My dear Miles,

You, my love, are a study in contrasts.  Last night, after a fun time at the park, you and Tobin and your dad were coming back home.  You rang the doorbell and were rattling the door.  I was sitting on the couch.  Because the windows were open, I could hear your dad telling you, “We’re coming.  Don’t make Mommy get up” (it is a well-established fact in our household that Mommy’s Quiet Time is a very, very important part of each evening).

You kept ding-donging and banging, and when your dad and Tobes made it to the door, you did something uncooperative  (I’m not sure what because I couldn’t see it) that ended with Tobin getting bonked in the head with the door.  So, after a blissfully quiet hour while you guys played in the park, Mommy’s Quiet Time ended abruptly with a crying toddler, a rage-filled almost-kindergartener, and a frustrated dad.  We were all fine ten minutes later, but this kind of scene replays a lot around here.  You get your mind set on how something should work, and you have a very hard time deviating from that plan.

I report this not to disparage you, but to set up contrast with what your teacher told me yesterday after your first day in your summer class.  It’s a special three-week Get Ready for Kindergarten class at your old school.  Even though the people and the environment were familiar to you, change is hard, and you were nervous yesterday morning.  When I came to pick you up, Amber at the front desk reassured me that you jumped right in and did fine.  I chatted briefly with Ms. Lindsey, your teacher, and she remarked on how agreeable and easy-going you are.  She said that whenever she asked you to do something, you did it cheerfully.

We’ve heard similar stories from your previous teachers, so it’s nice (I guess) to know that you continue to save your rudest behavior for family.  Maybe that means you’re confident enough in our love to know we won’t kick you out of our gang.  I’m sure it’s hard having so little control over your world, and you’re asserting yourself in ways in which you can feel some authority.

We went on a walk yesterday past City High, which sparked a conversation about the schools you’ll go to in the future.  I told you that when you’re a teenager, if we’re still living in our current house, you’ll go to City High.  That seems like a long way off right now, but I have the feeling it’ll come faster than I can conceptualize now.  You couldn’t seem to conceptualize it at all, because you kept asked, “Yeah, but where will I go to first grade?”  Assuming all goes well for kindergarten, you’ll stay at Lucas for elementary school, so you’ll have a while to get used to that idea.

Your last day of preschool was super-fun.  It was a special day in which families were invited, and you were so excited to show Tobin around.  He was just as excited to be included, and he loved it when you read to him, did a puzzle with him, and showed him some scooping and sorting works.  You got a face painting (actually you chose your arm), played games, blew bubbles, and got a special rose as part of your graduation ceremony.

They kept the ceremony pretty low-key—no silly caps and gowns or stiff marching.  You just sat in a circle with your friends, and your teacher talked about the progress you’d made and the hard work you’d done that year.  I’m really proud of you.  You’ve grown tremendously since you started preschool, and you’re ready for new challenges.

You had a ton of fun at Uncle Tyler’s wedding a couple of weeks ago.  You got to do your all-time favorite thing, which is wedding-reception dancing.  We did some other fun things in Lincoln, too, like a trip to the Children’s Museum and the Children’s Zoo.  You played catch with Aunt Oxana while she was in her wedding dress, which solidified her “good sport” status in my eyes.  I hope we can spend more time with them in these upcoming years. You also got to see your cousins Maxwell, Meredith, and Anna at the wedding.  Meredith and Anna are good dance buddies, and Max showed you some exciting developments in the world of phone-based games.  We spent time at Mubby and Skittergramps’s house, and you and your dad and brother took a special day trip to the farm to see Nana and Papa, too.

Summer is truly underway now, after a slow and rainy start.  The air conditioning is running, the humidity is up, and we just got done making a batch of homemade raspberry lemonade.  You are a good lemon squeezer, and I’m glad you think it’s fun to make something from scratch rather than buy it by the jug.  We’ve gotten back into our nice-weather routine, which involves trips downtown to the Natural History Museum and the library, to the Flavor Ice stand, and to play in our yard and the neighborhood parks.  We celebrated Mother’s Day since my last update here, and as always, I am delighted to be your mother.  Your dad got one of my all-time favorite pictures of the two of us during our annual Mother’s Day photo shoot.

