Happy Birthday, Mattie!

Mattie turned three on Monday. We celebrated his birthday with a family pizza party, and Lightning McQueen and Mater cupcakes. Mattie is our most physical child. He started wrestling his brothers when he was only 10 months old, and not even walking yet. We had never had ANY wrestling in our house before that. He has also brought a lot of hitting and biting to our house as well. For the first 2 1/2 years of his life, he was known simply as Mumu, which was derived from his newborn nickname, "Mattie Moo". We started calling him Mattie this summer, so that he could start school with a bigger kid nickname. Mattie has no food allergies. He has curly hair, and definitely looks the most like my mom's family of the four boys. He has my Grandpa Cliff's ears and my Grandma Marion's mouth. The ears have been obvious since birth, but I just figured out where his uniquely wide smile came from this summer. It warms my heart every time I see it spread across his face. It's like having my grandmother with me again, just for an instant. I wish that I could have shown it to her before she died! Mattie loves cars, trucks and trains, another first in our house. His favorite possession is his blanket, "Tita". He's been waiting patiently all summer for his birthday to arrive. He asked frequently whether it was October yet, as we celebrated Jack's, then Elliot's, then my birthdays. And when October finally did arrive, with the remarkable expressiveness of an almost three year old, he told me that kids don't like other kids' birthdays; they only like their own. He told me that no one was going to like his birthday, because they weren't going to get any presents!

As a mother of four, life seems to move so fast. We celebrate each birthday and milestone, and the years fly by. I still have those beautiful moments of wonder and awe with the kids, but most of the time, if I don't write them down immediately, they're lost forever. That was one of the reasons I wanted to start this blog. I used to keep handwritten journals for Jack, Elliot and Mattie. But, it got to the point that I was only writing in them once or twice a year. I knew that if I did something online, I would write more often. And so I have. Now, when I find myself thinking - oh I better write that down - I usually do. And share it with you, of course. I've tried to jot down some of the things I want to always remember about Mattie this year. Here they are:

This past Spring and summer was an incredible time of awakening for Mattie. He became aware of so many things, and was actually able to express them in words. One of his new discoveries was time. He started asking us "what time is it?" constantly. At first, Ted and I answered truthfully, "it's X o'clock, Mattie." But, that answer never really seemed to satisfy him. He would often turn around and ask "what time is it?" immediately again. Then, finally, after many months of being asked the same question, one day I answered, "it's lunch time." A huge smile spread across his face, and he replied, "Yeah, it's lunch time. That's what time it is." Clearly, that was a major breakthrough. At that point, he had probably been asking us what time it was at least 5 times a day for 4 months. Our answer was always the same. And we were completely befuddled as to why our two year old, who had no understanding of time, would ask about it so much. When I answered "it's lunch time" that day, I realized that Mattie had been repeatedly asking the same question because he never got an answer he understood. Once I told him what time it was in terms of what we were doing, he stopped repeating the question. It must be hard for kids at times like that, when they have such dumb parents.

Mattie also started to understand the days of the week, and the concept of past, present and future. He began referring to all the things that had happened in the past as having happened on "Thirty", which was his word for Thursday. It was always, "I saw that big blue digger at the park of Thirty," and "when I went to the Children's museum on Thirty." He never mentioned any of the other days of the week. He also went through a phase over the summer when he would refer to any smaller or younger child as someone who would "grow into Mattie." And he himself was going to "grow into Jack or Elliot". He told us several times that he was going to turn 6 or 8 (like J&E) on his birthday this year. Well, this week he's finally 3, and well on his way to growing into all the other big people out there.

Happy Birthday, Little Moo!