Mateo is 3! 2011 was a busy year! He started a new preschool and we are amazed by all the things he has learned. He knows the names of 10 kinds of dinosaurs, his colors, he knows a lot of numbers by sight and can sing so many songs.

He loves cars, dinosaurs, animals and horses and idolizes his sister. He hates to eat. Its a constant struggle to get food in him, but he keeps growing. He is one of the tallest kids in his class.

2011 was a great year for Matilda! Her art continues to amaze us. She has developed a love of cooking (and eating) and takes great care of her little brother.

She continues to question the world around her and is very exited to turn 5! Her favorite color is still pink. She likes to listen to Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. Her dancing is amazing as ever. Her favorite book at the moment is “Trouble at the Dinosaur Cafe”.

Here is a pic of her from New Year’s Day looking all grown up.

I highly recommend the book Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein. In it, she explains why manufacturers of toy and baby gear make stuff in pink and blue. And the answer (no surprise) is that it causes us to buy more stuff.

For instance, my daughter got a gift of blocks in pink. The regular, multicolor set, has a picture of a boy on the package. This is cearly a ploy to get you to buy one set of blocks for boys and another for girls.

If you must buy things in pink, do it for things that are for use by one kid only, like pacifiers. Otherwise, do yourself a favor and buy things in neutral colors that work for boys AND girls. If the package is too girly, remove the toy from the box and repackage it in a neutral box.

We finally got Mateo to wear his Halloween costume this year! He was superman and had a great time trick or treating!

For Halloween this year, Matilda was a superhero called “Superstar”. She loved this costume!

Trick or treating was brief. It was freezing and there was snow everywhere. Half of the homes in our area had no power!

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We just got back from 2 weeks and I am happy to report that Mateo can now speak some Spanish!
It was really bothering me. Matilda at his age was very good but Mateo was exposed to less Spanish and thus did not speak any Spanish at all.
A few weeks with his cousins fixed that!
Here are some pictures.

A ride at Puerto Adventura

Lots of swimming with is favorite cousin Marina

Visiting a run down castle

I’m on a boat!

Cool shades

Naked swimming at the beach!

Last night I let the kids hang out with me in the bathroom while I did some self grooming. I waxed my eyebrows, upper lip and legs and gave myself a pedicure.

Both kids found this to be fascinating, especially Matilda. She started pointing out places on her body that had hair and needed to be waxed. I explained to her that the wax was hot and she would not like it — which prompted her to ask me why I put hot wax on myself if it hurts. Oy.

A friend of mine told me about how her mother hauled her into a salon to be waxed when she was 12. When I expressed my horror at this she replied that its easy for me to be against it because I am relatively hairless. To me, hair removal is a vain and unnecessary act. To her, hair removal is an important part of grooming — like showering.

A similar debate is happening right now around the book Maggie Goes on A Diet. Its about a girl who is overweight and she goes on a diet and becomes fit and athletic. To me, the book is awful because girls have enough problems trying to keep up with the photoshopped models in magazines and advertisements. But others point out that we have a childhood obesity epidemic on our hands and that the book focuses on health and not appearance.

My final conclusion is to try to keep kids focused on how a body functions and not on how it looks — and that I should keep my waxing to myself.

PS. I am sure we can all agree that this book is a horrible piece of crap. My Beautiful Mommy – Written by a plastic surgeon to explain to kids about their mom’s cosmetic surgery.