the cast of characters keeps growing...

So Mexico is quite a crowded place, at least in Sadie's Mexico... we'll set aside the fact that my daughter's imaginary world happens to be in the news constantly for drug violence. i swear, we rarely have the TV on in this house

Anyways, so recent additions to Mexico-

Sadie's Mexico Grandma. This one has been talked about off and on over the past few months. Apparently her Mexico Grandma and Grandpa teach her things- best i can tell is that they are Mexican dancing instructors because she's usually doing some kind of little dance after which she says "my Mexico Grandma taught me that" and adds a little hand on her hip, flip of the hair for effect.

Well, just a couple weeks ago, we learned Mexico Grandma's name. Sadie informed me that her name was Terri and that her friends call her Aunt Terri. i can't help but wonder if she's basing her Mexico grandma off of my Aunt Terri. it's given all the Mattocks a giggle.

The other addition is Dotty-

i learned about Dotty last night while driving out to Derry to visit family. Sadie informed me of her Mexico cat named Dotty. Dotty is pink and apparently has taught herself to talk. when i asked Sadie if she spoke Spanish or English, Sadie replied that she "talks like me" which meant English. then we got distracted trying to figure out how to say hug and cuddle in Spanish so i didn't get to hear any more about Dotty.

And expect a call Aunt Betsy and be prepared to know how to say cuddle and hug in Spanish. :-)

Saving the planet... or not

in the new house, we have multiple bathrooms. This was eagerly awaited by everyone in our family. From a mom's point of view, the idea of getting to use a bathroom when one needs to and in private is a glorious idea.

Now, the kids get to use their bathroom (at the top of the stairs) and the half bath (at the bottom of the stairs) and this has worked out pretty well. They're enjoying their new independence, being able to reach the light switch and the water for hand washing. There is one downside- they are quite happy to turn the light on but somehow forget to turn the light off. So after I hear a monkey use the bathroom, I immediately ask the 3 most important questions...

Did you flush?
Did you wash your hands?
Did you turn off the light?

And of course, the monkey always replies "no" to all 3.

Now, if I should miss hearing a trip to the bathroom and forget to ask the 3 questions, I later hear the other monkey (the informant) announce to the house that the bathroom light is on. The announcement is always made and the informant monkey continues on their way- not touching the light switch. I guess there has been too much emphasis on the discussion of lights being on and not enough emphasis on the fact that we don't want the bathroom lights left on!!!

Sorry Al Gore, we're trying.

Caleb turns 5!

Another September and another year older for the boy. I was feeling even more nostalgic about it this year. Since he missed the birthday cut-off for kindergarten, this will be his last year spending most of his time with me. I can't believe he's five! I look at his baby pictures and think, is that really him with those big serious eyes taking everything in and that quick smile and of course, how ticklish and quick to giggle. My baby boy is really not a baby any more. He's a full blown little boy complete with fascinations for matchbox cars, legos, dinosaurs and super heroes.

This year has been full of some huge changes and the boy has come through them with flying colors. Grammie M lost her battle with cancer last fall. It was devastating for our family but we were able to make some great memories in those last weeks. In the midst of losing Grammie, Caleb managed to master the potty. This was huge considering that we were spending lots of time driving to and from Latrobe/Derry without any real schedule. Part of me likes to think that God showed a little mercy on me by having Caleb finally get it. It made a horrible time just a tiny bit easier.

There were questions about Grammie and lots of talk of heaven and God. Caleb was my little sunshine through it all- quick to offer a hug and always surprising me with an unprompted "I wuv you, Mommy."

Preschool was another change for him- 3 mornings a week and with new teachers. This year he was able to read and once the teachers were able to print up a schedule for him, the transitions went more smoothly. It also helped that he had a couple of buddies in his class. Andrew and Brandon were visiting from Canada and spent the fall semester in class with Caleb and on many, many outside play-dates.

Caleb continues to love reading and we're up to beginning chapter books. Mercy Watson is still a favorite but we've expanded to The Magic Treehouse books and beginning Marvel comics. Caleb loves Captain America and Ironman but Superman and Spiderman are also pretty high up on his list.

While he excels at reading, he struggles with writing and because of that struggle (I think) he resists it more. His poor teachers had quite the fight to get him to participate in the morning art activity and we have a very incomplete alphabet book but he's trying little by little. I'm not going to ask more of him 'cause this is only preschool.

At preschool, he continues to love music and movement and story time. This year also brought classroom jobs. He seemed to really like passing out napkins and door holder is always a popular job. The jobs have carried over home a bit too. He loves to be given "jobs" to do. If asked to pick up toys, whining will begin but if I simply say "I have a job for you" there's no whining and the task usually gets completed.

