Sibling fun with the bottle

Mateo and Natalia had a great time this afternoon playing with her bottle. At first Mateo was feeding her the bottle, and then the two of them got giggly and started playing. It looks like he's the only one throwing the bottle around, but she did start it!

Dictionary fun

This afternoon, after Mateo used the potty, I wanted to say that his bladder was empty, but I didn't know the word in Spanish. (I was talking in Spanish with him and Natalia.) I went to the dictionary and looked up the word bladder and showed Mateo how the dictionary told us that the word bladder in Spanish is vajiga. We have a visual dictionary (a favorite book of Mateo because it has thousands of interesting pictures), and so he is familiar with the idea that you can look words up in a dictionary.

A few minutes later, Mateo picks up the dictionary and tells me that I should give him a word. I say nose. He flips through the dictionary and opens it up to a page, points to a random word and says, "nariz." He then does the same thing for kitchen (cocina), ear (oreja) and a few other words. I then gave him the word floor, and he looks and looks and then pronounces to me that the word floor is not in the dictionary. He found it, though, after I told him that the word floor is piso.

I am really amazed at all of the words he knows in Spanish. He is just like a sponge at this age.

Bubby's 65th Birthday

This weekend I went up to Washington with Apa and the kids. (Alayna was in California with her college friends.) We had a wonderful weekend celebrating my mom's 65th birthday.

We had a wonderful time celebrating Bubby's birthday, walking on the beach, picking up crabs, and visiting our friends' chickens and roosters. Mateo even got to collect some eggs from the coop, which was very exciting to him. He also had a love bird sit on his shoulder for some time. Hopefully we will find some pictures of that.

While the day time of the trip was wonderful, the night time consisted of the kids' combined awakenings being 8 or more times each night. This made of quite the zombie of a mommy, but I suppose that is just what happens when traveling with two!

Overall, it was a wonderful trip. I think I am still recovering from the sleep aspect, so this is a shortish post.

Natalia's 10 month letter

Dear Natalia,
You are 10 months old, kiddo! After we all emerged from the fog of your first few months, the time has just raced by. Here are some things you've been up to lately:

First, you celebrated your 10 month birthday a little early by finally going to the doctor for your 9 month well-child visit. You weighed in at 16 pounds, 13 ounces, putting you in the peanut category - that's the 9th percentile. You're 27 inches long, which is around the 30th percentile, and your head is about 17 cm around, which is around the 20th percentile. You're a little one, just like Mommy was at your age, and just like your brother!

You're growing wonderfully well and learning to do new things all the time. You're working more on cruising these days, although you're still mostly happy to just pull up on things and play with whatever you find. Your attention span is getting longer and longer, which is great for everyone.

This month, you welcomed your first two teeth into your mouth. You now have two teeth, although they have just barely broken through the gums. You didn't particularly enjoy that part and needed lots of TLC, baby oragel, and tylenol to get you through it. We tried all the other stuff first - offering you cold things to gnaw on, etc - but you weren't any more interested in trying it out than your brother was at your age!

Speaking of gnawing, though, you are learning to chew and have added quite a few solid foods to your repetoire. You can now eat little pieces of tofu, soft fruits, crackers, and pieces of bread and bagel pretty much on your own. You also enjoy being fed a variety of blended veggies and fruits, oatmeal, and whole milk yogurt. Your favorite thing is to be given a hunk of something and to just sit there and chew and slobber on it until it's completely pulverized. We still supervise you very closely, as we regularly need to fish things out of your mouth!

You're still nursing a lot from Mommy and that's nice for both of you. Your calmest feeding is in the early morning before Mommy goes to work. During the other feedings, you are all about action and sometimes have a hard time concentrating! Mommy got her first person at school who asked when she's going to wean you, but neither of you are ready for that yet. Within reason, the timing of that one will be your decision. You also have a couple of bottles a day from Mama and that's a nice bonding time for the two of you, too.

This past month has been an interesting one between you and your brother. As you've become more mobile, he's discovered how easy it is to push you over. And over. And over. He thinks it's funny and you don't, not surprisingly. Your moms are struggling to manage this nascent sibling rivalry, but you mostly take it in stride. Someday, you'll be old enough to play with him on even terms!

You're doing really well in the sleep department and mostly sleep through the night on your own - 7 pm to 7 am. The holy grail! Your moms are getting rested enough that we actually notice feeling tired in the morning after we all have a rough night, instead of just feeling exhausted all the time. Keep up the good work!

You're communicating more and more with us. You love to babble, screech, wave, and generally connect with us and other people. You still love to say "ah-dah" more than anything, but you've said "mama" several times and even said "tay-tay" (for your brother) after we repeated it to you several times.

We love you to pieces, little girl! You light up our days and (thankfully) not so much our nights anymore.

love, Mama and Mommy

The job outlook

Last year, I had the unlucky situation of being unassigned, and so I thought that this year I might also have to deal with that because of all the budget issues. Amazingly, the school district really has pulled it together this year, and it looks like almost no one is going to be laid off! I have my half time job for next year. Yah.

