Mateo's 2 years and 7 months letter

Dear Mateo,
Kiddo, you are a really big boy these days. You have a little buddy who likes to say that to you when you guys are hanging out, and he is right. Let's think about all the things you've learned in the last month.

First of all, you have remembered your appetite. You are eating us out of house and home, which makes us think you must be growing. Several people have commented that you look bigger, and you look that way to us, too. You love fresh fruit more than anything, and you are very, very excited that our neighborhood farmer's market has just opened. In fact, we have two farmer's markets now! One on Wednesday afternoons, which just happen to be the afternoons when Mommy and Mama are both home, and on Sunday mornings.


We went to the Sunday market this morning and you sat transfixed by the band that was playing. Your favorite part of both markets is the music, at least for now. We'll have to see what happens as more of the berries and veggies start to appear at the booths. That might tear you away from the band for five minutes or so.

Mateo, you really, really, really, REALLY love music right now. This has been a consistent interest for you for...well, it seems like over a year now. We're starting to wonder if this is a passing phase or if it's going to be a longer-term thing. You devote much of your play time to making up different instruments and pretending to play them. Your guitar is sometimes a guitar, but also doubles as a banjo, a stand up bass, a cello, and a violin with a bow made out of another toy. You ask to listen to the all-classical radio station as soon as we get into the car and like to speculate about whether Itzhak Perlman or Yo Yo Ma is playing on the different pieces. We're throwing around the idea of signing you up for some Suzuki lessons when you turn three, because you seem to want to play an instrument so badly. The violin has been a consistent favorite, so far, at least. We'll see what this summer brings and then decide in the fall, probably.

Speaking of the fall, you may be going to preschool two mornings a week starting in September. Mommy and Mama had decided to wait another year (ie, until you were almost 4) to start preschool, but then we heard about this new Spanish immersion preschool less than a mile from our house that will be opening this fall. By the time we contacted the director, only two slots were still open! After doing some research and checking out the location, we applied and got you into one of the slots. Now we have two weeks to decide whether to formally sign you up.

You are fascinated by the idea of preschool and want to start today. When we were driving to drop off the initial application, I told you what we were doing and how I thought you would enjoy preschool. You thought for a minute and then said, thoughtfully, "I would enjoy preschool." So, we're leaning in the direction of sending in our deposit...but we'll have to think about it a little more, first.


Let's see, what else. You continue to express yourself verbally and copiously. You and Dascher, who is a year older than you are, have started to have conversations with each other during your Wednesday and Sunday mornings together. It is so cute, I can't stand it! In fact, we wish we knew a few more older kids who could talk with you like that. You do see your cousins, who are 8 and 11, pretty often and you love chatting with them. And, you have a great group of little friends that you see regularly. We always love to hear what you have to say and all the new things you're learning.

You're excited about our garden and love to eat leaves of lettuce right off the plants. You've also been enjoying the back yard a lot. You like to help water and to dig in the dirt and to help feed our worms in the compost bin. You're also learning some new physical things, like how to climb up onto the higher play structures at the park, and how to play tag.


Finally, you continue to develop relationships with both sets of grandparents and your Apa. When we went up to the Folklife music festival last weekend, you happily went around with Bubby and Poppa while Mommy and Mama and Natalia went to another venue. You'll be spending some extended time with Grammy and Grandpa, as well as the rest of Mama's side of the family, at our upcoming family reunion. And, you see your Apa at least once every week and are pushing him to develop ever more daring flips and tosses.


Mateo, seeing you experience the spring and early summer makes us newly grateful for things we don't often notice, like our worms coming out of hibernation or the fact that spiders are weaving lots of webs in our yard. We love how you get excited about stuff that adults sometimes forget about. We're so proud of you and we love you to the moon and the stars and beyond.