You are a human being, little Miles, full of contradictions and happiness and frustration and stinky feet and cuddles.  Having you around makes me feel such a wide array of emotions every single day.  Everything would be boring and stupid without you, so you’d better stick around a while.  No City High just yet, please.

Love every minute,

Mommy

Tobin bonked his arm on the table.

T:  (rubbing it) I hurt my…  Elmo.

My sweet Miles, on his very first day of preschool and his very last (today).  Oh, how he’s grown, in so many ways.

Denny was leaning over, helping Tobin with something.  Tobin pointed up at the chest area of his shirt, which was poofed out due to gravity.

T:  You have milky in there!

I was trying to change Tobin’s diaper, and he was being very uncooperative, wiggling and squirming, rolling around, and generally making it impossible for me.  Finally I spoke sternly to him.

A:  Tobin, you must lie still so I can change your diaper.

T:  You frustrated.

It’s Miles’s last week of preschool, and I was getting sentimental.  I put on a kind of silly, falsetto, half-Southern voice.

A:  Mah bay-beh!  I can’t believe you’re almost done with preschool!  Mah bay-beh!

M:  You’re talking like Russian people.

My squishy Tobin,

I started writing this just now, and I entitled it “The Tobin Times #22.”  Then I looked back at last months, and I realize I did the math wrong:  you’re only 21 months old now.  That’s good news.  It’s like I get a bonus month with you.  It won’t be long before I have to do some serious calculations to figure out your age in months, but I thought for the time being I could still keep a tally in my head.

Photo by Denny Crall

I guess that goes to show how cluttered my head is.  Things have been busy lately.  We’re just wrapping up our mini-vacation, which involved a trip to Lincoln for Uncle Tyler’s wedding (technically this occurred after your 21-month birthday, but it’s fresh in my mind now, so I’m going to write about it for this month).  We had such a good time.  You were a very good boy in the car, only getting a little antsy a few times.  You love Skittergramps’s blue van, so it was a treat for you to have some extra rides in it.  We went to the Lincoln Children’s Museum, which was so much fun.  You really liked the big red truck, the water table, and the stage.

When you played on the stage, you put on a fierce face and said, “I bad guy.”  I thought it was so cool how you’re learning to pretend, to separate fantasy from reality.  You understood that a stage is a place to act like someone else, and you showed us just whom you wanted to be.

I knew it was just pretending, because you’re really not a bad guy at all.  You have stinker tendencies sometimes:  today you threw a ball right in your brother’s face.  But you’re getting better at acting contrite when we scold you.  You say you’re sorry and have the decency to act sad about it, rather than laughing like you used to.  Well, you still sometimes laugh when you throw food on the floor.  I guess I should just be glad that you seem to realize hurting others has negative consequences.  We’ll keep working on the food-throwing.

Another fun Lincoln adventure was a trip to the Lincoln Children’s Zoo.  It’s a small zoo, but a fun and nice one.  You really liked riding a pony, seeing and petting the baby goats, and getting a look at some more exotic creatures like peacocks and tamarins.

The biggest highlight of the trip, of course, was spending time with Uncle Tyler and your new Aunt Oxana.  We got to meet Oxana’s family from Russia, and they thought you and your brother were very well behaved, though they did comment on your high energy levels.  You were so good during the wedding.  You didn’t cry or cause much distraction during the ceremony, and you tore up the dance floor with your brother and cousins during the reception.  You got to stay up way past your bedtime on more than one of those nights in Lincoln, but you adapted well and were generally a great kid to have around.  You can say Oxana, though I’m not sure you ever said it directly to her.  You have plenty of years left to do that.

Oxana and Tyler and building a new house, which is still under construction.  We stopped by the site, and it’s going to be a lovely house,  it wasn’t a very safe place for you to roam free.  There were building materials lying around and wet joint compound on the walls and floors.  You got wiggly while we were taking the tour, so finally I found as safe a place as I could see and let you down for a bit.  You immediately found a pile of lumber scraps and build a block tower.

You continue to say funny and interesting things.  Your favorite word right now is enormous, which is pretty cute to hear come out of your little bald baby-looking head.  You really liked the enormous windmills we saw on our drive through western Iowa and Nebraska, and you talked about them a lot.  You also recently used the word yesterday in the correct context.  We were outside on a Sunday, and you said, “We dig in garden yesterday,” and in fact we had.  I think it’s pretty cool that you’re gaining a conception of relative time.  That’s hard to grasp and hard to explain.

