matteo's village

Friday night we went out to an art show closing party where a couple of our friends were playing music and there was free beer and snacks. Matteo went with us and was all over it (the party, not the beer). He was running around outside with some bigger kids he met, went right up front when the music started, and spent a good part of the evening weaving through the crowd looking for hugs and goldfish crackers. He was in heaven.







Lucky for us we were both able to enjoy the free beer because there were about 10 of our friends there to help corral our wild baby. At all times someone was there to take him outside, share some snacks, or grab him when he started to eat things off the floor. At one point our friend Carrie turned to me and said, "It's so cool to see everyone looking out for him. He really does have his own little village of people who love him!"

At the end of the school year one of Matteo's teachers told me how wonderful it is to see him growing up with such confidence in himself. That has always been one of my biggest hopes - that I would raise children who are sure of themselves and comfortable in different social situations. I know so much of pesonality is innate, and that some children are just shy no matter what and that's totally okay too. But Matteo has always been a little sparkplug and I definitely attribute a lot of his confidence to being surrounded and nurtured by many, many awesome people who love him.

We feel really lucky to have such a good group of friends here who are helping us care for this amazing little guy. We seriously couldn't do it without them.