Besos,
Mommy and Mama

Natalia's 11 month letter

Dear Natalia,
You, little munchkin, are 11 months and one week old. You are closing in on one year! It's hard for us to think about you being a year old without our heads exploding, so let's just focus on 11 months, shall we?

In fact, you are growing up before our eyes. You have learned to stand up all on your own. You get up into a squatting position and then stand right up, not holding onto anything, with a look of surprise and glee on your face. You took your first step from that position last Saturday, but haven't shown much interest in repeating it. You sometimes leap ahead and do something once or twice and then back off until you feel confident that you really know how to do it. You also really like to know how to do all the parts of an action before putting them all together. You practiced crawling with all your different appendages before you tried to move forward. We know you'll walk when you're ready. We're not in any hurry for you to do it, actually!


Even if you're not quite physically ready to walk just yet, you are very mentally ready. This makes you feel frustrated. You are a cranky, cranky girl these days! It seems to us like you just want to get going, but you also don't want to at the same time. This leads to lots of shrieking in frustration. You shriek if we put you down on the floor, but then you also shriek if we don't put you down. You want to be walked around with someone holding your hands, but you also want to crawl on your own. Your brother put on a show like this right before he learned how to crawl, so at least we know what's going on. We're looking forward to the return of your sunny disposition after you get started with walking.

One other complicating factor for your mood is the fact that you're teething again. It's a double whammy with the walking thing. Whew! Maybe Mommy and Mama should buy stock in children's ibuprofen and teething gel.

Now that we think about it, this past month has really been an explosion of learning. You're starting to make sounds that correspond to objects - maybe the beginning of words? You've stopped staying "ah-dah" for bye-bye and instead will say "buh-buh" or something like that. You routinely say Mama for both your parents and often say "ba-ba" to Mommy when you want to nurse. Another fun thing is that you will try to repeat words if we say them to you. The other day, Mama said "kitty" to you and you said "kih...kih..." Since we're a little more experienced this time around, we can recognize the beginning of language development better than we did with your big brother.


Speaking of Mateo, you want to play with him very badly. When he has a friend come over, you follow the two of them around the house, crawling as fast as you can to keep up with them. You want to touch him and play with all of his toys, usually while he is playing with them. He's learning how to share, slowly but surely. Sometimes things are great between the two of you and we watch in admiration as you play together. Other times, there's lots of crying and shrieking and pushing going on. Guess that's part of life with a sibling, eh?


On that note, you have just now gotten the hang of stranger anxiety. You mostly you like having your moms hold you these days. And your Apa. You often want to go to him right away, as did your brother at this age. It's very cute and heartwarming for all of us!

Finally, since the weather has been so nice lately, we've all been spending tons of time outside in our yard. You've been enjoying the kiddie pool and exploring the grass and swinging on our new swings.

Natalia, we think you are the cutest, smartest, funniest, cuddliest, and most fabulous little girl in the whole world. We love you thiiiiiis much!


love,
Mama and Mommy

Guess who did something new this weekend?

We all did!

1. Natalia took her first steps on Saturday. We had driven up to meet Sacha's parents in Seattle at a folk music festival. It was a long car ride and I guess she was raring to go by the time we got there. She stood up (which she can do now on her own, without holding onto anything) and lunged forward and fell. Then, she stood up again and took a step... and stayed standing! Wow! It was in the middle of listening to a sea chanty band playing a song about being a pirate. She apparently found it motivational.

2. Mateo learned how to stay awake in the car. He has been a reliable car sleeper since we first put him in his Marathon car seat. It's difficult to take him places in the late morning, because he will conk out before nap time. However, this weekend, when we were counting on him to fall asleep on the way up to Seattle and then again on the way back down to Portland last night, he was wide awake. He did a great job overall though. We had some rough moments which featured both kids screaming their heads off simultaneously, but those were a small fraction of the overall driving time. Teo hung out in his seat, ate snacks, drank from his sippy cup, looked at books, and generally acted like a rock star passenger.