Photo by Gary Clarke

You love attention from big kids, such as your brother, his schoolmates, and your cousins.  At the wedding, some cousins were kind of manhandling you, but you loved it.  The downside is that your brother learned some bad habits, like picking you up.  The even downer downside is that you laugh when he does it, which isn’t much disincentive.  You guys still get along quite well.  Your only squabbles are about sharing toys, pretty much.  You want to do everything he does, including ride on the big-kid part of the double stroller.  That doesn’t always work out so well.  But you are always ready to go get him when his school day is done, and he often greets you with a big hug.  I think you’ll miss him when he starts going to school until 3:00.

We don’t have too much planned for the rest of the summer—maybe a long weekend in Chicago, but mostly just hanging around, going to the library and the Natural History museum, eating flavor ices and frozen yogurt, playing in the garden and at the playground.  I’m sure you’ll have fun in the sprinkler and at the pool.  Enjoy the warm days ahead, little Tobin.  I’m excited to spend them with you.

Love,

Mommy

Miles, Tobin and I are planning a trip to the doughnut shop.

A:  Tobin wants a doughnut with yellow sprinkles.  What kind do you want, Miles?

M:  Speaking of yellow, when I went to the bathroom, there was so much pee I had to flush!

Both the boys were crying for no good reason at the same time, which is my Kryptonite.  I was feeling very stressed out by the situation.

A:  At least one of you is going to have to stop crying.

M:  Tobin can.  I did yesterday.

My friend Mandy inspired the BLT salads we had for dinner last night.

It was a nice, (relatively) light main dish salad that will be even better when we have garden tomatoes.  It was made of salad greens, halved grape tomatoes (independently seasoned with s&p), thinly-sliced red onion, roughly-chopped hot bacon, boiled eggs, homemade croutons, and sunflower seeds.

I think I’m going to make more entree salads this summer.  These croutons have been a revelation.  They’re so easy and an order of magnitude better than boxed croutons.

My dear Miles,

Your feet are huge.  We need to get you a new sock wardrobe, because the size 4/5 socks that have fit for a long time due to their stretchiness are getting dangerously tight.  I look at those big-kid feet and I remember your tiny baby toes.  Jellybean toes, I called them, because each one was just a tiny little pellet I wanted to nibble.

March 2008 (age 2 months)

Now, most afternoons, I look down at your feet and see that you’re only wearing one sock.  You say that your socks rub your feet uncomfortably.  That’s reasonable.  The strange part is that it’s only ever one foot.  It makes it hard to match up socks when I’m folding laundry, because rarely do they go into the same hamper at the same time.

You’re finishing up your last weeks as a preschooler now.  That’s tough to fathom.  I’m feeling much less overwrought about kindergarten than I did about preschool, probably because you don’t seem nervous about it at all.  You did great at kindergarten round-up.  A couple of your school friends and some neighborhood friends will be at the same school as you.  It will be tough to leave Willowwind, because you had a great experience there, but I know it’s prepared you well for your future.  You’ll take some summer school classes at Willowwind, but those are separate from the preschool program.  You’re ready to move up to the big time.

You’re really excited about Uncle Tyler’s upcoming wedding.  Dancing at weddings is pretty much your favorite thing ever, and you’re psyched about the new clothes you got for the occasion.  We’ll swim in the hotel pool, maybe go to the zoo and the children’s museum, and then spend some time back in Ames with Mubby and Skittergramps.  It’ll be a nice mini-vacation, since we may not do anything else this summer.

Gardening has been one of your preferred hobbies lately.  You helped me plant some carrot seeds (which still haven’t sprouted) and you did some indoor planting of flower seeds at school and a kit Mubby got you.

You eat a lot of Wheat Thins.  You drink a lot of lemonade.

You still need a firm routine.  Last night it was getting pretty late, and you and your dad and Tobin were hanging out in bed reading stories.  Your dad noticed the time and said that the stories he was reading you counted as your bedtime stories.  You burst into tears because Mommy always reads you stories.  And Daddy wasn’t reading the right bedtime stories (currently Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, and 101 Dalmatians).

Those are long stories, and you tend to interrupt a lot.  But we didn’t fight you on that one, because, really, am I ever going to look back and think, “I’m sure glad I skipped reading those stories to Miles so he’d go to bed fifteen minutes earlier”?  You got all your stories, in the right order, read by Mommy.  I like our rituals too.

