6 Months of Mateo Madness

It has actually been over 6 months, but we just saw the pediatrician for the 6 mo. check-up and so the milestone seems more official.

Mateo is quite a big little man, in the 90th percentile for height and the 75th for weight. Approximately 10 kilos of love. Much more importantly, however, he is 100% smiles, curiosity, energy, happy noise-maker and bringer-of-joy in our lives. We thank God every day for his enormous generosity with us.

News hour with Grandfather.


Grey sweatsuit love.


Talking with his dad.


Monopolizing lunchtime conversation. Again.

Life is good.

Really?

The boy who tries to put everything into his mouth.

Oh, that face!

This has been Mateo's favorite expression--used to communicate everything from happiness and excitement to confusion, playfulness and explosions of wonder-- for the past two weeks and we can already see him moving on to more varied, but certainly not more versatile, planes of facial expression. So, this post is merely for the sake of remembering this bitty bean's lovely stage of no-lipped smiling:

P.S. I see quite clearly that I have become that mom who can't quite suppress the urge to keep talking about all of the details and delights of her child's development. I am okay with this.

94 and Counting...

Happy 94th birthday to our dear (great-) Grandfather, Roberto. A baby who wasn't expected to even survive the train ride home from the hospital with his mother, Roberto has surpassed all expectations and carries almost a century worth of stories illustrating just how very fully he has lived since the 23rd of January, 1915, growing up as a mischievous son of a clock-maker in a small town in the mountains of northern Spain where his parents'-aunts'-and-uncles' homes occupied 6 consecutive blocks on the main street of town, becoming a member of a bicycle brigade during the Spanish Civil War, wearing a shirt and tie every single day of his adult life thereafter (as his father did before him), driving as a chauffeur in post-war Madrid, dining hot chocolate and churros every Thursday and Sunday for the past six decades, and much, much more, all culminating in his claim to fame as the person who most automatically and fulminantly draws wonder and laughter from his 6 month-old great-grandson. Abuelito, we salute you!

T.G.I.F.

Mateo working on his feet, a new favorite activity.


This little logger always has something to say.

A Happy Birthday, Indeed

Thank you for the beautiful flowers, Mom. 28 feels sweet as pie.

Milestones, Presidential and Otherwise

This is an image I will forever associate with watching Obama's Presidential Inauguration on television. With Mateo's 6-month birthday upon us, he is just about in full control of the monumental sitting position. He has quite obviously already mastered, however, the "comfortably slouched" position and use of the arm rest. Honestly, someone get this kid a beer.

Mateo was about as excited as I was moved by Aretha Franklin's rendition of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee."

With a new American president afar and Mateo's great-great-great-Grandfather looking over our shoulders.