3. Sacha got ready for her two interviews coming up this week! She applied to a bunch of open jobs in the district and got offered two interviews - one for a half time job at a posh middle school and one for several different full time positions at an elementary school. We have a friend who used to work at the posh middle school and he told us there had been 150 applicants for one position in an earlier hiring round. So, getting an interview is a big deal!

4. And, finally, I had a new cooking milestone - I made my first batch of ultra-premium ice cream tonight. That's the kind with egg yolks in it. It was a deep chocolate ice cream and it was YUMMY. My friend, Catherine, made a vanilla version of this ice cream on our Sagehen weekend and I was inspired to try it out myself.

All in all, it was a lovely weekend. We had a wonderful time with Sacha's parents and got to celebrate Talia's birthday a bit early with them last night. Both kids enjoyed seeing their Bubby and Poppa.

Today, we were a bit bleary-eyed when we got up, as the kids had a rough night last night after getting in late, but our student nanny was here today and she quickly pepped us up. I spent some time talking with her this afternoon and it sounds like our family is the talk of the nanny school. All the other student nannies are fascinated by the two-mom aspect of our family. They have a two hour weekly class on their practicum experience and she said she's always getting peppered with questions on what we're like. Interesting, eh?

Anyway, then Apa came over and we had a fun dinner of pizza and beer and the fabulous ice cream. I love long weekends. And late spring in general. Yay!

Wrestling

Mateo has been wanting to wrestle with his sister a lately. Of course, he thinks this is a fun idea and she has other ideas about the matter. . . I have tried all sorts of things to deal with this situation (which normally ends with Natalia howling). I have tried the explanations, tried the time out thing, tried more explanations, tried running around the house, tried getting out of the house, but he still wants to wrestle.

When we were at a friends house for dinner on Tuesday, they let me borrow a book called Playful Parenting. It turned out to have a whole chapter on how to wrestle with your kids (including the ten rules for wrestling) and why it is important for their development. So, I tried wrestling with Mateo. He loves it! I also let him wrestle a bit with Natalia, under my supervision, and with the ground rule that if she started crying we would stop. Well, after he won quite a few times wrestling with me, he let Natalia win a wrestling, turned into a giggling match.

Later today he tried wrestling with her when I was on the other side of the room. I said, oh, it is not wrestling time right now. You don't get to wrestle with Natalia outside of wrestling time. Remember, we had wrestling time. He seemed ok with that, and moved onto a different activity. We shall see what happens in the next few days, but so far, so good.

The work update

Well, as it stands I still have my half time position. I am grateful for this, because I just found out that our district is going to start another set of cuts, but at the moment (before round 2 or cuts), I have been spared. I will find out more in the next few months. This is the positive news.

The negative news has been difficult for me. I had an interview with my school. I basically forced my principal to offer me an interview at the school. And, although they agreed that I was good for the job as a teacher, I am not who they are looking for. From what I have heard, only one other non-native Spanish speaker was interviewed (and that person had connections.) The interview was conducted only in Spanish, even though half of the day in the upper grades is taught in English. There were no questions on how to teach English to the students who need that assistance. I only had to give a written sample in Spanish, not in English. And, at the end of the day, although some teachers did back me, it sounds like other teachers who I have been working with didn't and the administration didn't.

It is really hard not to feel judged by this whole process. And angry. And sad.

Ironically, I have come to a place this year where I no longer doubt my own teaching abilities. I have always second guessed myself, and this year, having worked in many other teachers' classrooms, I finally feel confident in my own abilities. I guess that is the silver lining.

Options right now:

1. I keep my same half-time position and Alayna keeps hers or starts looking for work closer to home.
2. I get a full-time job, and Alayna quits hers and stays home with the kids.
3. I get laid off and either: start a bilingual daycare, bilingual preschool, start up my tutoring business again or get a job somewhere else.

