Mateo's 26 month letter

Dear Mateo,

Here it is New Year's Eve and you are 26 months old today. In the couple of months since we last wrote you a letter, you have developed an amazing amount! We know it will be this way until, well, forever. We'll blink and you'll know how to do something new and then soon you'll be driving!

Anyway, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here's what you've been up to this month. First, you have really gotten excited about imaginative play. Yesterday, for example, you arranged all your stuffed animals in a circle and told Mommy to call you Mary Beth (the name of your music class teacher) because you were about to lead a music class. Then you assigned each animal a name (Underwearra was our favorite by far - a pink bear wearing a pair of toddler briefs) and proceeded to sing the hello song to them while playing your pretend guitar.

You've spontaneously started a lot of other pretend games this month, from pretending to cook up hot meals to pretending to talk on the phone and pretending to do all sorts of other things. You really love the "kid kitchen," as you call it, that Bubby and Poppa gave you for Christmas and cook up lots of soup, milkshakes, mac and cheese, and other foods nearly every day.

In the realm of communication, you're still talking up a storm. You've started to use what we call conditional sentences, although we're really not sure if that's the right term. You'll say things like "maybe tomorrow I can have macaroni and cheese." You're also on the verge of using a simile in the correct way - you keep saying things like "That ball is sort of like..." and then you trail off, not sure how to finish the thought.

You're also working on singing and have several favorite songs (the Hello song and This Old Man are big right now). You have firm ideas of who can sing what song and if someone, say Mama, tries to sing a song that only Mary Beth the music teacher can sing, well, then you put her in her place right away by saying "NO! ONLY MARY BETH!!" Right now, the only song Mama is allowed to sing is called The Worms Crawl In, The Worms Crawl Out, which she made the mistake of teaching you around Halloween time.

You seem to be in the middle of a growth spurt and are enjoying eating. You have really started to have a huge appetite, which never ceases to amaze us. We'd gotten used to your tendency to have a few bites and be done! Now, you sometimes eat a whole adult size bowl of oatmeal and raisins in the morning, and other larger servings of food throughout the day. You are getting much better at using a fork, spoon and wiping up spills. You are also starting to use a regular cup some of the time and do fine with that.

In the arena of the potty, we think we can really say that you're potty trained now, at least during the day. It is amazing that you have been now going around in just underwear for a few months now during the day. You do have accidents here and there and are still working on letting us know when you need to use the potty, but most days you stay dry all day - at home and out and about. At night you are still in a diaper, and for the time being that is just fine.

Finally, you are really starting to play more with your sister. Today at a cafe you wanted to tell other kids, "Look that's my baby sister Talia!" You were so proud when you said this! You also like to tell other people how cute she is and give her toys to play with.

A new favorite activity recently is playing with all of your puzzles. You like your alphabet puzzle as well as other types of puzzles and are getting good at putting the pieces in. You've also been having fun with finger painting. You like to say what you have painted and have Mommy write a caption on your painting. Speaking of activities, you were also very helpful digging our car out from the snow recently...

Mateo, you are just the best little guy. We hope you have a wonderful start to 2009 and we're so excited to spend it with you.

All our love,

Mommy and Mama

Natalia's six month letter

Dear Natalia,
Today you are six months old! You marked your half-birthday with a rather unfortunate milestone - your first big fall. You were balancing on Mama's legs this morning as she lay on her back on the bed, having lots of fun, when Mama got distracted by your brother, who was lunging towards her. Before you knew it, you were flying through the air. You fell off Mama, off the bed, and finally landed on the carpet. Chaos ensued. You screamed, Mama and Mommy lunged for you, and Mateo started crying because you were crying. Luckily, you turned out to be just fine. Thank goodness for baby flexibility! However, Mama feels terrible about it and is very glad your memory of the experience lasted only about five minutes.

Anyway, other than that, your half-birthday has been quite a nice day. We're going on a week of being snowed in and we've had lots of nice family time as a result. Today, we did some house projects in the morning and then took a hike in the snow in the afternoon. We took you and your brother to a local pizza place and ate an early dinner before heading home.

That brings us to the first thing your mommies have noticed about you in your sixth month. You are fascinated by the world around you. You've started to show interest in our kitty and are always trying to grab her. In fact, you're always trying to grab everything! If you can see it, you want to grab it. Utensils, paper, toys, bowls, rattles, clothes, Mama's glasses, hair, your brother, and everything else under the sun are now fair game for grabbing.


