New shoes

M just outgrew his latest pair of shoes, so I went down to the basement to rummage through our prodigious collection of hand-me-downs. While down there, I found a brand new pair of shoes that a family friend got our little guy when he was born. They're baby (or kids?) size 6, which seemed impossibly big at the time and now is only slightly too big.

These shoes are the little edition of the Le.bron James signature shoe, of all things! Very snazzy and probably the fanciest sneaks he'll have for a long time to come. He is quite infatuated with them and even wanted to wear them over his jammies tonight.

In honor of his 16-month-birthday, here are his new kicks:

Glorious

It is a gorgeous, gorgeous, perfect weather day here in our rainy town. I am wearing a t-shirt with short sleeves. This afternoon, after Sacha got home, Mateo was wearing a onesie and sandals as he scampered up and down the sidewalk in front of our house.

We are having that day that comes every year where you take off all the layers you've bundled up and you actually see your skin again. It's kind of shocking, actually.

I was pondering Mateo's cute little arms as he nursed off to sleep this afternoon and I realized that they look different from the last time I saw them, lo those four or five or however many months it's been since September or October. I mean, we do bathe him but it's a little different.

My point is, his little elbows have creases in them now! When he was very new and even up to this fall, I don't think he had elbow creases. Now he does. Just a few. He's breaking in his skin, I guess.

I just loved looking at his little arms. And his little feet in their tiny sandals.

I know that pretty soon the clouds will come and the rain will start and we'll do the whole spring showers thing forever until it's finally July and summer starts. (Someone told us when we moved here that summer in the northwest starts on July 4th and it actually does seem to be true, horrifyingly). But it has been so nice to see the sun today and over the past couple of weeks. Wahoo for vitamin D!

PS: In other good news, I've finally started to be able to feel the baby moving in Sacha's belly. It feels just like I remember it feeling with Mateo, except this time I'm feeling the little one from outside instead of inside. It's very cool and I love feeling her move. Sacha's doing really well and her belly is really starting to assert itself! She is beautiful and glowing. I should post a belly shot on here sometime soon...

Cook-cook

Mateo loves him some cookies. He calls them "cook-cook". And I love to make cookies. So, yesterday, we made some together for the first time. I used to love to do this with my mom and it was really fun to introduce Mateo to the process. I had him 'help' me with pouring the ingredients in, but he was much more interested in chewing on the measuring cups. Eye teeth are coming in this week, survey says. Here are some photos:




Also, because I am picture-happy, some photos from the park today:

Tamales

We had a big cooking extravaganza in our kitchen yesterday afternoon. Mateo's Apa came over to make a batch of tamales for us to freeze for after the new baby arrives. We've been working on freezing dinners little by little and we think we'll have quite a stockpile by the time the summer is here. Apa whipped up some masa and a delicious chicken mixture for the filling and then we all got to try making some tamales. Ok, he actually made almost all of them in expert fashion, but Sacha and I contributed a few, too. The finished product was delicious and we can't wait to enjoy all those tamales in a few months. Thanks, Z!

Also, I've been experimenting with taking pictures without the flash (a la our friend Wendy) and thought I would put some up. These are from yesterday. I think they turned out pretty well, although they're not the clearest...

Cuddling Lucy (who he's now calling Goosey):



Rolling around with Mommy:


Saying bye-bye to Apa:

Sunny Saturday morning

I would now like to award the Mommy of the Day award to my wife, who somehow managed to get our son to sleep in until almost 7:30 this morning. He woke up crying way before his usual wake-up time and I was about to throw in the towel and go get him when Sacha decided to see if she could get him back to sleep. She used her magical baby touch and soon he was snoozing again. She even got him to cuddle in bed with us, asleep, for close to an hour, which he hasn't done in months. It was very sweet and he woke up with a smile on his face.

Then we went out into the main part of the house and it was light outside! Imagine! Light in the morning! And it was sunny! Sunny! Pretty magical way to start the weekend.

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Also, we had a wonderful dinner last night with my extended family. It was us and Mateo's Apa and my parents, my grandma, two uncles, one aunt, two cousins, and one cousin's little friend and my grandma's caregiver. Mateo was the life of the party and at one point entertained the entire room as people peppered him with word requests. He seemed happy to oblige by saying some of his crowd pleasers, one of which was coffee, which he just learned a few days ago. He's really started to be able to enunciate things and he can say coffee perfectly. It was a fun evening.

Happy weekend!

The sweetest thing

Three words together

Last night, M put three words together for the first time. What he said is maybe not one for the record books, but we want to remember it anyway.

He woke up around midnight last night with a start and started crying really hard. I was fumbling around getting out of bed and Sacha, who is sick with a yucky bug but was more alert nonetheless, jumped out of bed and ran to get him.

I, meanwhile, having learned my lesson long ago about how horrible it is to nurse a baby on a full bladder, went to the bathroom en route to the baby's room. M heard me open the toilet lid and said:

"Mama pee-pee no-no!"

As in, Mama, don't go pee-pee right now, I need milk!

I didn't hear him say it but Sacha told me about it this morning and we both cracked up. Does that count as his first sentence? It had a subject and a verb. And a command. What more could a sentence need?