Mateo's 2 year, 6 months letter

Dear Mateo,
We can't believe that you are two and a half years old. Where did the time go? You are getting to be quite a big boy these days. Here are some ways you've grown lately:

First of all, you're getting comfortable being with more people. You spend lots of time on Mondays with our new (and fabulous) student nanny, as well as spending Sunday mornings at your friend Dascher's house. Once you're comfortable with someone, you're happy to have your moms gone and to enjoy playing.

In fact, you and Dascher are actually starting to play with each other. You spend two mornings a week together (one at our house and one at his) and never seem to get tired of each other. In the past couple of weeks, you've started talking to each other. This is big! Your little conversations are just too adorable to describe. The other night, both our families went out to dinner and you and your buddy entertained each other for nearly the entire meal. Seeing you and him play together like that is like a vision of the Promised Land. Someday, you and your sister will be able to play together like that, too.


You're starting to play together already, actually. You and Natalia are getting along very well these days. You have a game in which she tosses her bottle off her high chair and chortles in glee while you run and pick it up. The other day, you were both playing and she started howling in anticipation before she even threw the bottle. You found this highly entertaining, as did your parents. We hope the two of you will always have this much fun together.


In other arenas, you've shown new interest in arts and crafts a lot more. You like playing wiht a little stamp set that we got, as well as finger painting and drawing with crayons, which you call "crans." You made some prints with leaves and other outdoor objects today.

Your great love continues to be music. You pretend to play the violin and the guitar and will proudly inform people that you play the guitar, if asked. Other favorite instruments include just about all of them, but the clarinet, bassoon, french horn, piano, and cello are near the top. We've been wondering if you're just in a phase or if music is always going to be a big thing for you.

We just planted a little garden outside and you take great pride in watering it with a little spray bottle. You're also starting to eat some greens - sweet pea leaves and lettuce that we are growing in the square foot garden. You helped plant lots of seeds in our garden, plus the pumpkin plant that is growing in the empty lot next to our house.


You still love books and managed to listen to a chapter book that Mommy read you in Spanish - a first for you. Your attention span is getting longer and you love to hear books more than once. Mommy still sometimes does headsprout with you, although not quite as often these days. Whenever she does, you amaze us with your ability to sound out words. We hope that you hold onto this love of the written word for a long time to come!

You continue to be quite a talkative little fellow and are learning new things all the time in English and Spanish. We love talking with you and hearing what's on your mind.


You still really like to be carried, and are not the big fan of walking. However, you love to run once you get started. You enjoy running the bases at our local park and had a blast "racing" Poppa when he visited last. You sprinted from base to base, with him hot on your heels, shrieking "I BE FIRST, I BE FIRST!!"

Finally, we're thrilled to note that your behavior has been on the upswing again. You have been having fewer time outs overall, and (cross our fingers), seem to be acting gentler with Natalia again. We know that toddler behavior ebbs and flows and we're grateful to be in a more cooperataive phase at the moment.


Mateo, we love you more and more and more and more all the time. You are our favorite little boy in the whole world. We can't wait to see what adventures tomorrow will bring.

All our love,
Mommy and Mama

Nation building and other pearls of wisdom

Mateo, who is fascinated by the big packages of things we get at Costco when his grandparents are visiting, says to me today:

"Mama, is Costco a big country?"

Actually, it kind of is.

********************

Also, our student nanny was here today and was talking to Mateo about the blueberries he was eating. They were frozen blueberries. She asked him whether blueberries grew on a tree or on a bush...

...and he said, "They grow in the freezer!"

Looks like summer can't come soon enough! This is the same kid who saw a picture of the sun in the newspaper weather section and asked "What's that?"

Ah, the burdens of growing up in the pacific northwest.

Blueberry picking, here we come.

Job adventures

It seems like every year I have drama with jobs. I know that this just happens the first few years of teaching, until you get tenure. On top of that, trying to move from half-time to full-time in the current economic situation is difficult, to say the least. But, this last bit of drama has been frustrating and ire-inducing.