I am wanting to transition to a full time job, though, and so am going through the hiring process. A few weeks ago they gave me an interview to determine my Spanish Language Proficiency. I passed with a near-native score - so I am good to go for applying for a full-time position. I should be finding out in the next few months what job I will be doing next year, and I am hoping for full-time!

Photos and more photos

I took these yesterday after I walked in from after a run and found Sacha giving the kids a bath. As a side note, it's amazing how far we've come that neither one of us bats an eye at bathing them both at the same time. It would have taken both of us plus some help to do that nine months ago!

Also, we had a lovely Easter today that included church and amazing organ and singing music in the morning, a mid-day brunch, and an impressively complicated Easter egg hunt at Grandmommy's to wrap things up. Apa brought the kids Easter outfits this morning and they were just too cute.

Photos:

Yesterday...










And, today...





Happy Passover and Easter!

Apa is the best

We want to send a big thank you out to Apa, because he is the best!

Thank you...

For springing us for date night nearly every week for months and months.

For coming over to hang out with the kids when we both need to work, even when it means rearranging your own schedule.

For having family dinner with us every Sunday and cooking up delicious meals for us all to enjoy.

For getting us hooked on the Biggest Loser!

For being so great with the kids.

For all the flips you do with Mateo.

For finding that funny spot that makes Natalia laugh and laugh.

For making all sorts of cool stuff for them, including a sleeping canopy for baby Talia earlier this week.

For lending a hand to innumerable household projects.

For going with us on about a zillion outings.

For being able to take both kids out on your own.

For taking them last week to the storytime we go to every Monday and braving questions about where your "wife" was this week.

For proudly explaining our babymaking situation to the many interested and confused folks we've encountered.

For finding a perfect balance of letting us be the parents while building your own relationships with the little ones.

For wanting to navigate this unique journey with us. We love you!

I love Wednesdays

Around the time our original student nanny started, Alayna changed her day off from Monday to Wednesday. I just want to say that I love Wednesdays. The new set-up works so nicely.

This is what we did this afternoon:

• After teaching I planned out all of our food for the week and went grocery shopping.
• I arrived at home and Alayna went for a run.
• While Alayna was running, Mateo carried many of the groceries to the kitchen and helped me put away all of the groceries. He even managed to carry the gallon jug of milk to the kitchen from the front door! He was very proud of himself for that.
• Both children went down for a nap and Alayna and I had lunch, down time etc.
• I went for a 20 minute run (yah).
• We hung out with friends and then I cooked honey glazed mustard chicken over stir fried brown rice and vegetables.
• We had our own private pilates class at home with a friend who is building up her hours to be able to teach. We are so lucky! (We do this almost every week.)
  

And . . . the other news is that we have a student nanny again. This one seems much better than our first one! Keep your fingers crossed.

Standing up, plus Sunday dinner

Guess what we saw last night when we went in to check on our little chickie? She had been "in bed" for about half an hour by this point, not making a peep. We went in and she was just standing up, smiling like she was having a wonderful time at the night-night party...


Also, I couldn't resist putting in a photo of our most recent Sunday dinner with Apa. Doesn't it look delicious? It was a fabulous basil and great northern bean soup courtesy of Apa and a delicious chicken breast with avocado and tomato salsa courtesy of Sacha. Yum!

Mateo's 2 years and 5 months letter

Dear Mateo,
You, big boy, are now two years and five months old (or 29 months, if you want to count it that way). You're so close to two and a half that your Mama has started telling people you're two and a half, although Mommy is holding out until you hit the actual day :) Here are some of the new things you've been up to recently.

First of all, you love our president. You call him Rock Obama and like to look for him in the paper in the mornings. If you can't find him, you'll ask to see him in the "old paper," which is the copy of the paper from the presidential inauguration that we saved and filed away down in the basement. You are also quite fond of Rock Obama's wife, who you call simply Michelle, because the two of you are naturally on a first name basis!

Along with the prez, you still love to listen to Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman and Anthony and Gabriella on YouTube. That's the quartet that played at the inauguration. We must have listened to their special arrangement of "Simple Gifts" about a hundred times.

On that note, music is your primary fascination these days. You love to play your kid-sized guitar, and also to put it into different positions to make a violin (held up against your chin) or a cello (standing straight up on the ground). Mommy got you a kid harmonica and an egg shaker and you love both of those, too. When asked what instrument you play, you proudly reply: "The guitar." You also know that Mama plays the clarinet, Mommy plays the oboe, Uncle Galen plays the bassoon and Auntie Edlyn plays the french horn. You regularly talk Mama into putting together her clarinet or bass clarinet from high school and playing simple songs on them.


In other news, you have learned a new word recently: why. You can probably imagine that you're using it a lot. "Why Mommy/Mama?" is our household's most popular utterance. This has happened just in the past couple of days.


