Down South

To indulge Nico while he's away (yes, again!) in Chengdu, here's a picture fest of our little guy.

We had a tough first week without Daddy.  Mati, like never before, pulled tantrum after tantrum.  He tested my patience to the limit!!  Fortunately, his temper mellowed out when we went "Down South" to Orange County to visit my family and my grandma who's in town from Mexico.  Much like in the Dominican Republic over the Christmas break, Mateo had a great time with his extended family.  He enjoyed his time with his grandmas: playing and walking around the hood with them, relishing his Abuelita Geno's mexican cooking and just being silly with them.  My sister and brother were also there.  We took him to Downtown Disney one evening and we went into the Disney Store where Mati went absolutely crazy with all the stuffed animals.  He didn't know which one to hold and was just so overly happy that it almost made me buy him all the stuffed animals.  But then his techy nerdy side took over and he was thrilled playing with the buttons and lights of swords and some twirly thing.  To top off the night, he saw fireworks for the first time!!

I took him to the Discovery Science Museum where we went into a wind tunnel and experienced winds of up to 78 miles/hr, sat in a booth that simulated a 6.4 earthquake, saw a tiger exhibition, flew a model plane, and saw a Clifford exhibition (again!).  I also took him to Disneyland.  It might have been a little too early for him to go but he still had fun riding the planes and trains and driving the cars (we did that about 4 times!).  He behaved extremely well despite the long waiting times and the heat of 80F.  For the first time he ate macaroni and cheese (Nico said I had to make him try it at least once in his life, so this was it) and helped me eat my french fries with ketchup and mustard.  We indulged later in the afternoon with a vanilla ice cream with hot fudge chocolate.   We stayed until 5pm and 3 minutes into our car ride, Mati was fast asleep in his car seat.

Besides his brief tantrum phase, Mati is also in a building blocks phase.  He is fascinated with building towers and does it with his cars, with his food, and now with the blocks my sister and brother used to play with when they were toddlers!  He is also in a climbing and singing phase - he loves to sing along to songs on the radio or on iTunes and recognizes a lot of them just from hearing them in the car, for example.

And his talking continues ...  When my mom asked him where Nico was, he answered, "In Chengdu, seeing pandas."  What innocence, I'm sure Nico would love it if those 3 weeks in Chengdu were just about seeing pandas!!  And then today, as we were walking on the street, he saw on overweight man and said to me, "That man is fat."  I truly hope the man didn't understand Spanish and if he did, that he didn't understand Mati's Spanish!! 

This is how Mati spent most of his afternoon in Orange - in his underwear, running around the pool and kicking balls.

Excited to see the fireworks!!

Climbing up to grab more stuffed animals ... with so many to choose from, which one to hold???

Playing legos with his Tia and Tio 

He asked me to take this picture of him for Nico to see.  He even said "Cheese".

In the happiest place on Earth!

He asks for his glasses all the time now, even if they bend his little ears! :(

The highlight of the day: meeting Pluto!!

Hard day's work ...