growing baby

Mateo has been jabbering more these days (combining consonants and vowels to make random sounds) which is very cute.  Even more exciting, though, is that he’s also sometimes starting to sound like he’s actually mimicking your speech, only without any consonants at all.  For example, this morning I told him “te amo” and he repeated back to me “eh-ah-oh” with the proper inflections.  So sweet.  If only he knew what it meant!

He’s also started waving bye!  Usually you have a wave quite a while (sometimes for several minutes) before he’ll stick a hand out and kind of flap it.  Sometimes he follows the hand-flapping by saying “baaa”.  Is this “bye”?  It sounds sort of like it, but perhaps it’s random since we only say “bye” some of the time–we’re probably more likely to say adios, paka or even ciao.  In any case, I continue to be endlessly overjoyed and fascinated by Mateo at every turn.

Mateo took his first steps today! I came home from work, and he got excited at seeing me and took a couple of short steps towards me. We confirmed that it wasn’t a one-time fluke when he repeated this trick a few more times!

Obviously he is still quite wobbly on his own, and not really interested in this challenging “Walking” business when he has a Master’s degree in Crawling already, plus the months of apprenticeships in Cruising. But there’s really no turning back now 🙂

1) Baby Darth Vader: Mateo embraces the dark side for Halloween 2009

2) Pumpkin Boy: An adorable beginning for the many Halloweens ahead

3) Other ideas?

Mateo has three teeth now (and the fourth is about to pop) and so I’ve brushed his teeth the past two nights.  Mateo thinks this is a riot!  He smiles and giggles all through the tooth-brushing!

1) Mateo’s first move.  He helped pack by crumpling old magazines as stuffing for the “fragile” boxes. 

2) Mateo’s first stairs.  He climbed the staircase all the way to the second story at my parents’ place–my mom was the diligent spotter.

3) Mateo’s first bandaid.  Yesterday he had a nail-clipping accident and needed a bandaid.  The grandparents were a bit shaken up, but Mateo took it like a man.  You know, licking the bandaid.

4) Mateo’s first cheerios.  He swallowed the first one whole, but Abuelita and I modeled chewing one at a time for him and he picked up quick.  Now I keep finding cheerios everywhere–including stuck to the outside of his diaper.

5) Mateo’s first swings.  Maribel, his babysitter, took Mateo to the nearby park today and he played in the swings and in the sand.  Her cell phone pictures showed a very happy Mateo.  Unlike our old place where we didn’t live walking distance to any parks, here there are three parks in walking distance and one of them’s a really nice one with a great play area, a roller skating rink and a pond with ducks, fish and turtles

6) Mateo’s first clap.  Mateo started clapping on purpose today–he claps when we clap, though not yet consistently.  It’s too cute!

Mateo’s come back from his trip to Toronto and he was the best little traveler I could have wished for.  He was barely fussy on the planes–only a teensy bit here and there–and he napped and slept nights in his travel tent bed beautifully.  His infant passport already has its first stamp (and he’s already so much bigger than he was when we took the passport picture).  Yay Mateo!

Geneva spotted Mateo’s second tooth today (right next to the first) when we met up at Long Beach’s Museum of Latin American Art (Mateo’s first museum trip!).  So Mateo’s now moved beyond “one tooth to rule them all”–that’s a good thing, right, Ilya?

Mateo loves books. Now that he’s crawling, he especially loves going over to his bookshelf in his room and pulling out a large selection to read, err, chew. It was only a matter of time before crawling-Mateo realized that books live everywhere in our home, not just his room. His first adult selection? Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

Mateo has been eating solid foods for a few weeks now, some more successfully than others. He started with banana (yum!), then nectarine (yum!), then rice cereal (yummish), then yogurt (yum for the first few days and then bleh), and then sweet potato (bleh). I don’t know what we’ll do next–maybe avocado? He makes a HUGE mess when he eats and doesn’t like being cleaned up afterwards (wah wah, why’re you wiping my wonderfully gooey face/neck/hands/legs with a wet towel?). He’s also drinking water from a sippy cup with help. Sippy cups are fun–especially chewing the handle.

Since Ilya posted last, Mateo’s become quite the crawler. He can get from any point A to any point B, slowly but directly and with no hesitation. He used to crawl with one leg sticking out straight, but now they both bend like they’re supposed to. He’s also getting better at pulling up and cruising. Eeeek–I really want to wait until we move to babyproof (just one more month, Mateo!) but that’s starting to feel irresponsible. As it is, Mateo loves going for our shoes and trying to play with them. I knew puppies chewed on shoes and kittens played with shoelaces, but I didn’t realize that Mateo would channel his inner baby-animal and do the same. Playing with shoelaces is ok, I guess, but definitely not putting shoes in his mouth.

Also, Mateo’s going to take his first airplane flight–to Toronto–in a few weeks. That’ll be exciting!