Natalia's eight month letter

Dear Natalia,
You are eight months and four days old! Somehow eight months seems very grown up this time around. You're practically a year old already! Well, not quite, but you know what I mean. Or, you will in 30 years when you're digging through all these old letters :)

Anyway, back in the here and now: This was a big month for you. You learned how to crawl! You learned how to pull up! Mobility has transformed your environment into an even more interesting place. You're thrilled to be put down just about anywhere in our house. You particularly like the playroom, for obvious reasons, and the living room carpet, where toys can often be found. You've started to pull up on items of reasonably low height and are working your way towards things like the coffee table and the couch. You can actually stand on your own for several seconds at a time - you're amazingly stable for this stage of the game. Mommy found you today in our living room, standing and holding onto this toy activity block with one hand and wildly waving your other hand in excitement.


Also, your addled moms are convinced that you're learning how to talk. You really do seem to say "ah-da" for goodbye and also for general communication. You say it when you want to participate in the conversation! You look so pleased with yourself when you say it. You can make quite a few other sounds, but nothing is quite as much fun as screeching at top volume when the mood strikes.

In the eating department, you took advantage of this month to discover dairy. Yogurt! On the plus side, you love it and it supplies you with lots of good calories to fuel your busy body. On the less fun side, well, it's pretty constipating. That's why most of your meals involve some sort of prunes these days! Your poor little digestive system is learning what to make of this stuff called food. You still love your mommy's milk and consider her mammary glands to be your own personal possessions. When she comes home from work, you transform from a mellow baby into a milk-seeking missile!


Speaking of that, you clearly recognize both of us. The way you crawl up to us when we come home from being gone is just too adorable to describe. It's just one of the many moments when we wonder how we got so lucky to have you and Mateo as our kids.


And, of course, you love your brother. He cracks you up! You get quite a kick out of watching him zoom around the house going about his two-year-old business. You want to play with ALL his toys, and usually right when he's playing with them, too. Right now, you particularly like his puzzles and his toy trucks, as well as the big activity block we mentioned earlier. You're teaching him a lot about how to share and how to be gentle!


Sleeping is going pretty well these days. After a concerted effort by your moms to get you to sleep longer, you generally sleep until about 4 am before your first feeding (not counting the sometimes numerous binky re-insertions by Mama prior to that time). You even (very) grudgingly consented to sleep through until 6 am on one occasion. Crying it out with you hasn't been as gut wrenching as it was the first time around, but it still isn't fun. Luckily, we haven't had to do that much of it. We love the progress you're making and are actually entertaining faint hopes of sleeping through the night sometime soon. Knock on wood.

Other popular people in your life right now include your Apa and both sets of grandparents, your great-Grandmommy, your aunties and uncles, your cousins, and a constellation of big and little friends. We've said this before and it's still true - you are just a delightful little chickie. It's a lot of fun to watch you peck out of your shell and start to explore the world around you. We love you more than ever all the time!


Happy three-quarters of a year, little munchkin.

Besos y abrazos,
Mommy and Mama

PS: One more thing - you're starting to get some actual hair! We're trying to enjoy your fuzzy little head while we still can...

Bad morning

Mateo and I just finished up what had to be the worst morning we have ever had together. If he wasn't crying and whining, he was deliberately throwing stuff off the counter and looking at me to make sure I saw him. I think I must have given him between 10 and 15 timeouts. He didn't want to eat, he didn't want to play, he just wanted me to carry him around. He usually wants to be carried around, but this was a lot more than usual. We did make it out to drop some stuff off at goodwill and took a side trip by the library, but even that didn't last long. Sometime after his millionth timeout and in the middle of another tempter tantrum, I started thinking that maybe we should take him to the doctor. He just wasn't acting like himself. And he did just have a fever for a couple of days. And he had an awful night last night - he was up crying and carrying on twice - once for an hour and once for half an hour. And he kept asking for cuddles and wanting ibuprofen, although he'd already had some (I thought maybe his molars were bothering him).

So, I called the advice nurse and she thought we should take him in this afternoon. Sacha and the kids are there right now. When I called around 2:30 pm, she said he'd been screaming for 45 minutes continuously after taking an absurdly short nap.

My theory is that he has an ear infection. He's only had one before, but it got to the point of nearly rupturing his ear drum before we realized anything was wrong. And, as Sacha said, I almost hope it's something like that, because otherwise we have really hit the terrible twos! I just wish I could be at the doctor with them instead of stuck in my office...

