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