Dear Matteo, 69 Months Old

Here we are, in Fort Wayne again for Easter.

It’s been well over a year since we visited, and Easter seems to be the sweet spot with weather and Spring Break at school. We tried to make a trip earlier in the year, but the winter weather wasn’t cooperating.

It’d been a little too long since our last visit, and your young mind didn’t remember the house. Of course, you can get comfortable quickly and aren’t intimidated by seeing Grammie with her oxygen nose tubes that help her since one of her cancerous lungs failed.

I’m amazed and shouldn’t be surprised by how you and Eliza can quickly entertain yourselves in a new environment. Eliza found an old doll in a wicker box that she named Lisa and has drug around with her everywhere. Your Mom bought you a football that we’ve spent hours throwing and kicking. It all goes to show that you don’t need much in life to have fun. Perhaps the less you have, the more imaginative you are for the better.

Once again, we had an Easter egg hunt, and the Easter Bunny was flush with cash this year. You and Eliza each found eggs totally $44. I have no idea why you hit that unround number. The ATMs must be different out here.

Your Mom is also having a good time and started with a bang. At the car rental facility, she coyly suggested we upgrade from a small SUV to a more fancy Lincoln Navigator and negotiated a remarkable discount for us with the willing Enterprise employee. We are riding in style this trip! Otherwise, she’s helping organize and disgard around the house, as she usually does. On our rides around the city, she points out houses where her friends grew up, and many of their parents haven’t moved.

Ty, Amber, Abby, and Mason visited over the weekend. You got your share of time playing football and soccer with Mason and Abby, who ran you ragged. Or maybe vice-versa. Your Popa Roger sat on the porch most of the day to take it all in — the rare occassion that the extended family is together. That doesn’t happen so often, neither good or bad. The reality is that distance and life stage keeps us apart, and that will continue as your cousins mature into independent adults. What matters is that we enjoy the time when we have it.

Your Mom and Uncle Ty also prove that you can stay close even when the visits are infrequent. That is one of the most important and underappreciated qualities to build. Fortunately, you can see how that’s done first-hand here in Indiana.

Love, Dad

Dear Eliza, 89 Months Old

Last night we went to Bella Bella beach to catch the sunset. These winter days are getting a little warmer and a little longer, so we put on our puffies to head to the beach after dinner at your Mom’s suggestion. As you know we’re locked in by trees at our house(s), so horizons take effort.

Automatically, you grabbed your circa-2013 Sony Cybershot camera, checked the batteries, and stashed it in your pocket.

We are a lot alike and nothing proves that to me more than your art and taking up phorography with gusto. You have asked for your own camera since you could talk. We got you a "little kid" camera at first, but it wasn't great. What it did in durability didn’t make up for the lack of pixels. You asked for a Polaroid camera but that paper is expensive, so I graduated you to the Sony, which was a handheld marvel in its day. Now it's worth about $30 on eBay.

You've since been running around with camera and taking selfies with you friends. For events like our sunset beach walk, you pay attention to the details and capture them: a dog’s footprints, a stranded starfish, a stork that you chase for several minutes at a time. You run over and playback the pictures with a big grin as we look at the imperfectly perfect short series.

I uploaded the first batch of your images from these past months to our Google Photos account so we can always and easily access them. It’s fun seeing our world from your point-of-view, and I trust I’ll get to see more and more of that. Just keep shooting.

Love, Dad

Dear Matteo, 68 Months Old

Our vacation schedule is heavily influenced by the school calendar these days. We spent our mid-winter break in Palm Springs visiting Gigi, who has been slowed by some heart valve issues in recent weeks. Thankfully, she returned to playing tennis while we were there.

I’m glad we made the usual visit, but it was a lot colder than we expected. Sure, we had the desirable 75-and-sunny weather, but we also had some days in the days in the 60s and a high winds day. That all made for a couple fewer pool days than we expected and a little more time at The Living Desert Zoo, where we once again have an annual pass. It is nice to walk the zoo and not have to hunt for shade. We also had more comfortable late morning hikes up to the cross. The weather was so bonkers that we drove through snow on the way from Palm Desert to Ontario airport.

