Dear Matteo, 45 Months Old

I got to witness your first F bomb at the ripe age of 3 and a half. It was epic and memorable for so many reasons.

We were halfway through a ski day, riding up the Discovery Chair together at Crystal Mountain. The lift runs parallel to a small jump park and provides some entertainment on the ride up as novice skiers and snowboarders throw small tricks and, more often than not, crash.

We saw one snowboarder land a 360 spin off a jump and yell “Fuck yeah!” in bro-ish celebration.

“That guy said, ‘Fuck yeah,” you turned and told me, in curious reaction.

Yep, he said “Huck yeah,” I replied, in parental overcorrection and appropriately inspired by the Matchstick Productions ski film of the same family-friendly name.

“No, he said ‘Fuck yeah.’ Like Ffff,” you rebutted. “What does that mean?”

“Well, you have your helmet on so it’s hard to hear,” I said. “So anyway, he said ‘Huck yeah’ and it means totally awesome!”

You finally relented: “Huck yeah. Awesome! Huck yeah.”

That was a special father-son bonding experience.

What has me saying “What the huck” recently is your silly, primal tendency to hide and eat snacks.

I know your metabolism is off the charts, but on top of the 2,000 calories you eat a day in front of us, you have gotten into the habit of stealing “mommy bars” (Larabars), Clif Kids bars and any form of candy from cabinets, purses and backpacks and eat them in hiding for an extra 500 to 1,000 calories. We only find the wrappers as evidence.

I understand why you take them. You get hangry before any meal time and can’t wait long enough for cooked food. You let us know about your hunger by grumpy comments and wildly swinging arms and legs, before your snack espionage. Of course, that snack appetizer makes you a poor eater at mealtimes, causing you to be hungry again later and continuing the virtuous cycle of snacking.

This is all about timing, and we’ll get your body clock calibrated for normal meals soon enough. Until then, huck it. Enjoy your snacks.

Love, Dad

Dear Eliza, 65 Months Old

One of my favorite books is The Giving Tree. It's about a tree that gives and gives at every life stage of a boy's life until there's nothing left of the tree but a stump for an old man to sit on.

A house is like a tree. You take a lot from it. You learn a lot from it. It outlasts you.

The first home that your Mom and I owned was at 1002 North Oakes in Tacoma. So help me God, I hope whenever you read this letter, that house isn't torn down and turned into a multi-unit. I’d rather it be a stump.

The house was built by Canadian Henry Choinere, who purchased the land in 1903 and completed the house in 1904. The house exchanged many hands a hundred years before we found it, right after the Great Recession and huge collapse of the real estate market between 2008 and 2012. It felt risky to buy it at the time in 2009 for $235,000.

Your Mom and I sort of grew up in the house. We grew from carefree 20-somethings into semi-responsible adults. We lived through life stages.

We got engaged and came back to that house. We got married in Indiana, flew to Costa Rica to honeymoon and came back to that house. We learned about failed pregnancies and returned to that house. We adopted our first dog Gianna and lost her in that house. We were chicken farmers right outside that house. We threw parties in that house, great Halloween parties with an orange room for photos. We lived with your uncle Sergio for four years in that house and watched him grow up, too.

We brought you home from the hospital to that house.

We lived through amazing moments for the first time as parents with you in that house. Restless nights. Poopy diapers. More poopy diapers. Watching you laugh for the first time in the living room. Watching you roll over. Watching you crawl. Watching you stumble. Watching you walk and run. We brought your brother home to that house.

And then we realized we're all getting too big, too fast, and faster than the house could keep up — despite all the love and upgrades and money we put into that house. You better believe that we left that house way better than we found it.

The house taught us a lot of lessons along the way. How to paint. How to pay contractors. How to fix busted pipes in the winter. How to fix and replace toilets. How to build decks. How to landscape. How to kill grass accidentally. How to take down gigantic hedges. How to pick contractors for an expensive bathroom addition. How to refinish cabinets. How to pay IKEA to redo those cabinets you painted and refinished.

As it turns out, the house has one more lesson for us: how to let go.

I had a little time in the house a couple nights before we put it on the market. I was packing the last of our personal items out to the garage to ready the house for furniture staging and photos the next day. Looking into that bare, beautiful 1,475 square-foot house, I felt appreciative. Then I felt overwhelmed. I hugged the walls and said thank you. I walked in each and every room and said thank you out loud.

And then, I Iet go.

Love, Dad

Dear Matteo, 44 Months Old

I don’t remember the house my parents brought me home to in Des Moines. I don’t remember the apartment after that and only start to have some memories from a house in Renton that we moved into when I was around age 5.

Similarly, you probably won’t remember the first home we brought you to in Tacoma where you’ve spent your first three and a half years. Your Mom and I will have fond memories from our 12 years in the house and have photos from nearly every day of it. We’ll have plenty of stories for you about how you evolved from rolling over in that house to jumping across its living room like a wild cat.

We decided a few weeks ago to put the house on the market and find the next home — the one you will mostly likely, pending other unforeseen circumtances, call “the home you grew up in.” Future letters will report back on how all of that unfolds.

Why the move? To keep it simple, we could use more space for you two growing kids. Let’s also face the fact that your Mom loves window shopping houses online, and this is her chance to carpe diem. It took me some time (years) to figure out that she liked to go to open houses for fun without much serious interest. I did not enjoy all of the pressure of thinking about real estate on a random Sunday morning while walking through a stranger’s house, but I guess you can enjoy any sort of sport without intending to play along yourself.

