Dear Matteo, 41 Months Old

We are in full swing for the holidays. Every morning you and Eliza wake up giddy and go hunting for your Elf on the Shelf, Tinsel. (We can’t find previous elf Elfie, so Tinsel came to the rescue via Target.) Then you go to your Advent calendars, which are really low fidelity, cardboard toy machines, and punch in a perforated box to receive your small Lego Star Wars toy. Your sister has a PlayMobile version. Back in my day it was cheap chocolate. Who says the next generation has it tougher?

You’ve added a lot of things to your Christmas list these past weeks as you see them but can only recall a PJ Masks tower that I believe Santa will deliver.

We’ve talked about being naughty or nice this hoilday season. Most days you are both. It’s a progression every day. You start most days the right way. You have a nice tone in your voice and are affectionate. As the day goes on you get tired and therefore grumpy. Like the world is crashing. Hanger can’t be the source of angst because you eat constantly. It’s just tiredness. You put a lot of energy into everything and wear yourself out. Then you furrow your brow and yell in waves of increasing volume. You threaten to pinch and hit and sometimes act on that. As a result, I sometimes carry you off into bed, which you naturally fight against. I think we’ve found a solution in ignoring any negative words or actions. You lose steam as you lose attention. Sometimes you turn back to being snuggly.

It’s something like that little fire lizard in Frozen 2. You’re all flames until you eat a snowflake and then you just want a back rub. Can you tell that how diverse my media consumption is these days?

I should also mention in this letter your interest and fear in coyotes. You talk about them a lot. We do have some in our neighborhood (that you’ve never seen) but the idea of them stays at the top of your mind. You ask about them and think you hear them. “Are the coyotes out yet?” “Do coyotes eat cute bunny rabbits?” “What would you do if you saw a coyote?” You’ve transitioned some of this anxiety to hippos lately, which do not roam our neighbohood yet occupy similar questions.

My answer to all of the above is always the same: “My job is to keep you safe. If an animal tries to hurt you I will punch it in the face.” That makes you laugh and feel better. I trust if you’re in fire lizard mode the animals won’t want to come near you anyway. Too hot too hold, too much to handle.

Love, Dad

Dear Eliza, 61 Months Old

We’re back in quarantine. Don’t forget your toilet paper.

We made the last of our freedom and skipped off to the non-fiction, coastal Pleasantville that is Seabrook. We didn’t know at the time of booking it would be our last excursion before a new stay-at-home order, but I sure am glad we made the call to go. The weather wasn’t great, mostly rainy, and the sea was rough and unpredictable. That didn’t prevent my hardened Pacific Northwest children dressed like Alaskan fishermen from wanting to dig into the wet sand.

Getting to the sand was more the challenge. The carriage house we stayed in was a good half mile away from the beach. Oh did you whine about the walk both directions. Your Mom and I like to walk. We are a family that walks and takes the slower, tougher path sometimes.

You complained, “My legs are too tired to walk” and “Why do we have to walk so much?”

My same reply: “We are a family that walks.”

It’s all about getting some exercise and fresh air, even through a mask.

This stay-at-home order feels a little less shocking this time. The seal is broken. We sort of expected it with record-breaking COVID cases. For the first time, we know a lot more people who have contracted COVID. Knock on wood, we’re staying healthy.

A lot of schools are closed down and even our home school pod is slowing down. We’re likely to have a very small Thanksgiving and Christmas season ahead with little extended family interaction. I’m trying to figure out how we logistically make the most of the ski season ahead (the most wonderful time of the year) without the benefits of staying at friends’ cabins.

It’s all the same to you, and your resilient, creative personality reminds me of that. I just wish “the same” was a little easier, a little more social, a little more fun to navigate. Yet, we walk ahead.

Love, Dad

Dear Matteo, 40 Months Old

“What?” is your most common refrain. You say it as a deadpan “WUT.”

You picked that up from my own failing hearing reply and think it’s just the way to acknowledge a question or comment.

“Hey Matteo, what do you want to drink with dinner?” Reply: “Wut.”

“This is such a cool movie.” Reply: “Wut.”

“Can you put pants on?” Reply: “No.” (There are exceptions to this pattern.)

I’ll chalk this all up to a typically masculine trait of selective hearing and polite acknowledgement in absence of attention. When you’re checked in, you’re all in. Recently, Legos and Hot Wheels have captured your imagination and hours of playtime. You love creating Star Wars characters and spaceships with the Legos (as they masterfully intended in that licensing deal) and multi-height tracks and jumps for your cars.