We had our big choir concert.  I was so proud of you—how brave and confident and attentive you were.  You’ve always been attentive.  At rehearsals, when the other kids were running around being squirrelly, you always sat quietly, playing with my phone until it was the kids’ turn to sing, and then you were immediately focused and ready to sing.  I worried a little that you weren’t making friends, but by the end, you’d gotten to know quite a few of the other kids.  Also, by the end, you no longer needed to be in constant physical contact with me.  During the rehearsal period, I sometimes had to stand in the soprano section (gasp) because you were too shy to stand with the kids unless I was right there with you.  But you got over that and were just fine joining the kids onstage for the kids-only numbers in our concert.  You even added some choreography.

Photo by Gary Clarke

Gabe, one of the big kids, was your total role model.  He’s a really sweet guy, and he was so kind and friendly to you.  He’s going to be a fifth grader at your elementary school, so I’m glad you’ll have an older buddy around the halls.

Photo by Gary Clarke

You have a whole repertoire of songs you like to sing, and they’ve fully infiltrated Tobin’s brain, too.  We play them in the car, all of us singing along, and I’m so glad we got to share our choir experience.  You have a good musical ear, I think.  You like to study the sheet music.  You’re taking a drum class this summer, and I hope there’s a little music theory in there.

Your reading is really taking off too.  You’ve had a good basic handle of reading for a long time, but you have a perfectionist streak that makes you reluctant to try when you’re not sure (this is also what led us to taking you to an optometrist because of how you failed the eye chart test at the doctor’s office—it turns out you could see it, but you didn’t want to say because you might be wrong).  But you and your dad have been working with the letter blocks a lot, and last night you read the dedication in your Disney storybook with almost no help.

Soon you’re going to be reading over my shoulder, and I’m not going to be able to skip chunks of the stories anymore.  Maybe you will have moved on to something a little more compelling by then.  You’re probably still too young for Harry Potter, but maybe I can find a chapter book for us to read together at night.  I’m glad you’re not ready to tuck yourself in yet.

You got a haircut last weekend, and your dad told me he overheard you telling the stylist, “Don’t cut off too much.  My mom likes my curls.”  Yes, I do, my sweet boy.  I love your curls, and I love your smile, and I love your pointy elbows that always seem to jab into my muscles, and I love your enormous feet.

Photo by Denny Crall

I will still need you, I will still feed you, when you’re sixty-four (months).

Love,

Mommy

This morning, Tobin and I had been playing “Hungry, Hungry Hippos,” and of course we left a mess of marbles on the floor.  A while later, I was in the bathroom getting ready. Tobin came in and proudly showed me a zip-lock bag full of the marbles.

T:  All by myself!

We’re working on Miles doing his own bathroom clean-up.  Today, after a bathroom visit, I got him started and then handed him a wipe to finish up the job.  He wedged it in, let go, then looked back over his shoulder.

M:  It’s a butt-cape!

I’ve been trying some new things this week.

Monday:  Fajita quesadillas, a rip-off of something I like at a local restaurant.  I sauteed up some shrimp (for me) and chicken (for DC) in some latin rub seasoning, as well as a red bell pepper and an enormous onion, also with some of the latin seasoning.  I stuck the aforementioned into big tortillas with Mexican blend cheese (I think it was Monterrey Jack, asadero, and queso quesadilla), folded, and toasted them up.  I served them with salsa and sour cream.  Denny probably wanted guacamole, but his dream came false.

Tuesday:  Chicken Caesar salads, the chicken seasoned with cajun seasoning.  The salad was pretty pedestrian except for the croutons.  I  cubed up some “Italian peasant batard” (so Hy-Vee calls it) with butter, garlic powder, and salt, and crisped them up in the oven.  I thought I made way too much, yet somehow they all disappeared.

Wednesday:  Ribeye steaks with an exciting new broccoli treatment.  I was thinking about my old-favorite oven-roasted broccoli, but it’s warm today and I didn’t want to heat the oven up to 425F.  I found this pan-roasted broccoli, and it was really good, maybe even better.  I did change it a little–I couldn’t deal with that much butter, so I used about half the recommended amount plus a little glug of olive oil

The rest of the week is TBD.  I imagine there will be a scrounge night and a going-out night in there somewhere.