A month ago, I applied to be in the Spanish applicant pool for the immersion program, and was granting an interview yesterday. It looks like around 20 people are being interviewed in the district for a total of 7 job openings in immersion. All of those jobs are either at the school where I am currently teaching, or at another school down the street from our house. I would prefer the second school, but either school would be fine.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, they are being very annoying this year as regard to Spanish, and made me take a written Spanish test, on top of the oral Spanish test, on top of the other three tests I have taken in Spanish in the last two years. It seems like all they care about is if you are a native Spanish speaker. They are not giving all of the native Spanish speakers five million tests in English, because apparently that isn't as important. In not so many words, the principal has made it clear that he really only wants native speakers. I don't think I could even prove that it was discrimination, but that has been made clear to me and a few other people I know.

The interview yesterday went sort of ok. The principals at the interview didn't look at my portfolio, not one of them opened the portfolio. I had to teach them a lesson, and had brought actual samples of student work on the same lesson I taught them. No one looked at the papers I brought of student work. I brought the article that was written about me in the Oakland Tribune, and no one looked at that. And, one of the principals didn't even follow the instructions for the lesson. Overall, it was actually a frustrating experience.

Last night, one of the teachers who is leaving my school called me to let me know that they were actually doing interviews at my school today for the position I want. Now, how that even works logistically is beyond me, because the district interviews were yesterday, but I clearly had not been invited to these interviews.

Today, I talked to my principal to request that I be invited to the interviews. Clearly he had been looking at all of the applicant papers when I walked into his office. He didn't mention anything about the interviews until I let him knew that I was aware of them and requested to be interviewed. He said, ok, and when I signed up it was clear that they had already scheduled all of the other interviews, and they were just squeezing me in at the end.

I wish I could teach somewhere where people could look past the fact that I am not a native Spanish speaker and see that I am a good teacher. I consistently help students improve their scores on their state exams, I am engaging, I have high standards for all of my students and am an asset to any program. This year has really helped me gain confidence in my teaching abilities. Being in other teachers' classrooms for three hours every day has been very eye opening.

Whatever happens, I know I'll be fine and I am so lucky to have such an amazing community of family and friends. Hopefully things will work themselves out or I will be able to find a position at another school or maybe even teaching in English. Who knows, but I know that I hate the spring roller coaster ride of job switching and this spring is proving to be particularly difficult.

Mother's Day and tons of photos

We had a lovely and busy week and weekend, full of visits from both sets of our parents and lots of fun outings. We also had a great Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day to all our favorite mamas out there!

Here are some photos from the last week or two. Enjoy!

Photo shoot in the bath:

This one features both kids in classic poses - Natalia is gnawing on a chew toy and Mateo is making a "smiley" face for the camera:






Some from our visit to Grandmommy's house:


Check this one out - baby synchronized eating!:


And some from the park yesterday:

In a pickle

My parents are in town for a few days for some meetings and a lecture by Desmond Tutu, to which we were lucky enough to go tonight. It was amazing!

But, what I am really going to write about is Natalia's first taste of a new food, which she tried today. Sacha and Mateo are both big fans of the pickle. I have personally watched (in horror) as they collectively polished off half a jar of pickles as a snack. Now that Natalia is eating all kinds of foods and we've thrown caution to the winds (we were so cautious with Mateo that we didn't give him wheat until he was over one year old) we decided to let her try a pickle that came with our sandwiches when my parents took us out to lunch today.

It was the. funniest. thing. ever. Before she even put the pickle in her mouth, she got a whiff of its fumes and her face puckered up into a shocked and overwhelmed expression. But, once in the gravitational pull of the pickle, she could not stop. She would lick it and jump away...but then lick again, and again, until she had stuffed the whole thing in her mouth and was happily gnawing away.


It appears that I am going to be the only one in this family without a pickle obsession. There could be worse things, eh?