You're starting to get into little games like peek-a-boo. You laugh at that and lots of other things. You can be quite serious a lot of the time, but when something strikes you funny, you let us know. The other day, we were playing with one of Mateo's friends and came up with this random made-up game where he would run around in a circle and every time he got to Mama, she would yell "BOO!" as loud as possible while shaking a stuffed reindeer at him. This went on and on because you thought it was hilariously funny. We've never seen you laugh that hard. And, today, you were cracking up at the sight of Mateo playing nearby. You think he is pretty neat and the feeling is often mutual!


Next up: food. You love food. We sometimes hold pieces of pear to your mouth and let you gum on them and you just go nuts. You've mastered rice cereal, as well, and just tried banana today for the first time. Verdict: good. From the looks of it, you would happily have indulged in pizza and bagel and cheese and pretty much anything else we ate today.

Speaking of food, you and Mommy have reached six months of breastfeeding! We don't know if you remember, but you had a tough time with it in the beginning and Mommy did an amazing job of persevering until you finally got the hang of it. These days, you love your mommy's milk and you have these hilarious conversations with the boob. Sometimes, when it seems like things aren't going quite the way you had in mind, we would swear that you're giving the boob a stern talking-to. We're so proud of you and Mommy for making it to this point!


Things are going well again in the sleep department. You're starting to sleep longer stretches at night again, which your mommies welcome wholeheartedly. Against the advice of every sleep book we have (and we have several), bedtime seems to go best if you have a short nap around 5 or 6 pm and then go down for the night at 7:30. You've been waking up around 11 pm to eat and then, at least for the past few days, have slept through until 5 am or so before waking again. This works quite well for all of us. Keep up the good work, kiddo.

Finally, you are turning into a mover and a shaker. Your Grandpa noted recently that you've been raring to go ever since you were born! You certainly do want to get going. You now can creep backwards all over the place. You have the crawling position mastered and like to rock back and forth, but haven't figured out how to move forward yet. This is fine with us. You can just take your time on that one! You love to stand and jump when supported. And, you have gotten into the crawling position from sitting a couple of times. We're enjoying this calm before the storm, because once you get going, you are going to GO!


Baby Talia, you are just a delight of a baby. You are in that delicious phase where we just want to eat you for dessert. We love your chubby cheeks and your big smiles and your fuzzy head and your whole chunky, babbling self. You are our favorite six-month-old girl in the whole wide world.


Hugs and kisses,
Mommy and Mama

White stuff from above

After a week of snow days that started out snowy and ended up drippy, today we finally got a real snow day. It has been below freezing and pouring down snow all day today. It's still going out there right now. Our favorite weather site, to which we have become totally addicted since our outdoor thermometer broke (well, Mateo ran it through the wash by accident), says that it's 19.9 degrees outside right now and is calling for blizzard conditions.

We had a surprisingly busy day, all things considered. We did an errand very, very carefully this morning in the car, and then had lunch with my brother, who's in town for the holidays. He came to us on his studded tires. Mateo was very into playing with him - so much so that when Sacha came in to tell them something, Mateo said "You go back out!" He also very much discouraged Uncle G from holding baby Talia, who was doing her best to compete for attention! Then we went to a neighborhood buddy's birthday party and then had dinner with other friends who live close by, who braved the budding blizzard to walk to our house. We were very impressed.

I didn't get a chance to take any photos while the sun was up, so I decided to give it a try after the kids went to bed. It was snowing really hard and the flash picked up on it, which was sort of cool. Here are a few photos of our surroundings. Plus, at the end, a bonus photo of Teo and Uncle G.

Snow and ice and everything nice

Our weekend started off on the down side - Mateo was getting over being sick, Sacha was sick, we were worried that Natalia was going to get sick - but ended on the up side. Everyone is well and we've had a cozy last two days in our house. It is bone-chillingly cold for Portland, hovering in the low 20s. Thank goodness we got the plastic sheeting up on our windows on Saturday, because otherwise our heater would never be able to keep up! Sacha had a snow day today and I had a work thing also get canceled, so we got to have a bonus weekend day together.

Here are some photos from the last week.

