Mr. Mateo . . . Helper Boy Extraordinaire

Mateo has loved his first couple months of Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten . . . until just the last week or two. Although the curriculum is absolutely incredible . . . and the kids learn more than their Florida public-school attending Kindergarten counterparts, he has hit the wall . . . and He.Is.Bored. He is reading. And writing. And doing math. And excelling in his enrichment program Spanish class. So now what? Instead of him being challenged, he is CHALLENGING his mother every time she walks by his classroom. And his teachers. And the Director and Assistant Director of the center. So now what? Oops, I already asked that question.

I can't have the absolute perfect child right? I figure that is why he is giving me academic challenges. Now on to his perfect characteristics: He is the best helper in the whole entire planet. Here are a couple examples:

1. On Friday, Sarah had another one of her infamous medicine-induced meltdowns at school. It's usually a snowball effect where one thing leads to another, which leads to another, etc. In this particular incident, her Cinderella princess high heel (which her mother told her was too dangerous to wear to school) had BR-OKE. And then to top it all off, her Cinderalla dress that she was wearing for Halloween got caught up in the pedal of her bike. She fell off the bike and hit her chin. Mateo was visiting another classroom (Read: Mateo was kindly invited to give his teacher a "time-out" and was sent across the hallway to another VPK class that looks out onto the "big kid" playscape/playground). He asked the teacher if he could go outside and help Ms. Meagan with Sarah. He led Sarah by the hand, walked her inside to his "time-out" classroom and said as told to me by a couple teachers that witnessed the entire incident: "Come on, Sarah. It's o.k. Big brother is here. Let me help you." He then proceeded to help her wash her hands and face to cool down, gave her a wet paper towel to stick on her banged up chin, gave her a big giant hug and kiss, and took her over to the reading corner and read her a story. Meltdown CEASED. Sarah happy. Whole world can now move on again.
2. Mateo absolutely LOVES to cook. And clean. There is actually a side story to this which I will save for another day, but it has something to do with him wanting to show me he is responsible enough to help . . . which translates into= he deserves to get a pet. Anyway, yesterday I came down with a KILLER cold. I spent the majority of the day in bed feeling downright MISERABLE. We were having the missionaries over for dinner (which I felt bad cancelling on them) . . . yet NO DINNER HAD BEEN COOKED. Mateo came into the kitchen and said "Mom, I can tell you need a lot of help. Since I'm your best helper boy (yeah, and also extremely humble), can I vacuum the floor for you? After vacumming he said, can I help you mop now?" And then he put two and two together that the poor missionaries were going to starve . . . and his family was also going to starve . . . so he volunteered to make a cake. He is able to do most of the reading of recipes. He LOVES the power that reading gives him . . . especially in the kitchen. He proceeded to go get Tino (so Tino could help him with the long vowels and crazy irregular words in the recipe that he hasn't learned how to read yet) and together they made a chocolate cake for dinner. I mean for desert. (As a side note, thank goodness for SUPER SUPPERS or the entire family and missionaries would have gone without dinner.) And speaking of Super Suppers, Mateo is my Super Suppers helper now. He goes with me each week, decides what we are going to have for dinner, and helps me assemble the meals. He thinks it's cool because he is being my best helper boy and I think it's cool because my pickiest eater in the whole entire planet is now eating better because he likes to eat the food that he has prepared.