Celebrating Earth Day

Today, we decided to celebrate Earth Day. Our friend Katie came over with her girlfriend, and we had a ton of fun in the dirt. We made an herb garden for our kitchen, so we can now have fresh herbs for cooking. Mateo helped with planting some basil, oregano, thyme, chives, rosemary and coriander. I don't know how you use fresh coriander, but I am sure we will learn.

On top of that, we bought some hood strawberry starts and planted them on our steps. I am sure we won't get too many this year, but in the years to come they should be delicious. The other coup from the local nursery was some rhubarb. As a child, I really enjoyed that we had a rhubarb plant in our garden and am looking forward to fresh rhubarb next year. (Yes, we have decided to stay in our house for the meantime.)

Lastly, our square foot garden has been transformed into a polyculture garden. Who knew that I, who likes to organize things, has suddenly decided that this might be fun. Instead of planting rows, or squares or anything like that, you take a bunch of plants that can grow well together and just spread out a ton of seeds. Then you "Eat your way to Equilibrium" or eat the baby greens to thin out all of the plants. We will see how it goes. Mateo loved spreading the seeds and watering them. We planted bok choi, lettuce, peas, bush beans, carrots, parsnips, chives, more lettuce, arugula, radishes and all sorts of other plants. So, hopefully, we will need to do a LOT of eating to thin our way to equilibrium. We will post pictures later if the garden actually works out.

Happy Earth Day, belatedly!

Sagehens

Last week at this time, I was sitting in a beautiful kitchen in Santa Monica with my two best friends from college, at the beginning of our annual weekend together. In addition to the three of us, we had Anastasia's little six-month-old son along for the ride, and he was just about as angelic as a baby could be. Adorable, happy, babbling, and I don't think he cried for more than five minutes total the whole time. Go Toby!

It's somewhat unclear how many of these yearly reunions we've had, but it's been close to every year since we graduated nine years ago. Lots of life changes have happened in that time, including three marriages and four kiddos, but we always seem to just pick up right where we left off. This weekend was particularly lovely and refreshing, actually.

Part of the decadence of it all was the food! Catherine is quite the chef and spoiled us all weekend with her creations. Among the menu items were crispy pork chops, several incredible salads, a phyllo pastry with turkey and egg, a brownie pudding cake, homemade custardy ice cream, french toast made out of a sourdough baguette, and waffles with fresh fruit, plus all the Mexican hot chocolate I could drink. Add to that some yummy LA restaurant cuisine and espresso drinks and I think I may now be prepared to hibernate for the summer. It was all soooo good!

We also had some fun activities, including going to the Getty Villa and the Santa Monica farmer's market, but we really spent almost all our time talking. Even at the Getty we looked at the art for about two minutes and then returned to our conversation. I feel so lucky to have friendships like this. It's kind of wild to think about how we all met as 17- and 18-year-old freshmen who had never lived away from home and now we're in our 30s and actually living adult lives!

Anyway, I had a really great time and am already looking forward to next year. And, I want to send a HUGE thank you to my lovely wife, who took on the kiddos for the weekend and traveled up to Washington and back with Apa, for taking one for the team so I could go. You're the best!

Stories

Mateo and I were chatting this morning as he sat on the potty and he told me that he had some babies. He's been really into calling himself either a mommy bird or a daddy bird lately and telling us that he has two baby birds and that they live at the zoo. But, today he was all about having human babies.

According to him, one baby is two and a half and is named Henry. The other two are growing in his belly and their names are Callie and Elizabeth. They will be born in nine and a half months. At that point, they will join him and Henry and they will all sleep together in his crib. I kid you not - this is basically verbatim, with some editing for toddler rambling.

Oh, and when Callie and Elizabeth are born? He wanted me to know that they will be as big as his poo.

That is all.

PS: I took this yesterday before bed. The camera battery died before I could get one with him smiling, but check out that hair! Soon he can be our little Elvis.