That flight home, by the way, was an absolute haul. We got to the airport just fine but our incoming plane was struck by lightning, so our flight was delayed and eventually cancelled, or so we thought. Lightning strikes are common, as I learned from some quick online research. Most commercial planes are struck by lightning once or twice per year! You and I spent the delay time at the airport throwing a soft football. The gate area gave us a solid 50-feet to throw back and forth and you have an arm now to cover that length with accuracy.

We rescheduled to fly out the next morning and took our free hotel stay and food vouchers. By the time we got to the hotel and walked across the parking lot to a Denny’s knock-off, we checked the flight schedules and learned our flight was never actually cancelled. At that same time, I saw open seats on a flight later that night, so we checked out of the hotel and headed back to the airport. We made the flight.

Door to door, it was a 14-hour travel day. You and Eliza were champs. Good news: that’s about as long as we’ll take to get to Europe in the spring. In that light, this was just good practice.

Love, Dad

Dear Eliza, 88 Months Old

Last time I wrote you, we were hoping to get those loose front teeth moving out. So far, one down one to go. You got the first tooth out while watching a movie and gripping it with some toilet paper. For some odd reason you decided to finish the job inside a nearby cardboard box for some privacy. After a few short minutes, we heard a squeal and you emerged like a butterfly out of a coccoon. But instead of new wings, you had a new hole in your mouth.

The remaining tooth isn’t moving out so much as moving up. The new tooth is pushing your old tooth forward and nearly horizontal now. I’ve given it a couple good tugs, but we’re not near the finish line. I hope it happens soon for the sake of removing that small dagger of a tooth pointing out.

This week, we are back in one of your favorite places in the world: Palm Desert. We’re spending mid-winter break with Grams here. So far it’s been cool, not quite 70 degrees, but that didn’t stop you and Matteo from a first 4-hour pool day. The temps will get into the 70s starting today, and that will get me and your Mom in the pool, too. We’re used to warmer temps because we usually come down here on the shoulder seasons late March or October. We were supposed to be here in October but yours truly caught COVID, so this is our reschedule. We’re also not used to the Deep Canyon community being so busy. The seniors here are rarely in the pool but are always in the hot tubs.

The agenda here will be our usual jam: zoo trips, pool days, tennis (more like open batting cages at this age), and hiking up to the cross. I was ready for a family vacation again. It came at the cost of missing pajama day at school and we’ll have to agree to disagree that it was worth the trade off.

Love, Dad

Dear Matteo, 67 Months Old

In your most frustrated moments you like to say, “I have the worst ideas!” and “My ideas are always so bad.”

We all self-pout and doubt, and I’ll tell you here like I tell you in-person: you have a lot of great ideas, and it’s all about when and how you make them happen.

For example, suggesting that it’s time for dessert is a great idea, just not before dinnertime. Asking to build Legos or make a smoothie an hour past your bedtime are also poorly-timed, good ideas. Putting your fingers forcefully inside Luna’s mouth is never a good idea and that’s why you have bite marks. Sometime you have to take more than a hint.

Now let’s talk about some great ideas you’ve had lately.

You decided to play basketball and are a top player on the court at all times. Your Mom’s Hoosier vibes come out and she loves it. I have accepted that the basketball Saturday games conflict with ski season, or I keep telling myself that.

You decided to stop playing baseball despite your awesome eye-hand coordination and monster throwing arm, but I appreciate the early-in-life prioritization.

You want to ski higher and explore more of the mountain on our ski days. I love this! This past weekend, you and your sister skied more runs off the gondola than any other lift at Crystal Mountain, which means you can ski most of the resort now with regularly scheduled hot chocolate and food breaks.

I’ll help you continue to place your good ideas at the right place and time. In turn, I hope that you start to consider some of my ideas as good, too. That starts with going to bed on time. That’s always the best idea.

Love, Dad