You've also made a lot of progress on the counting front. You can count on your own up to almost 20 and are starting to be able to count objects, too. You can count in both English and Spanish and are learning lots of new Spanish words. Today, you informed Mama how to say "peanut" in Spanish, among other things.

You have started to have conversations with other kids. Today we went to a local garden store and this was the conversation we overhead while you and a four year old girl were playing by one of the display chicken coops.

Girl tries to walk in chicken coop . . .
Mateo becomes agitated because he knows she shouldn't go in the coop . . .
Girl explains she is a girl, and he is a boy and girls can go in.
Mateo: I am a big boy.
Girl: Actually I should tell you, you are a lot littler than I am. I am four.
Mateo: I am two (very proudly stated).

Girl scampers off, leaving you blissfully unaware that you have been dissed. In your mind, you have established to her that you are indeed a big boy.



You are indeed learning to do many big boy things, like cleaning. Many days you enjoy listening to a song on the computer called, "Cleaning can be fun." When the song gets put on (and Mommy always puts in on repeat so it goes over many, many times) you run around the house helping put away your toys. You actually get upset when the song stops.

Speaking of getting upset, you are definitely embracing your two year old status. You want your way and at times don't quite understand why you can't always have it. We have some days where you have lots of time outs and temper tantrums. Other days you are able to stop when we count you, or you don't need to be counted at all. Mostly we find that distracting you works pretty well. We are all learning how to help you grow.



Mateo, we love seeing you grow into such a kind, gentle, curious big boy. You are our favorite big boy in the whole world.

Love,
Mommy and Mama

Braces off

I am excited to say that my braces have been taken off! Yah. My teeth feel so very different now that I do not have braces, and I love how easy it is to floss.

Here is a picture of me without my braces.



Also, I wanted to show a picture of the Friday evening welcoming crew. Here is Natalia and Mateo welcoming home Alayna after a long work day.

Natalia's nine month letter

Dear Natalia,
You've been nine months old for a couple of weeks now and you are just getting so grown up! You've learned quite a few new things recently. Here are some of them:

First of all, you can wave now! You may have actually been able to wave when we wrote your last letter, but we didn't know if the arm flapping was really a wave. It now seems clear that it is. You do it at both socially appropriate and random times - as in, sometimes you wave when Mommy leaves for work in the morning and sometimes you don't, but you also do random waving at times that make sense only to yourself. Like, earlier today, Mama was holding you and bending down to get something and you started waving. Were you saying hi to the object on the ground? Or did the waving urge just happen to strike? Only you know for sure.

You have two new sounds: Ma and Na. You have said "mama" several times - again, sometimes using it to mean one of your parents and sometimes just saying it randomly. You also like to say "na na na," which, coincidentally, matches up with your brother's newfound love of replacing "m" sounds with "n" sounds - so our family is "Mana, Monny, Natanya and Mateno." This last month was brought to you by the letter N.


You have a deep and abiding love for Lucy the kitty cat. You want to look for her when you're nursing and when you see her, you want to crawl to her no matter where you are! You've developed a fun new trick of removing yourself from the boob, rolling over in Mommy's lap, and crawling away. Ah, the joys of independence!

You continue to have the sweetest little personality - smiley and mellow for the most part. One of our favorite things is figuring out ways to get a laugh out of you! For all your smiles, you really make us work to get you laughing! One thing that's gotten you giggling lately is when Mama lifts up your shirt and pretends to sniff you all over. You've got a great laugh and we hope to get it on video at some point.


As the months go by, you get more and more interested in your brother. You think he's quite funny and want to follow him around a lot. We know this will get easier when you learn to walk!


In other new things, you seem to recognize your name! This morning, you had your back to Mama and she called your name a few times. You turned right around and crawled over to see what was happening. Along those lines, you now raise your arms to be picked up when one of us gets close to you. You vacillate between wanting to be held and wanting to explore. Luckily, you get to do quite a bit of both!


In the sleep department, things are going pretty well. You officially moved out of Mommy and Mama's room and now sleep in our front room. It's not the easiest set-up, but it's working for now. We keep a screen up to shield you from the rest of the room and you have your own heater at night. You sleep through the night most of the time and, when you do wake up in the night, you can mostly get yourself back to sleep without too much consternation. Good job!

In the next month, we hope that your sleeping will solidify and that you might actually get some teeth! You were born with your tooth buds clearly visible right underneath your gums and there they have stayed, not budging, for nine months. Will this next month bring us some teeth? Tune in next month to find out! Here you are practicing one of your favorite activities: gnawing.


Natalia, you are our favorite little girl in the whole world. We can hardly believe there was a time when we didn't know you. We love you from the top of your head to the tips of your adorable little toes. We're excited to find out what you're going to be up to next!

All our love,
Mama and Mommy

PS...

APRIL FOOL'S! :)

Maybe someday, though. Or, maybe not. The issue of whether or not to have another baby is actually one of the few areas in which we really disagree. So, I guess we'll figure it out when we figure it out. Happy April 1st!

Coming in December

We are so excited!!!!

(Now you know why we haven't been posting very much.)