Caleb is still our policeman but we've also seen him improve with playing too. He spent one afternoon pretending to be a conductor for a train and taking us all over the country. Sadie is pretty successful in getting him to go along with her adventures. We've even had some issues with Margot (Sadie's imaginary friend) playing with Caleb instead of Sadie. You never know what's going to come up this house. Most recently, there have been lots of battles with evildoers.

This spring we started getting Caleb services to deal with some of his Asperger's issues. Stephanie and Thao came to our house and began working with him in June. They worked on getting him through transitions and used to doing tasks that he doesn't really like. They were really good with him and helpful for us, figuring out how to navigate with Caleb's struggles. The move interrupted things for a bit but I still think the time was helpful. Now at the new house, we've just started with a new TSS and BSC and they're excited to work with Caleb.

Over the summer, we bought and built a new house. This was probably the best way that we could have handled moving. They broke ground at the end of April. We were able to come of out and check it out through all the stages of building. This seemed to really help Caleb get use to the idea of a new house. Once we discussed that there would be potties and that they're toys would be at the new house, they were very excited. We've been in the house for almost 2 months and Caleb has loved it. No tantrums, no sleepless nights, and we now have drive-way dump-truck luge for entertainment.

The little boy is growing up and surprising us with new things everyday. Happy Birthday Monkey-Man!



First time on a horse at Derry Ag Fair



Soccer Skills



The Big Blizzard- we finally got him to play outside with gloves and a hat



Getting Our Christmas Tree



Halloween '09

Sadie's New Friend

No, it's not herself :-)


Our first friend in our new neighborhood is a real live girl, as opposed to another one of Margot's entourage. "A" lives in the house down at the corner and turned 3 in June (they'll be in the same class when they start school in a few years, of course).

Now besides location, what makes this match perfect is that "A" has quite an entourage of imaginary friends as well. While Sadie seems to collect Mexicans, this girl has dinosaurs- apparently she's recently watched The Land Before Time and it's had quite an affect on her.

We met at the playground yesterday and the two quickly began racing around the playground trying to escape from the "hot water." Not sure what the story was there but they seemed to be in a jungle.

Sadie was not shy at all (I think we're all hoping that she'll be our ticket to meeting others in this neighborhood). She also was not bashful about forgetting the little girl's name. "Hey kid" she would yell to her and "A" would ignore her not expecting to be called "kid". I tried to remind her what her friend's name was only to get an "Oh, Mom" accompanied by the eye-roll (I thought that wasn't supposed to start until she's at least 10).

The girls played and I was able to chat a little with her mom and then potty-time signaled the end. I just have to say, I'm so glad our house is close to the playground, especially when someone suddenly has to go potty.

Drive-way, Dump-truck Luge

This is our new entertainment at the house. I should probably discourage them from doing this but they're having such a good time and I actually get a kick out of Caleb doing something reasonably dangerous. This might all change when they end up needing a trip to the ER.

All Aboard!

So I'm trying once again to post a bit more frequently about our days, instead of having to write out long posts that take forever. So here it goes... :-)

Today was huge in our world. Caleb did 2 major things-
1. He pretended that he was a train conductor and took Sadie and I on a tour of the states.
2. He tried a tiny bit of pork chop and kept it down. Plus, he decided that he liked pork chops.

Now for any other child this might not be huge. In fact, Sadie often is a different character every hour of the day and she also tried pork chops tonight. But for Caleb, these things are more challenging. Caleb has been insisting that he is Policeman Caleb since he was 2.5. No matter what the game of pretend we are playing. It took us months to get him to let us pretend to be different things (I thought I was forever going to be Ballerina Mommy). We've tried lots of things to help him with this but nothing worked.

So the boy wants to be a policeman. What's the big deal? Well, it's not really but our little man is spending more and more time interacting with other kids and we've had situations where the kids want to pretend one thing and The Policeman doesn't fit in. This is a part of play and a part of socializing that the little man needs to learn and it's huge to see him take that step today.

And the pork chop... well, everyone knows a picky kid and funny, we've learned that pickiness is contagious. Caleb has also had eating issues. Right after turning 1, he went from eating everything to only eating a handful of things. It's a little more than just being picky. Even when the boy wants to try something, he will gag and vomit either as soon as he puts it in his mouth or even after he's managed to get something down. It makes mealtimes rather stressful. And as I mentioned, it's contagious. The little princess sees that brother gets special meals and doesn't have to eat what Mommy and Daddy eat, so she throws a fit.

