Dear Matteo, 79 Months Old

After the long wait and watching Eliza accumulate cash from her tooth fairy, you’re finally losing some teeth.

You’ve had a few bottom teeth come in behind your baby teeth, creating shark-like rows, but the first tooth finally came out with little drama. Unlike your sister, you’re willing to work your loose teeth back and forth and have no hesitation to give them a solid yank.

Eliza established that every child has their own unique tooth fairy, resulting in a large fairy universe. You excitedly placed your first lost tooth under your pillow and wrote a note:

“Hi Tooth Fairy. Can I have a rainbow and gold Pokemon card?”

The tooth fairy didn’t have Pokemon cards, but delivered some cash. I remained shocked that the going rate for a tooth in 2024 is $5. Talk about inflation.

Your tooth fairy also left a note and identified himself as Trent. Eliza was right about the personal tooth fairy assignments.

Aside from this exciting development, you’ve been having a great winter. We’ve got you playing basketball, and you’re scoring 4-6 points per game. You prefer to dribble left-handed for some reason, and we won’t stop you until you realize you’re right-handed yourself.

I’m glad we’ve got basketball going because the ski season has been dreadful. Too warm, too dry. We’ve pushed to get up the mountain anyway to make the most of our season’s passes. You’re progressing technique, skiing your first black diamonds on an icy West Face (Uncle Scott calls it “Colface") and Middle Ferks (also called “Iceberg.”). You’re linking parallel turns incredibly well and sporting a great attitude. You seem to ski better on the harder, steeper runs. On that West Face run, you took a spill and Uncle Scott caught you from sliding 50-60 yards. You got right back up and finished the run without worry. Other kids would have froze in fear or initimidation, but that’s not you. Instead, you complained that we didn’t ski it again. Ha!

Don’t worry you’ve got many more black diamonds to ski and teeth to lose, hopefully never at the same time.

Love, Dad

Dear Eliza, 99 Months Old

When the lights go out, turn them off like Grams. We lost her earlier this month, and she went out the way she wanted: quickly, peacefully and after two active decades of retirement.

Grams lived the western Americana dream. Born in Nebraska and raised in Missouri, her mother died when she was young, so she was independent at the start. She worked at a diner on Route 66 before heading west for work with her first husband. She had two daughters, divorced, and met Gramps, who famously took a newer drug called "Valium" on their wedding day to help take the edge off marrying into the young family. He had a great time.

They had two more girls, including my Mom, who they raised in the greater Seattle area. Grams worked her way up to eventually out-earn Gramps in her later years as a collections manager for Gai's Bakery and then Carnation and judged local restaurants based upon their accounting as much as their menu.

Grams is a retirement legend, living the past 20+ years at Deep Canyon Tennis Club in Palm Desert and the last 10+ since Gramps passed. I visited often over my adulthood, crashing with them for Coachella concerts, bringing friends, babymooning with Amanda, and visiting "Gigi" with the kids these recent years. All the while, she played tennis with the men's teams like the "The Motley Crew," and hit the gym weekly. She color coordinated all wardrobes from tennis visor to shoes, of which she owned 120 pairs. She danced and partied hard, including this past New Year's Eve, just days before she passed.

Grams loved you very, very much. I remember how excited she was for Mom and I to become parents, and we babymooned in Palm Desert before you were born. She loved holding you as a baby and as a “bigger kid” she helped outfit you at the tennis club with those matching outfits. You especially took to those tennis visors for a mature look, and she was impressed by your immediate knack for hitting the ball. I am glad you got to have a relationship with Grams and though you probably won’t remember much of it, I want you to know that you brought her so much joy. We’ve got a lot of great photos and videos to look back on and remember her together.

Love,
Dad

Dear Matteo, 78 Months Old

Pokemon was the word this past holiday season. As a kid, I remember cycling slowly through Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and eventually into video gaming as an adolescent. Through my adult eyes, it seems like you’re flying from monster trucks to Hot Wheels and now balancing between Legos and Pokemon, but especially Lego figures in the likeness of Pokemon.

Grandma Vicki got you (read: me) a high-difficulty Pikachu Pokemon Lego set for Christmas, and you and I spend a culmulative number of days building the set, which we still haven’t finished weeks later. The body is complete, but we haven’t started Pikachu’s head. We could be done by now if it weren’t for you receiving even more Lego sets, including more in the Pokemon category.

I am familiar with Pokemon because Zio Sergio came up with them at a kid, but I don’t quite “get it.” I definitely do not understand the game itself and can’t track with the universe and value of the cards, monetary or for the game itself.

Because I support any of your hobbies, I took you to a dedicated Pokemon store in downtown Tacoma called Metro Retro so you could spend some allowance (a new system we implemented last month where you and Eliza could earn up to $5 each weekly for chores and some personal hygiene). We spent a solid 45 minutes in the store as you paced, overwhelmed, between walls of high-value ($15-$500+) cards and action figures. We spent the most time scanning through boxes of cheaper cards ($0.50-$3) and you eventually decided on three V-Max cards you could afford. You left on a lottery-ticket winning high with cards in hand.

