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.)