Updated to add:

Well, it's not an ear infection but it still sounds awful. He has something called Herpangina, which is basically painful blisters in the back of his throat. It's not the same as hand, foot, and mouth disease, but apparently it's similar. Doesn't sound like there's much to do for it except give them pain medicine and try to get them to drink. I'm sure the next few days will be really fun at our house! It does explain why he keeps wanting teething gel though - it was probably numbing his throat. And, he had inexplicably started drooling, which we thought was related to teething, but turns out to be a sign of this virus. Bleck. Poor baby :(

Sacha's teeth are rubber banded shut

Poor Mateo has a virus - fever and one episode of throwing up. He is starting to feel better and his fever (I hope) is going down today!

That was me writing yesterday. He seems much better now. He played at the park today, his fever finally broke, and was just a sweet cuddly boy today.

I received some exciting and different news at my ortho appointment today. Finally, after over two years, I am going to get my braces off! Yah. The only deal is that before I get them off, they wanted to make my teeth "fit together like gears" to take all of the stress in the future off of my jaw. This means that all of my teeth are rubber banded together. I made a video, which I will try to post of this.

Mateo thinks that the finishing is quite funny. This afternoon he keeps on singing - open and shut them, open and shut them. Too cute. All I can say is that I pray to not get the stomach flu. Just in case, though, I have a small set of scissors in my pocket and have practiced cutting the rubber bands quickly, if the need should arise!

Also - notice on the video how Natalia starts saying "a-da, a-da" when I say bye-bye! It could just be coincidence, but who knows!

When the cat's away, the mice can play

Someone got brave during big brother's naptime this afternoon...

Prized possession

Yesterday, Mateo became the proud owner of an actual kid-sized guitar. He is in love with his music class and instruments in general, but especially the guitar. We had debated getting him one for Christmas and decided against it because he was having so much fun playing with a multitude of pretend guitars. He played "guitar" on a ridged plastic plate, on a plastic microphone, and on several musical instrument-shaped puzzle pieces. It seemed a shame to interrupt all that imagination with an actual guitar!

Anyway, two days ago, a new family came to Sacha's weekly Spanish playgroup. They live down the street and are returning to South America in the summer, so are getting rid of all of their possessions. When the mom of the family saw Mateo pretending to play guitar, she asked Sacha if he might want the one they were giving away. And, the next morning, it appeared on our porch!

Mateo is obsessed with it. You can't blame him, either - his fantasy play object just appeared out of nowhere one morning and it was just for him! The only problem with it was that one string was missing and another broke upon arrival. This made it pretty much unplayable. So, today, after I took the kids to a special breakfast at my work, we went to a nearby guitar store to see about getting it restrung. Mateo did pretty well leaving the guitar at first, as he was ogling the shiny full-size models all over the store, but he was very, very sad when he realized it was really gone. Knowing that he'd get it back when I got home from work was no consolation. He woke up from his nap wailing "Where's my GUITAR???"

You can imagine his delight when I walked in the door with it this evening. He grabbed it and ran to the playroom yelling to Mommy about how his guitar was back. We took this video soon after. It includes Mateo singing part of his favorite song ("Hello Everybody") as well as baby Talia saying her favorite new sounds.

Ah-da!

Who knows if this means anything, but baby Talia has done an interesting thing the past several mornings when Sacha has left for work. As she and I and Mateo stand at the window to wave bye-bye to Mommy, I usually say "bye-bye Mommy!" over and over and encourage Mateo to wave. The past couple of days, Natalia has flapped her arm up and down and said "ah-da! ah-da!" during the goodbying and waving. Of course, she won't do it on command. Either it's just a random combination of movements or she knows when we're really saying goodbye and when we're just trying to get her to perform!

However, Sacha and I realized, upon going back and looking at some videos of Mateo around a year old, that he was actually communicating a lot more than we thought he was. We could hear him trying to say things that sounded like precursors to words he started saying for real a few months later. So, we're a lot more tuned in this time to whatever Talia might be trying to say.

Whether she's actually saying goodbye or not, it is awfully cute to watch.

getting into rhythm

It has now been around five months that I have been home half-time with the children. It is just now, after five months, that I really feel like I am comfortable with my afternoons with them. I am sort of surprised that it has taken this long to get used to my six hour stretches.

Here are some things that have made the afternoons easier for me. Obviously, we have the student nanny one day a week, and so that day is quite easy for me. On the other days, I have a set activity each day of the week. On Tuesday we have Spanish play group at the house for an hour. Even though it is only one hour out of the six, it gives me some structure for the rest of the afternoon. Each day of the week I have a plan. Although this can make it difficult to do things spontaneously, I do much better with the routine, and the activity or get together tends to just be one or two hours long.