My sweet Tobin,

Today, a woman at Miles’s school asked how old you are.  She started to prompt you to say “one,” but instead, you said, “Twenty months.”  She was impressed.  I already knew you could do it, but I live with you.

You are such a talker.  I really love hearing all the things you have to say, because it lets me know a little of what goes on in your inner life.  Sometimes you wake up from a nap talking, so I get to know what you’ve been dreaming about.  The other day, it was “messy hands.”

Other things you’ve been saying a lot lately include, “I do it!” and “By myself.”  We’ve clearly entered the stage in which I need to budget an extra fifteen minutes for every excursion, because you will not let me help you with much of anything.  You want to walk up the stairs to Miles’s school by yourself.  You want to get strapped into your car seat by yourself.  You want to get snacks out of bags by yourself.  Overall you do a pretty good job.  I don’t think the car seat manufacturer intended a twenty-month-old to be able to manage the clips, but you can do it.  Fortunately, it’s harder to unclip them than to clip them.

It’s hard to get you to sit still enough to eat nowadays.  You spend as much time throwing food on the floor as actually eating it.  It makes your dad and me so frustrated, because you know full well that you’re not supposed to do it.  We’ve told you over and over, and yet you can’t abide food in front of you if you don’t want to eat it.  Instead of doing something reasonable like telling us you’re done, you throw it on the floor.  You don’t even seem sorry.

You love books right now.  You’ve found some favorites, especially the If You Give a… series by Laura Numeroff (and, as you will not let me forget, illustrated by Felicia Bond).  You’re also into Caps for Sale, Miles’s Spider-Man story collection, and a book we got at the doctor’s office with pictures of various trucks and tractors.  You love to sit in the big chair with your daddy and hear those stories, though you’ll plop onto a lap with a book in your hand just about anywhere.

I babysat a friend’s three-year-old the other morning, and you will not stop talking about him.  He was wearing a really cool Robin (as in Batman’s sidekick) costume, and now you really want a Robin cape too.  You’ve been picking up the toys you guys played with together and saying, “Johnny.”  We’ll have to get together with Johnny and his mom again soon.  I think both of your favorite part of the morning was bouncing on Miles’s bed.  After a while, you got so worn out you both just lay down and rested on the pillows for a while.

Right now, you’re playing outside with Daddy and Miles.  That’s one of your very favorite things to do.  In fact we have to spell the word outside, because much like bath, you get so excited when you hear it that we can’t get anything else done.  This is going to be your big night:  when you come in from playing, it’ll be bath time.

It’s finally starting to get warm enough so that you can play outside without six layers of clothing.  It’s been a long winter and the spring has been slow to start, so this is really good news.  The forecast for the upcoming week is great, and I’m looking forward to getting out with you guys.  We had a fun afternoon yesterday tooling around downtown, though it’s getting harder and harder to keep you in the stroller.  You love the big playground by the library.  Playing with you there was a very athletic endeavor, because unlike our playground, there are ample opportunities to plummet from great heights.  I couldn’t just stand at the bottom and watch you.  I needed to be right up there with you to keep you from crashing to your doom.  I was more scared than you were, for real.

It’s a good thing Miles is responsible enough that he can scramble around on the playground without constant supervision now.  There’s no way I could do it if I were trying to keep two brave and reckless little kids like you alive.  I don’t know how parents of twins do it.  I guess they only go to small playgrounds.

A librarian with whom we’re friendly mentioned yesterday that my two boys don’t look anything alike.  She’s pretty much right.  When I look at Miles, all I can see is a little Denny.  It’s harder with you, but I definitely see a resemblance between my baby pictures and your sweet little face.  I think I was verbal like you, but more shy.  If you keep this outgoing personality, there will be no shutting you up.  That’s fine with me.  It makes it easier to find you.  I just follow the sound of chattering.

You’re so bright and curious.  Another of your common phrases is, “What this?”  You want to know what everything is called, and then you repeat it.  You usually remember it, too.  When we go on walks, you point out to me not just birds, but robins.  You thought a dog was a giraffe yesterday, but to your credit, it did have kind of giraffe-like markings.

