK dad.
Bystander: [chuckles].

Alex: Mommy, tell me the story where everyone dies.
Nick: ???
Alex: The one with the volcano.
Dina: You mean Pompei Alex.

Alex is having a sleepover with one of his friends, Joël. It oddly feels like he’s cheating on Douglas, Geneva, and Gideon.

Arianna’s reasonably expressive, is constantly vocalizing, but her actual vocabulary has plateaued for the last few months.

• Mama/mamie, Dada/dadie, Aleh
• Nein/nöd/no
• Hello (including wave)
• Hot (including sign)
• That/das, this/diese
• Dog (intermittent), woof (ditto)
• Come (signed)
• Help (signed) + vocalized

Alex: [lying in his bed] Oh <muffled>shoot</muffled>.
Dina: Did he just say, “Oh shit”?
Nick: No, “Oh shoot”.
Dina: Oh crap.
[Nick looks askance at Dina]
Dina: Fine… blog about it.

Went to see Toy Story 3 with Alex on Saturday, (leaving Dina and Arianna at home). First theatre wouldn’t let us in… apparently the minimum age in Switzerland for the movie is 6. At the second theatre we had better luck… though they did charge us ~$40 to see the movie. Once our tickets were purchased, we visited the Freitag shop. I was very tempted to get a bag… but I need to make sure that it fits my laptop. Overall, a nice relaxing afternoon with Alex.

From Varacalli Kids 2010

Arianna now purposely walks around in place to make herself dizzy.

• I guess that as we’re preparing to take a plane ride is not the time to teach Alex to call his play dough “plastique” or “C4″.
• Dina: Alessandro is your long name, Alex is your short name.
  Nick: Arianna is your sister’s long name, what should we use as her short name? Ari? Aria? Anna?
  Alex: Let’s call her… Pepperoni-head!

• Dina and I entertaining 7 under-5 year olds that mostly didn’t speak English for Alex’s 4th birthday party was orders of magnitude better than I thought it would be. Pictures coming soon. All in all it was a lot of fun.
• Alex has Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Kart. He’s started complaining that, since he’s four, he should have four Mario games and is lamenting the fact that Bowser, the villain in the Mario games, stole his “Mario with the hearts” game (Super Paper Mario). We hid it from him last year since the 2D-3D flipping was confusing for him and there’s too much text to read for him to be able to play it himself.
• It anticipation of our upcoming vacation… and because he’s four, we’re putting our feet down and toilet training him. 2 days, 3 pee accidents, 1 poop accident. Ugh.
• Arianna is intent on keeping up with her brother. She’s walking really well. She started later than Alex did, but is much sturdier. Dina thinks it’s because she has to resist getting tackled by her big brother all the time.

  Dear God, why am I going to fall backwards again?

  From London, June 2010

• While she doesn’t sign as much as Alex did (we spend less time teaching her), she definitely lets us know what she wants. At supper she demanded a fork and then proceeded to eat with it. We’re screwed.

… and then you can go swimming!

Alex, “reading” the safety instructions on the plane.