growing baby

Mateo was looking through some of his old baby toys this morning and I asked if he was going to give them to his baby brother.  Mateo said “no”!  (Of course, I probably shouldn’t have asked that question in the first place.)  But after I said “no?!!!” in a jokingly scandalized voice, Mateo turned around and gave the rubber block to my tummy saying, “Baby Roan.”  Very sweet, Mateo, very sweet indeed.

Mateo is starting to draw.  I mean, he’s been scribbling for a long time but now he’s drawing with intent.  He’ll identify his drawings–arrows and letters are his favorites.  His letters are fairly passable too.  Yes, sometimes what he calls a “p” looks more like a “q” or his “b” will look more like a theta or his “w” will look like three vertical lines.  But a lot of his letters are quite recognizable–he made a perfect “A” yesterday and his v’s are consistently v-like.  Pretty good for a boy who just turned two!

Ilya and I keep meaning to put lengthier posts up, but here’s some little tidbits before we forget them anyway.

Mateo really enjoyed his birthday party–it was a wonderfully warm December day (sunny, about 78 degrees) so we had a birthday gathering at the park.  The kids fed ducks (we gave them cracked corn as part of the party favors), played with bubbles,  took turns pushing each other in Mateo’s toy car, drew on the sidewalk and ate pizza.  After we sang Happy Birthday and blew out candles (Mateo’s favorite part!), Mateo took several bites of his cupcake and ended up with quite debonaire chocolate mustache.  (Ilya and I gobbled the rest of the cupcake that Mateo didn’t finish.)  The most memorable, for Mateo, part of the story was that his number 2 shaped balloon flew away into the air on the drive home.  We told him it went to go visit the moon.  For a couple of days afterwards, Mateo kept asking for his globo dos (#2 balloon).  The other day he said “dos, arriba, cielo, up” (two, up, sky, up).  I think he’s finally forgotten the balloon now though.

On Friday we took Mateo for his 2 year pediatrician appointment.  Mateo’s a perfect 50% again: 50% height at 34 inches, 50% weight at 27.5 pounds.  His head size is 48 cm across.  According to an online height predictor test, Mateo will be 5’10” tall at 18.  Seems about right; we’ll check back in 16 years!

Last night we went out to dinner with some friends from high school.  As usual, we got a booth so we could trap Mateo in (if he’s in a chair, he escapes and tries to run around the restaurant).  When the waiter came by, Ilya asked Mateo (in Russian) if he wanted water or milk.  Mateo ignored Ilya altogether and, looking directly at the waiter, ordered juice instead (in English).  Ah, Mateo!

These days, Mateo sings *all* the time.  His number one favorite is the ABC song, but he also sings Raffi’s Baby Beluga, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, the clean up song, and a couple others.

In Spring, Mateo will be a big brother!!!  We’ll be welcoming a new little boy sometime around April 30th (the due date).  I’m hoping he’ll wait a few days and we can share my birthday on May 3rd.  Ilya thinks the new baby should have a birthday of his very own.  Either way, we’re absolutely delighted!  Mateo seems interested too, though he doesn’t quite get it yet: sometimes pats my belly and asks me to “open” it so he can see the baby.  Family of four, here we come!

Today Ilya and I went with Mateo to his first family conference at daycare.  We’d been really looking forward to the conference since it’s a chance to talk about Mateo (always a fun topic!) with some people who spend a good portion of his day with him–Mateo’s special friend, Jessica, and the site supervisor, Mary.  (At Hill and Dale each child is in a group of 6 kids assigned to one teacher–the special friend.  Mateo is in the Purple Dragonflies group led by Jessica.)

The family conference started out with Mary showing Mateo a little chair at low table with a snack, milk in a tiny metal pitcher, a small empty glass, and some toys.  Mary told Mateo this was a conference all about him and that he could ask questions or say anything he wanted to say.  I don’t know how much Mateo understood of that, but he definitely understood that it was snack time!  He sat down, poured his milk from the pitcher into the glass (without spilling a drop!) and got started on the munchies.  After that, Mateo just played with toys (both on the table and all around the room) while the rest of us talked about how Mateo’s doing at home and at school.

Jessica and Mary had so much to say that it’s impossible to repeat it all, but here are some highlights.  First of all, Mateo has hit all the milestones for his age-range in every category–social, fine motor, gross motor, etc.  On the age development scoring guide Jessica completed for Mateo, he got the best score possible.  So all is good with Mateo’s development.

In addition, Jessica filled us in on Mateo’s social life at school.  She says that he’s both good at working independently and also enjoys playing with the other kids.  She says when a kid cries, Mateo will come over and try to comfort the child by rubbing his back–even if Mateo was all the way on the other side of the play yard and had nothing to do with why the child was crying.

Jessica also said that Mateo enjoys looking at books and often takes a book up to the top of the loft to read there.  That is totally how I spent my  afterschool daycare hours–up in the loft reading.  It’s too adorable that Mateo enjoys that too!  Apparently the daycare has books everywhere–in the reading area, but also in the pretend areas and even outside.  That’s wonderful!

In terms of language, Jessica says that Mateo speaks Spanish at the lunch table and when Jessica or the other teachers talk to him in Spanish.  She says he’s also speaking English more, though his English isn’t always as easy to understand as his Spanish.

Jessica and Mary also talked about how we could address some difficulties we’re beginning to see with Mateo at home.  In the past few days, when he’s been frustrated, he’s started to throw whatever he’s frustrated with across the room–whether it’s food or toys.  They said at Hill n Dale, if a child throws something as an experiment (what happens if I throw this block?), they say, “it looks like you want to throw things–here, throw this ball because it’s safe to throw; the block isn’t safe”.  If the child throws something out of anger or frustration, then they take it away–and the next time they tell the child, “remember you couldn’t play with this yesterday because you threw it so today play with it like this”.

There’s so much more to say, but in the end it was a really enjoyable and useful conference.  We are delighted with Hill & Dale and Mateo loves it too–now he runs to school in the morning and he says a quick and happy goodbye when we leave.  Apparently other kids like Mateo, too: I happened to be talking to a different mom this morning and when she found out Mateo was my son, she said that her daughter talked about Mateo all the time at home and looked forward to seeing him at school!

Mateo learned his first French word this morning.  I was singing Belle’s opening song from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (the one that begins “Little town, it’s a quiet village…”) and Mateo loved the part where everybody says bonjour!  Mateo was also saying bonjour, bonjour, bonjour!  He had me sing it four times in a row this morning–something that’s a bit easier to do since I only remember the very beginning of the song.

you may need to turn up your volume…

Whenever we’re in the car, Mateo orders his music by number. He’s learned that this children’s music CD is in slot 2 in our 6-disk changer, and so often before getting in the car — or while in it already — he starts telling us “dos, dos, dos, dos” until we change the changer to slot 2, and his favorite song on that disk starts. It happens to be “Had a Little Rooster” which is track 1 on that disk.

He also knows other disks in the changer. Slot 3 has Birdie’s Playhouse. Slot 5 has a Spanish language children’s music disk. Slot 6 has a song sampler by Laurie Berkner (his favorite on this disk: “We Are the Dinosaurs”, which is track 2). Slot 4 contains some instrumental guitar music, and he never orders that. Slot 1 contains the soundtrack to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s musical episode “Once More, With Feeling” — Mateo doesn’t care much for the music, but he knows that slot 1 contains something called “Buffy”, and sometimes asks for it by that name. We oblige.

Interestingly enough, we thought it’d cause a lot of confusion if we moved the disks around in any way at all. So we haven’t. But Linda’s parents also have a Prius, and also have a CD changer, and even also have the same children’s music album as what we have in slot 2…. except for theirs is in slot 1. Mateo was horribly confused about things when in their car, since he kept asking for “dos” but we kept playing “uno”, and he kept asking for 6 but we kept telling him there was no 6 in that car… *sigh*. Life is tough as a little kid. I don’t think he understood, in the end.