You have definite opinions on a lot of things, including clothing choices.  You like to pick out clothes for me in the morning.  Yesterday you choose my Rooster Club shirt.  A lot of times you want me to wear something green.  You have your own favorite wardrobe items as well.  You like your monster shirt, your whale shirt, all your brother’s sweatshirts, and jeans.  I like getting you dressed, because lately you’ve been giving me big hugs as I pick you up from your changing table.  You also give me kisses on the legs as I get ready in the morning.

You are such a fun guy.  I laugh every single day, many times, because of the funny things you do.  You are energetic, charismatic, sharp, and sometimes frustrating.  You are learning about imaginative games, pretending to lick the play food items at the library and faking sleep (complete with snores).  You are such a joy, Tobin.  I am so glad I have you.

Love,

Mommy

Tobin had climbed up into bed and was playing “night night.”  He got kind of tangled up in a blanket.

T:  (In an alarmed tone) My toes!

(pause while he untangled himself)

(In a relieved tone) Oh, hi.  I find them.

We’ve been reading the story “Beauty and the Beast” a lot lately from a Disney storybook collection Miles has. I like to put on a big French accent for the Lumiere character.

M:  Why do you talk like that when it’s Lumiere?

A:  Because he’s French.

M:  Then why don’t you go [weird heavy breathing noise]?

A:  … what?

M:  Oh, never mind.  I was thinking of German.

I haven’t posted in this category forever, I guess because I’ve mostly been rotating through old favorites and I figured I’d be duplicating.  But lately I’ve been feeling sort of in the mood for trying new things.  Maybe it’s the change of seasons.  Here’s what we’ve been eating:

Monday:

Linguine in lemon/garlic/butter/white wine with fresh gulf shrimp for me and chicken for Denny.

Tuesday:

Flank steak fajitas.  I love the spice rub blend from Cook’s Illustrated (unfortunately the site is subscription-only.  I have a cookbook I found it in.  It’s basically your warm spices:  cumin, cinnamon, cayenne, salt, crushed red pepper, that kind of thing).  I make big batches of it and keep it around for all kinds of Latin-inspired cooking.

Wednesday:

Asian lettuce wraps, inspired by this recipe, but instead I used ground pork and also added half a pound of finely-chopped mushrooms.

Thursday:

I think I’m going to roast some chicken thighs with zucchini, red bell pepper, onions, garlic, herbs, and pine nuts.

Friday:

Leftovers, duh.

Tobin (19 months) and Denny were watching squirrels out the window.

T:  I see him right there!

This was his first five-word sentence.

Hello, my Miles,

After months (seriously, months) of reading the same four bedtime stories, we’ve finally moved on to four different ones.  Now, every night, you want to hear in this order:  Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, and 101 Dalmatians.  These are from a couple of Disney story collections Mubby and Skittergramps gave you.  It’s nice to have a change of pace, because I swear if I had to read The Little Mermaid one more time, I might go crazy King Triton-style.  You’re not a Disney freak in general (although you pretty much only want to go on a Disney cruise for vacation for the rest of your life).  You don’t demand to watch the movies over and over; in fact, of the four new stories, Tarzan is the only one whose corresponding movie you’ve seen.  You don’t have much for merchandise, so I don’t think we’re in too much danger of losing you to the Cult of Disney.  I’m happy to read the stories to you.  They’re a little different from an adult perspective, anyway.  I’m not sure, but I think the whole rescue chain in 101 Dalmatians is an allusion to the Underground Railroad.

We’ve been having lots of fun with our choir, gearing up for our big concert next month.  You are getting a lot braver, though you’re still shy about standing anywhere except right next to me.  We’ll see how it goes when we practice standing in our official positions.  You truly love the music for its own sake.  You always want to hear the songs from our practice CD, and you sing them around the house so much that Tobin knows most of the words, too.  You don’t always get the words right.  This morning I heard you singing about shooting with crystals (as opposed to pistols), but I’m okay with that.  I’m glad you’re more familiar with the former than the latter.

Photo by Denny

It seems like you’ve been extra sweet to your brother lately.  He still gets on your nerves sometimes, but overall you’re very kind to him.  You’re still great about sharing food, and today, when I asked you to play with a toy in another room because it was torturing Tobin not to be able to play with it, you chose instead to hand it to him.  You got a smiley check for that, dude.