This week we decided to try something new- a food chart. I read this somewhere and thought it might work. The kids each have a chart with 3 columns- Foods that I like, Foods that I tried, Foods that I don't like. They can put anything in the I like columns but for the dislike column, they can only put something there if they've already tried it and marked it in the tried column. And of course there is a reward. We tried having the same reward for each kid but our kids are motivated by different things. If Sadie tries 10 different foods, she gets a trip to Bruster's for ice cream. If Caleb tries 10 things, he gets a Captain America action figure. I'm really praying that this continues to work. It would be lovely to only have to cook one meal an evening instead of 3- what andy eats, what i can eat, and what the kids can eat.

Okay, so this hasn't been a really short post but maybe I'll get better. Now, a photo from this evening. This is where we found Sadie sleeping. Too cute :-)

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

So where have I been for the past month...backpacking through Europe? a cruise in the Mediterranean? undercover, saving the world from imminent destruction? Nope. We've been moving and not even to an extravagant location. We moved from Oakland to the North Hills. Please, don't misunderstand, I absolutely LOVE our new house, it just seems like there was a whole lot of work going in to a move only 15 minutes away.

This all started back in February, right after the ridiculous snowfall. Andy and I had come to the realization that our little house in Oakland was not going to cut it forever. It was a nice little 3 bedroom place but that third bedroom was smaller than many walk-in closets around these days. It was not going to work and having a boy and a girl, they weren't going to be able to share a room forever. So we decided to start looking for a bigger place. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of houses on the market right after record breaking snowfalls. I was looking online and found some new construction websites. I had always been curious about them. Andy agreed, so we decided to check out a couple.

I never thought we would actually do this. Of course, the model homes were gorgeous and we thought, there's no way we could afford something like this. Then we started doing some more research. Andy and I are not fix-it-up kind of people. We don't like spending weekends re-modeling. The idea of having a house already done and better yet, we pick out how it looks, this was looking better and better. Then the first week of March we got a call. There was a big sell off of lots in the community we were interested in and so if this was what we were going to do, then we needed to decide quickly.

So on Andy's 30th birthday, we bought land, or rather, our lot for our future house. They set a closing date for August 25.



And over the course of the next 3 months, our house began to come together as we got to decide cabinets and flooring and counter tops. It was very exciting and very overwhelming at times. We also had to put our house up for sale. Amazingly, it sold after only being on the market for a week and a half. And our buyer happened to be a girl who lived across the street from us. Selling the house was not the best experience but thankfully, God brought us through and worked out all the details.

Then it was time to pack. Little by little, boxes began to fill up. And we were also able to take little trips to watch the progress of our new house. I think this was so incredibly helpful for our little man who struggles with change and another reminder that God knows how to take care of us. Caleb and Sadie both were very excited by the new house but were also full of questions...

"Will our toys come to the new house?"

"Will our beds come to the new house?"

"Will our new house have a bathroom?"

The bathroom thing really seemed to have them worried. They we relieved to learn that the new house would have 3 bathrooms. This is big when you come from a house with 1 very awkwardly shaped bathroom.




May came and went. June 1st we closed on our old house (and started renting for the next 2 months). Then it was July. Then mid-July and oh my, we needed to get going. All the while, we kept visiting the house and seeing how quickly it was coming along. The second to the last week in July, we learned that it was possible that the house might be finished early. (Duh, we thought to ourselves and then scrambled to get the paperwork together for closing).







Amazingly, everything came together. We changed around movers (since we no longer needed to put our things into storage) finished packing, painted most of the old house (and hired painters to finish that) and closed on our new house July 30 almost 1 full month ahead of schedule. The moving truck dropped our things off at the new house and we went on vacation. That's right, our family vacation to NJ had been planned in 2009, way before this craziness started, and we really needed a break so we took off for Ocean Beach, NJ. We had a wonderful and relaxing week there and we were able to leave the kids with G'ma Jody and PopPop Pat for a few extra days. With the kids at G'ma's house, Andy and I were able to get beds assembled and the kitchen put together without extra helpers.

So we are well into August and enjoying the added space (and multiple bathrooms) in our new house. We're slowly unpacking and organizing. We're trying to coax our lawn to not completely die on us and slowly starting to meet neighbors. Most of all, we're enjoying the quiet that is part of living in the 'burbs- no speeding hot rods and motorcycles down our street and no helicopters circling overhead.

Usually it takes Andy and I a ridiculously long time to make purchases, even something as little as a toaster oven, we'll research for weeks (in the midst of that right now). Buying and building this house over such a short period of time was completely out of character for us. The only explanation I can find is that God has a plan for it. There was a plan for us 4 years ago when we learned we were unexpectedly expecting Sadie. There was a plan 2 years ago when Andy was looking for a job and only had offers in Pittsburgh. There was a plan for us to be in Oakland, walking distance to Magee Hospital. I know there's a plan for us to be
here.