The playtime has been a nice distraction for your Mom and me. Your monthday is the same as Election Day this year. The country had to decide to keep Donald Trump in office for a second term or replace him with Joe Biden. I’m writing this a couple of days later (though I always timestamp letters on the 3rd of the month) and we still don’t know the outcome. The results of tight state races trend toward Biden, but we’re not out of the woods yet. The country has been holding its breathe and might pass out soon. The compounding stress of the election and COVID is just a lot to deal with.

My sincere hope is that by the time you can make sense of presidential elections we’ll have a calmer political environment and maskless society. I don’t know if I’m being hopeful or nostalgic in that statement.

Either way, you have your toys and imagination, and most days that’s all you need. No matter wut.

Love, Dad

Dear Eliza, 60 Months Old

You’re 5 years old! Woo hoo!

You ramped up your excitement the past few weeks like your birthday is its own holiday season. You told everyone you saw that you were turning 5, practiced writing the number 5, and told us (often) what you wanted your birthday to be like: Cake, candles, balloons and all things Frozen 2.

You spent your birthday eve like Christmas Eve, full of anticipation. You got to open a good number of presents early from grandparents and Uncle Ty and Aunt Amber. I think we delivered on the big day itself with a special gift (for the whole family) in a trip to Palm Desert to spend the week with your Gigi. You were so excited to get on the plane and didn’t hesitate to tell the flight attendants that it was your birthday plane ride. A lot of people still aren’t traveling because of the pandemic, but we took a lot of precaution in how we managed our timeline and kept the travel experience as low-germ as possible. So far, so good.

In Palm Desert you got a lot of pool time and continued to impress us with your swimming progression. That might be your sport, kid. Goggles are like your superhero cape. You put them on and can do just about anything. You could swim the width the pool and started trying to touch the bottom of the pool near the deep end. You figured out how to somersault underwater and could do two in a row before coming back up for air.

During rest time you played with a Frozen 2 Lego set we bought you and of course drew a lot of pictures. You’re experimenting with a new style where you draw outlines of figures with pencils and color them in with markers, creating a mixed media effect. You created a five page “book” that way in a sequence that told a story: You went swimming and got wet (page 1); Mom got you dry clothes (page 2); you put the dry clothes on in a bedroom (page 3); you went to a jungle gym with Matteo (page 4) and climbed around (page 5). That’s quite the autobiography.

You are such a wonderful kid and I’m happy to help make your birthday a special one. Being a parent is a little like creating art. You have an idea of what you want and try to shape it as you go, but you often end up with something you couldn’t have fully pictured in hindsight. That’s you. You are so bright, creative, imaginative, and beautiful. Everything I’ve wanted as a parent and so much more.

Happy birthday, kiddo. Year cinque is going to be rad.

Love, Dad

Dear Matteo, 39 Months Old

M is for Matteo.

Pandemic-era virtual school has begun. We joined a “school pod” with another family in the area, so you go to their house and they come to ours once a week. Everyone is about the same age and pre-Kindergarten, so the rigor stops and starts with crayons.

Because your sister writes and draws nearly all of the time, you’ve taken to trying your hand at it. You are writing your Ms really well and can accurately trace the rest of the letters in your bold name. You’re also getting good at making shapes, like circles and triangles. What cracks me up is that both you and Eliza hold a writing utensil properly between your fingers. I always thought it took awhile for kids to figure that out. Parenting is full of funny little surprises like that.

Of course, your attention only sticks to schoolwork and art for so long before you find a ball to play with or object to fashion into a “shooter” (gun). I’ve realized I turned you on to Star Wars far too early because of your tendencies to want to have a shootout or lightsaber battle at any hour. Right now you’re playing with what you call a “doo doo,” which is both a potty joke of yours and set of bath tubes that you’ve connected and claim to be either a space ship or a shooter depending on the moment in your imagination.

You can settle down, occasionally. I enjoyed a classic father-son sports marathon with you this past Sunday. We cruised through some early morning EPL soccer into a Seahawks win (4-0 start) followed by watching some ski films. You’re really into the action sports right now and gave a “whoo” everytime a skier went airborne and twisted or flipped. I can’t say I’ll be a great model for hucking off a kicker, but I’ll cheer you on when you want to try.

We have also been watching the NBA playoffs and dominant LA Lakers. By the time you’ll read this you’ll probably put the 2020 NBA Finals into the last act of Lebron James’s career. Despite the drama of the game, you fell asleep the other night in my arms and I got to enjoy what felt like the last moments of a toddler quickly growing into big boy. I’m not sure how many of those I have left, so we sat on the couch like that for a long evening. And the Lakers won.

Love, Dad