Photo by Denny

It’s time to do some clothes shopping for you, too.  A lot of your pants are getting high-watery, and your shirts show your tummy if you reach your arms up.  Last Saturday morning, I grabbed some clothes for you from your drawers so you could run an errand with me, and when you came out wearing them, you had about three inches of ankle and wrist exposed.  I don’t know how you keep growing with how little you eat, but you seem to be getting it done.

We’re closing in on the end of your time in preschool.  After your graduation in May, you’ll move on to some summer programs especially for kids who will be entering kindergarten in the fall.  We’ve decided to move you to our neighborhood public school, not because we don’t love Willowwind, but just because it’s hard to turn down a free, high-quality option.  Willowwind has been a great place for you and a truly good environment as you worked out the kinks of being away from home for the first time.  Kindergarten will mark a change, too.  It will be the first time you’ll be away for a full day, since you’ve always been a half-time preschooler.  I’m not too worried about how you’ll handle the academic and social aspects of it.  Your teachers had nothing but positive things to say about you in those areas at your conference.  I’m a little concerned about whether you’ll eat your packed lunch and whether you’ll handle a public bathroom all right.

But…you’re not the least-prepared kid to show up at  kindergarten, I suppose.  It may take a little adjustment, but you’ll sort it out.  We have kindergarten round-up next week, and it will help when we can show you the three kindergarten classrooms.  We don’t know yet to which you’ll be assigned, but we’ve heard great things about all the teachers.  A handful of school, neighborhood, and choir friends will go to the same school, so even if you don’t share a classroom with them, you’ll at least see friendly faces around.

Does it sound like I’m saying this more for me than for you?  I might be.  It’s my mommy prerogative.

Something that’s been weighing on me heavily lately is a horrifically sad situation facing some acquaintances.  A boy you knew early in your preschool days, one whom I specifically remember being really friendly and welcoming to you when you were new and homesick and scared, is probably in the last months of his battle with cancer.  In no way do I mean to co-opt that family’s pain. It makes me feel sick and tear up every time I think about it, but I’m sure I feel about 1% of their grief.  All I can do is hug you and your brother tightly and try to maintain perspective.  How much would that little boy’s mom love to have his transition to kindergarten be her biggest concern?  Our problems are very small.  I haven’t talked to you about the situation specifically.  Maybe that’s cowardly of me, but I want to protect you from the idea that a child could die.  You’re sometimes a fearful kid, and I don’t want to compound those issues.

You do understand the idea that kids can suffer, I think.  For the last couple of years, I’ve participated in the Layettes for Life program.  I found out about it through a former coworker who has done humanitarian work in Haiti.  It involves making packets of baby supplies (cloth diapers, onesies, socks, hats, sleepers, outfits, blankets) that are sent to Haiti.  They’re used as an incentive to get mothers to bring their babies to health care professionals :  come get your kid vaccinated and get some clean, new, cute clothes out of the deal.  Today the supplies I ordered arrived, and you watched as I assembled the layettes.  We talked a little bit about how there are some babies in the world who are so poor they don’t even have a onesie.  I’m sure it’s hard for you to comprehend, considering the overflowing boxes of baby clothes that fill our house, but I want you to be involved in a small but concrete aid project.  You can understand that the clothes you helped fold will go to a baby who needs them, more than if I just told you that I sent money.

Another sad piece of news:  the Roosevelt playground, which my family and I helped build and was a huge part of my childhood, has been dismantled.  The building is being turned into condominiums.  You loved playing there, and I haven’t told you about that yet either.  I’ll need to do that before we go to Mubby and Skittergramps’s house next, because you do better when you have some time to process things.  Much like the whole kindergarten situation, I think it’s probably harder on me than on you.  You’ll be bummed, but there are many other playgrounds.

I’m bummed, but I have two healthy children.  We’ll get over it.

Spring is here.  We’ve had a couple of tantalizingly warm days, followed by those rude cold days that wouldn’t even seem cold if it hadn’t been warm just recently.  More beautiful days are to come.  We have a wonderful spring and summer ahead of us, full of trips downtown to play in the fountain, to scramble around on the library playground, to walk on the path behind our house to get ice cream or a Flavor Ice.  I’d prefer it if you didn’t grow up, but it’s a whole lot better than the alternative.

You called a candy cane a hurricane today.  I had to hide my laughter because you really like to get things right.

Photo by Gary Clarke

I love you forever and ever and ever, my tender-hearted little sugarbug.

Love,

Mommy