First, Sacha and the kids by our tree. Yes, the matching jammies have been quite a hit with the two of them. And wow, baby Talia is getting big!:


Second, here's Mateo licking his very first beater covered with cookie dough. He seemed to get the hang of it pretty fast! We made oatmeal raisin cookies with chunks of dark chocolate and they are yummy:


Third, here's Teo pretending to take a bath with his bear, Knut (named after a book about a baby polar bear). He has suddenly discovered pretend play in the past couple of weeks. He's been making us pretend eggs and tea, "fixing" his toy cars in an auto shop, and pretending to feed his bear a "bottle" that's really a plastic measuring cup. Today, he insisted on taking off all his clothes to climb into a pretend bath with Knut the bear, including on-going commentary for our benefit. "The water is very hot," he would say as he climbed into the plastic basket. Knut has been all over the place with us this weekend, including out in the snow and sleeping with our boy. Here are the two buddies in their hot bath:

Rockin' and Readin'

1. Baby Talia is working on her crawling skills. In the last couple of weeks, she has gone from a sphinx-like tummy pose and not being able to sit to rocking on all fours and sitting like a champ. Of course, we are bursting at the seams with pride. With our first child, we tried not to go into what we call "Babylandia" (in which the parents can only and ever talk about their child), but with our second kid, we are embracing it. We have officially landed in Babylandia. We keep finding ourselves telling anyone who will listen that Baby Talia might crawl soon! And have you noticed how cute and chubby she's getting?

2. Mateo and Sacha have been playing at reading in the afternoons and lo and behold, he can actually read a few short words. He actually read a very short story on his own this afternoon. The text: "See Vee. See San. See the van." Who are Vee and San, you ask? Cartoon characters with conveniently phonetic names, apparently.

Over and out.



Notice that puffy right eye on our little guy? Somehow he managed to come down with both a stomach virus AND pinkeye in the same week. I'm starting to wonder if we're all going to make it through the winter in one piece...

Our tree...

We got our Christmas tree today and I have to say, it was hard won. We had planned to go to a u-cut tree farm today and cut down our own tree, and even though yesterday was a beautiful, sunny, gorgeous day, we opted to stick with our plan of going today. I thought the weather would be just as nice...but it wasn't. No, it was overcast, raining, freezing, muddy, and just generally not the kind of day where you really want to go tromping around through the forest. But, hey, that's what winter is like! So, we carried on with the plan.




When we got there, it was pouring down rain and socked in with fog. Mateo insisted on being carried the entire time and baby Talia didn't really see the tree farm because we had to bundle her up in the ergo so she wouldn't get wet and cold. But, we did find a great tree and successfully cut it down - a really nice 6-foot Douglas fir. It looked big to us until we carried it to the tree-wrapping area and saw the massive trees most other people were buying. Crazy.


Then, we accidentally tied it to the car through the windows, so we could only open one door to get in. And, we got lost on the way home and had to stop to change the baby's diaper and such. This led to me crawling in and out through the window several times. Good times!


Anyway, we made it and we have a great tree and we really did have fun. A friend came with us and she was a lifesaver. I don't know if we could have made it through by ourselves!

And, one of Mateo and Apa hanging out after our weekly Sunday dinner together:

New stuff

Last week, during a surge of motivation, we filled out an application to be a host family for a nanny-training program in our city. We read about it in a local parenting magazine and thought we'd give it a shot. Basically, it's an agency that runs a year-long nanny school and they need families for their nannies to do internships with. You get the nanny student for one eight-hour day per week and one of the parents needs to be there half the time. Their internship days are Mondays, which is perfect for us because it's my day off, so I'm with the kids in the morning and we're both around in the afternoon. And, it's the day on which we end up scheduling all errands and appointments.

Anyway, we'd heard that this program was very popular, so we sent off the application and kind of forgot about it. It said there was a very long waiting list and you might not ever get called.

So, imagine our surprise when they called us the next day! I don't know if they were having a temporary shortage or if being lesbians actually helped us stand out or what, but the training coordinator came over the next day (yesterday) to interview Sacha and meet the kids. And now we have a nanny student starting on Monday!

We're very excited about this. We'll get someone to help out with the kids and the house one day a week, it will be free, and we'll get to help her gain experience for when she becomes a paid nanny. One of her assignments will actually be to cook us dinner. I guess they have to demonstrate all sorts of household skills. I can say that I will be more than happy to help her learn that one. Wahoo!