You’ve since been trading the cards with friends, to mixed results. The collective Dads observe and oversee the process to make sure no one cries or is disappointed, although no one of any age can decipher value other than if the card has some kind of hologram effect.

My role in this all is making sure you take care of the things you like and find valuable and have bought you some card books and cases to help keep things in good shape. The card book itself can keep you busy for hours and you reorganize the cards in categories neither you or I can explain.

Oh, and I’m also the designated Lego builder and rebuilder (in the case something goes wrong). You do your fair share but take breaks and delegate some of the harder steps to me. If you want to hang out like that, I’ll keep snapping the pieces into place.

Love, Dad

Dear Eliza, 98 Months Old

We all like to ring in the Christmas spirit in our own way.

This year, I put on the Buddy the Elf costume (a big hit), and Mom dressed up as Jovie for an “elf date” around Gig Harbor. Let’s be honest, we were attracting attention as we ran around Gig Harbor’s coffee shops and grocery stores to help bring some Christmas cheer. It was so fun, and your mom got a lot of compliments that she makes a great-looking blonde. I can’t argue with that.

We also stopped by your elementary school to bring sweets to the front office and more Christmas cheer to the students. I was surprised by how many students knew Elf movie lines and recited them on the spot, like, “Buddy the Elf, what’s your favorite color?” I also jumped into a game of football at recess and made a catch for a 5-yard gain.

Mom and I stopped by your classroom, and you looked at us quickly, smiled, and looked right back at your teacher, as if we disappeared — or maybe you wished it, ha! I get it. Parents are embarrassing enough in front of your friends without being in an elf costume. Unfortunately, you have some pretty outgoing parents, so you’re going to have to adapt every festive season, particularly Fourth of July, Halloween, and the entirety of Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day. I think you can handle it.

As for how you get into the Christmas spirit, it certainly involves the classics like Christmas lists and seeing Santa. You and Matteo are also all-in on your Elves on the Shelf, Elfie, and Tinsel. Every morning, you hunt for them to see where they repositioned themselves, and occasionally, they leave you a small present or a trick. See, elves aren’t so bad.

Your neighborhood friends Aliyah and Austin don’t have the same Elf on the Shelf tradition, so you created an elf for them out of a paper cup and paper so they could join the fun. You asked their mom to move the elf each night after they went to sleep so that they’d think they had a “real elf.” It’s beyond funny how you put together how to make the magic work, yet not quite connect all the dots. You were also incredibly thoughtful to help your friends enjoy Christmas a little more.

Whether you dress up in yellow tights and put yourself out there or just make a little magic happen in the background, what really matters is that you help people feel special around the holidays. That’s really the whole point.

Love, Dad

Dear Matteo, 77 Months Old

This past weekend, your Mom went back to Indiana to help Popa get more things sorted and organized, which gave us an opportunity to show Mom that we could function, albeit for a short time, without relying on her. How long could we hold our breath underwater?

Functioning without Mom is challenging enough, we were also sick. You have had a dry cough for weeks now, and Eliza has a stuffy nose and crunchy cough. I came down with the seasonal flu that included fever, chills, headaches and a cough. Good times.

Despite the sickness, I took the weekend to make sure we had a “house reset” to help keep the house orderly and raise the stakes for your and Eliza’s contributions. We established a new set of chores and a weekly payday on Mondays of $5 each. The daily chores: Tidy your room, tidy the house, brush teeth, dishes to sink, and clean your bathroom. We also created a new “laundry game” to help put away clean clothes, which is a race to see who can put the most clothes away first.

Because we established the new chore schedule over the weekend, I gave you a “starting bonus” of $6 each because you completed the initial chores and some bonus work. Eliza vaccumed and you enthusiastically cleaned the litter box. We agreed that after school on Monday I would pay you and we could do a little shopping.

After counting out the $1 bills, I encouraged you both to save at least half of your payday for something bigger down the road, and that’s where you and Eliza showed your colors. Eliza cautiously counted and put away $3 in her room and and kept $3 in a purse to shop with. You insisted on buying a pack of Pokemon cards immediatey for $5.49 with tax. You asked me that Monday morning to go shopping for you during school, but I wanted you both to have transactions at the register. I’m glad I didn’t shop for you because you came off the bus nervous I had shopped and bought the wrong pack of cards. Heaven forbid.

We went to Bartell’s after school and you stuck to your plan, immediately jogging toward the locked case of cards and working with a cashier to get the card pack you wanted. Eliza bought a $2 bag of gummy candy. You paid cash at the register, and I had to explain a bit about taxes and how coins were fractions of a dollar that surely went over your head. All that added up for you was that chores got you more Pokemon cards. I can’t be mad about your motivations.

After opening the pack of cards, you were happy with the contents, and Eliza shared some of her gummies with you on the ride home. Neither of you had buyer’s remorse and were focused on how to get more money to buy more next week. Back to the chore chart.

I’ll keep working with you on saving money. Bigger things than Pokemon cards come to those who save.

Love, Dad