Well, this time we’re in the ring. The housing market is really favorable for a sale. People work a lot to make money with their time, but also you have assets, like a house, that can appreciate in value. This is a good moment for us all to get a little more space and change our surroundings. We will talk about all of these adult details about home ownership and financial investments many years from now for your own self interests.

We will likely move within a 20 minute drive from our current house. We won’t stray far and will keep a slice of ourselves connected to this city where you and Eliza were born and we became a family. We will still come back to a lot of your favorite places, including Point Defiance, the Tacoma waterfront, UPS and Pao’s Donuts. We will visit all of your friends (once the pandemic vaccines really roll out). We’ll also get to explore a lot of new surroundings wherever we find our next house.

Moves like this are sort of a big deal. Most people only change houses up to a few times in their childhood and adult lives. You may tend to move around a lot between college and finding your lot in life. I think your Mom and I are doing a good job packing things up, staying sane and only being slighly reliant on your screen time to get us through some hours of the day.

I think we’re also doing a good job looking forward. There’s a lot to look back and be sentimental about. We will find those moments. But in a house that is 117 years old, we’re one of many families and people who have their own memories. We are leaving the house in amazing condition for the next owners. As is often the case, if you leave something better than you found it, you’ve done it the right way.

Love, Dad

Dear Eliza, 64 Months Old

It snowed! Your Mom loves true seasons. She’s disappointed when the moderate Pacific Northwest doesn’t provide hot summers and snowy winters. Well, this is your time, Amanda!

We’ve spent the past couple of days frolicking around the yard and neighborhood, enjoying all that is magical about snow in the lowlands. After the first dump of nearly half a foot, we got out in the morning for sledding (you kids and Mom) and skiing (me). I skied North 29th Street hill a few times and even got a neighborhood shuttle back up for a final run. The community really comes out with the snow hits.

We stopped at Nicole and Caleb’s on the way back so you could play with your school pod friends. The next day, Zach and Holly came over with their kids for an outdoor firepit hangout. It’s nice to see more friends (outside) where the pandemic has otherwise left us inside and keeping to ourselves.

Oh, we also had some work to do shoveling snow. That’s the thing about snow in town. It’s hard play and hard work. You and Matteo were all in on the shoveling though. It wasn’t super effective, but I appreciated the effort.

You have been totally elated by the snow days. I should also mention you wished for the snow in advance, upon seeing the forecasts on the local news, and credit yourself for making the snow happen. I guess I should say thanks! You so believe this dynamic that you also convined Matteo that you hold the power to all weather. You two were in a scuffle later and he said something about how you need to stop wishing for snow so he can play baseball outside. It was one of those moments as a parent when you break up a fight while holding a laugh.

In between all the snow play and celebration, you’ve been playing a lot of pretend: acting like a cat or setting up mouse traps with building blocks and baskets. You have the food chain in the right order.

I should also mention it’s been a celebration-filled week. We enjoyed a very low key Valentine’s Day (Dad excuse: snow), which was the same day as Greta’s 7th birthday. Your Mom only remembered in the final hours. I wasn’t too concerned about disappointing her. A snowy birthday is inherently the best birthday. Your Grandma Vicki also turned the big 6-0 and is celebrating in style in Lake Chelan.

Despite a generally chill winter (pun intended), it’s nice to have a few calendar days to celebrate and look forward to. Of course, I get to celebrate being your Dad every day.

Love, Dad

Dear Matteo, 43 Months Old

We’re still living in the hybrid-imaginary world of Gita and Gata. Most mornings wake up and tell us about the island they live on, their blue house and meanderings that I assume to be dreams from the previous night. I tried to throw you off the other day by telling you I was going to visit them. Unphased, you asked if you could come and penciled out a map for how to get to their house in 10 hours. I decided that was too long to drive.

You are becoming very animated in your communications. A lot of body language. Very Italian. When you agree to something you enthusiastically say, “Yessah!” The rise in the “ah” at the end is a dialect of your own creation. You also continue to keep a song in your heart and created your own song the other day for Greta. You sang over and over, “Sweetie, I love you. Sweetie, I love you.” It’s February and you must be feeling those Valentine’s vibes already.

Despite your serenade to Greta, you continue to be a little too rough with the dog. You give her a lot of body check, a hard fur tug or just directly try to stick your fingers in her eyes, ears and nose. I get in your own face when I see it. I need no further evidence that dog is an angel because she has not once showed her teeth to warn you off. She sometimes groans out of annoyance and scurries away, but that’s it. And you persist. I wish I had the same patience as Greta because walking away and removing attention from bad behavior is the “right” way to change it. This also proves that Greta is older, in dog years, and much more mature than I am.

Despite some pet misbehavior, you have told us that you want to be an animal doctor when you grow up, and I can see it. You do love Greta and all animals. When I was your age I enjoyed digging up and collecting (read: killing) bugs in a bin and even remember playing animal hospital, turning stuffed animals into patients. That obviously didn’t become my calling later in life, but it did instill a real love and empathy for animals. It’s simply true that no one will be excited to see you after an hour or a week away than a dog. As with most relationships, the more you give, the more you get back.

If you don’t believe me, just ask Gita and Gata.

Love, Dad