When we all eat dinner around six and I expect the dinner to bed process to take about an hour, things go much smoother. Most of the time I make dinner for Mateo and me (and give Alayna a portion of the leftovers), and then make someting simple, but obviously different, for Natalia.

I used to show Mateo and Natalia a video almost every day, but have stopped doing this consistently. I read somewhere that video watching at this age is more habit forming for the parent than for the kid, and I would have to agree. I was using the video to do my cleaning of the house, but not try to involve Mateo in the cleaning more. When we are washing dishes I sometimes give him a sponge and a bucket full of water so he can wash some dishes too. He loves that activity. Other times I have him put the silverwear in the dishwasher.

When we are cleaning his room, he always walk around in a clockwise circle putting away the things we see as we find them. He loves to do this, especially now that I have a cleaning song I downloaded from the internet! Natalia loves to sit in the middle of the room as we run around her cleaning everything up.

Anyway, these are some random thoughts, but I just wanted to write them down.

Mateo's 27 month letter

Dear Mateo,

Happy two years, three months! It has been quite the month of growth. Although we have had our more challenging moments, and you have definitely turned two, you are just a sweet wonderful guy who we love to the stars and moon.

This month, you have really gotten into action stories. You love it when we tell you a story about baking the cake and you pretend to break the eggs, mix (your favorite part), add in the milk, mix again, add in the sugar, mix again . . . bake the cake and then eat it! Action stories make driving so much more entertaining.

You also have been getting used to hanging out with more people. On Mondays we still have our nanny student (not weekly, but that is a different story). You really enjoy playing with her and are getting more and more used to her. On Thursdays we now have a mother's helper for two hours. She speaks Spanish with you and you just love playing together with her too. Today you made a long train in the playroom and went to the park with her and had a blast. She is helping you hear some more Spanish from a native speaker, lets me do lots of housework and have time to hang out with either just you or just Natalia.

Speaking of Spanish, you have started to sing some songs in Spanish - "10 Deditos", Bomberos (a new favorite about firefighters), Venga a la Granja and some other songs. You have also memorized a handful of stories in Spanish and love "reading" them to us. You seem to understand most of what Mommy says and continue saying a few words in Spanish.

You are an action powerhouse these days. You have finally learned to jump, jump, jump, and you do it all day long. You also can walk and run for longer periods of time. We took a nature walk a few days ago and you pushed your stroller at least half of the time, and also can run/walk all the way to our local park and back.

You continue to love food, when you feel like it. You have been eating us out of house and store - really enjoy oatmeal for breakfast, still a lover of mac and cheese, bbq chicken is a new favorite, anything with fruit, also like corn, peas and dinosaur trees (broccoli).

On the sibling front, you are more interactive with your sister. Most of the time you like to make her laugh, give her pats and are really good with her. Of course there are those jealous moments, and you don't completely understand that you can not pick her up or what is not gentle enough, but you are working on it and overall you seem to really love Natalia. You are such a great big brother.

We love you so much and think that you are turning into such a wonderful little boy.

Much love,
Mommy and Mama

The terrible you-know-whats

This week, our son realized that he is two years old. Before this weekend, he was toodling along in life, blissfully unaware of how a two-year-old might be developmentally required to act. Then, either a switch was flipped or those two-year molars he's working on are really awful, because he has been somewhat difficult to be around ever since.

He's been pushing and shoving his sister, yelling at his mama, kicking his friends, and just generally testing limits in a lovely variety of ways. He's had more timeouts in the past week than he has, well, maybe ever.

A friend asked me today if the timeouts were working and I said, honestly, that I didn't know but at least they were keeping me from spanking him. Giving him a timeout is a much-needed breather for both of us when things are going downhill.

I'm holding onto some hope that things will improve once those awful molars are finished. However, the phrase "terrible twos" keeps ringing in my head! In any case, we're going to have to brush up on our 1-2-3 Magic skills...

Right and left

In the car today:

Mateo is jabbering about right and left. For kicks, I say, "Mateo, which is your right hand?" The kid raises his right hand. I ask him about his left hand, thinking he just got lucky. He raises his left hand. He then correctly identifies right vs. left feet. Then, he says, "Baby Talia is on the left side of the car."

At home:

The student nanny arrives. I decide to test the new right/left thing in front of an audience. Again, Teo obediently raises his right hand. Then, his left. He does it again for Mommy when she gets home.

He has a little friend who can do this, too, and we were making a big deal of it at a recent playdate. I guess he decided to figure out what the fuss was all about. I feel like I didn't completely conceive of right vs. left until a much older age and I can't quite wrap my mind around how he managed to figure it out. Go little guy!

Crawling and jumping on video

Here's the evidence!

Jumping:



Crawling:



Another crawling video: