December, you were awesome

Oh, December - you were both hectic and relaxing - jam-packed and blissfully empty.  I loved you especially this year!!

The first week full week of December kicked off Nutcracker MADNESS...the culmination of two months of Saturday rehearsals for Lily.  Thursday was dress rehearsal, followed by the premiere on Friday, two shows on Saturday and two more on Sunday (all at the school's space).  The following week there was yet another dress rehearsal on Thursday, a walk-through at the Leo K theater at the Seattle Center that Friday, and then two more shows at the theater on Saturday.  It was exhausting and poor Lily stated she didn't want to be in the show again the next year....yet despite that she tried her absolute best every performance and was the Bon Bon with the biggest jumps and brightest smile.  We were so very proud of her that Chris busted out the Lionel train set he'd gotten her and Matteo for Christmas the first week of the shows.  Lily was THRILLED and Matteo was completely enthralled.  Almost a bit too much - she didn't want to leave the rec room and just wanted to play trains while Matteo effectively turned Chris into a train-watching-barcalounger.  By the end of the month the train passion had manifested into an actual full-size train table in the basement, which Lily greeted with a delighted "Oooohhhh!"  Yep, it's official.  We're a train family.

While Lily was wowing us with her dance moves, Matteo took another big leap forward with development.  As we've mentioned, we knew he'd be a late-talker, but this month he decided to add a few more to his repertoire.  He now says "hiiiii!" to absolutely *everyone* in the grocery store, calls Paco "paaackO", says "thank you" (or a variation thereof) when given food/drink/etc, "bow" for bowl (as in - do you need a fresh one? - our code for diaper changes), and to our delight and surprise he says "agua" whenever the faucet turns on.  There are both pros and cons to bilingual education...the pro being bilingual kids, the con being not necessarily understanding what their first words are.  Lucky for me he grasped an easy one I understand!   

Matteo is such a fun little boy - so loving, quick to smile, adventurous and clever.  He still loves playing peek and melts my heart into a puddle every time he covers his eyes with his wee hands, then whips them down with a huge "ta-da!" smile on his face...and when Chris says "it's time to puff up!" and he runs over to get his jacket and hat on...or when he brings us said jacket/hat and shoes/socks, then marches to the door, looking at us expectantly like "ok, I'm ready for adventure, let's go!"...or when he proudly shows his beebo...or when he runs to me with his head upturned with a huge smile and those gorgeous long lashes almost touching his eyebrows...or when he saw me walk in with a Dick's bag, turned and beelined to his chair and tried to climb in....and even when he gets to his classroom and wriggles away from me to he can throw himself into the arms of his teacher for his daily abrazos (although post vacation he is instead burying his face in my knees...I'd MUCH rather be a little jealous of his love for the Senoritas than have him be sad to see me go!).  Of course with the good comes the embarrassing, but that's all part of childhood, right?  Like when he was soooo mad to leave Lily's classroom that he lay down in the hall and screamed bloody murder while scooting around in a circle (thankfully his only audience were other parents who hopefully remembered what the toddlers years are like), or when he brings me his lonchera at pick up, opens it looking for an after-school snack, doesn't find one to his liking and goes to stand in a corner, back to me, refusing to leave the classroom.  I know those last two are ones I will one day laugh at, so all in all I am very blessed I get to see this this person develop - warts and all.


The silver lining to all the Nutcracker craziness is that I got to spend a ton of 1:1 time with Lily during the Leo K weekend.  Between performances we had lunch in Queen Anne and on Sunday we went to see the PNB version.  She was very disappointed that rather than coming out of Madam Bon Bon's dress, the kids in "her part" came out of a little house.  As punishment she opted not to clap for them.  Apart from that, it was fantastic and I got extra time to appreciate all the special things about her.  How she now points out the letters for everything "c is for candy...s is for sand...w is for water), how intensely she can focus, concentrate and stay engaged with both her dance and her art (we gave her an unfinished Nutcracker after the last performance and she sat and decorated the whole thing in an epic 90-minute stretch AFTER a very full day), how charming, funny, quick to laugh and eager she is for others to laugh with her, how she embraces life and has an energy and spirit that is so very infectious and lovely.




And of course there was Christmas - the big show.  Matteo naturally preferred Paco's new tennis ball to anything we had carefully researched and bought for him, Lily is playing with Matteo's Magna Tiles more than the gymnastics Dora she was soooo adamant about (this is actually a good thing), we had smoked goose at Mary and Guillaume's, and followed that with few days playing in the Suncadia snow - what more could we ask for?  Maybe some funny quotes....

Me:  Come on, you're a silver medal now, one more bite and you'll be a gold medal eater! Lily - I want to be bronze 

Chris: Oh man, Matteo had a full load!  Lily: Did he have a masterpiece?
Chris, riffing on That's Not My Reindeer: That's your mommy - her hair is SO curly...That's your daddy - his stache is SO creepy (funny but true....his Movember 'stache started too look like a biker version of the Lorax...so much so he kept getting stopped at Lily's school)


Me, picking Lily up after a performance: Did they redo your hair? They do it so much better than I do. Lily, in a conciliatory tone: They said you're getting better 


Lily, the morning of my birthday: Happy birthday dear mama
Happppy birthday dear monkeys
Woowoo
Aye-Ya!



Here's to a healthy, happy 2013 - can't wait to see what happens next!