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.