My dear Tobin,

You’ve been doing the grossest thing lately:  you stick your fingers down your throat and very nearly gag yourself.  You seem to think this is fun.  Your dad and I yank your hands out of your mouth and tell you very sternly not to do it, but you laugh and laugh and keep doing it.  It is disgusting, and I have nothing to say on the topic except that you are very weird.

Although the last few nights have been better, you went through a really tough spate last week with your sleep.  I thought maybe it was related to teething, but it seemed like you had been working on the same two teeth forever.  Those two bottom canines were just loitering around beneath the surface for what felt like months.  I decided, teething or no teething, I needed to night-wean you.  I remembered that your brother magically started sleeping much better right after he was weaned, so I figured it was worth a try.

I picked a week, read a bunch of other people’s opinions on how to do it best, and got started.  Your dad wasn’t crazy about the idea, largely because I was going to be counting on him to help out with the middle-of-the-night grumpiness you were sure to express when I denied you your favorite solution.

We made it two nights.  Strangely, you didn’t really cry much.  You did a little, but mostly it just seemed like you were wide awake.  I think you’re addicted to the sleep-inducing qualities of warm milk, and without it, you just wanted to sit straight up in bed (prairie-dogging, I call it) and hang out.  So why did we make it only two nights?  On day three, you came down with a fever.  You were lethargic and crabby.  You also cut those two teeth that had been toying with you for so long.  I felt like I couldn’t deny comfort to a little guy who was feeling bad, so we got off our rhythm.  Now, you’re feeling better and those teeth are in, and suddenly you’re sleeping pretty darn well.

This has reduced my motivation for full-on night weaning.  It’s a lot easier to allow you your milky when it’s only once or twice a night, at reasonable times like 9:30 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., as opposed to five or six times.  Still, we’re going to have to do it at some point.  I don’t want you to be late to your high school graduation because you were up all night nursing.

[A note to people who may be new to this blog:  I am KIDDING. I only plan to nurse until he’s 13 or 14, tops.]

You are super excited right now about playing outside and riding in our new red car.  Spring has been very late in coming this year, and I don’t even think it’s fully in swing yet.  The last couple of days have been nice, so we’ve maximized your outdoor time with trips to the playground behind our house and the one by the library.  I think it’s going to get cold again next week, though.  I hope things turn around soon, because those afternoons when we’re stuck in the house can really drag.  Your brother wants to play computer, and you want to be anywhere he is, and that sometimes means mashing his keyboard and pulling out his power cable, and that always results in at least two people screaming.  You are not usually one of them.

I don’t mean to make it sound like you’re naughty all the time.  You’re really a sweetheart.  Mubby and Skittergramps visited last week during Miles’s spring break, and you had so much fun with them.  After they left, we went down to the room where the slept, because it’s also where we store some old clothes I needed to sort.  You climbed onto the bed and said in the saddest little voice, “Please?  Please?  My Skitter?”  Usually you saying the word please gets you pretty much whatever you what, which I suspect you have figured out, but there was no way I could grant that wish.

You remain a great talker.  Yesterday you gave yourself a little assignment.  You said, “Zzzzz.  Zzzzz.  Zzzzz.  Izzzzzzzaak.”  Izaak is a friend of Miles’s, and he and his family came over to our house for dinner the other night.  His name was hard for you to say, and you gave yourself the task of working on that tough sound and trying it out in the name.  You’ve started doing more and more multi-word sentences.  At Hy-Vee recently, your favorite check-out person gave you a sticker, and you said to me, “Sticker on coat.”  I was happy to fulfill that request, even if you didn’t say please.  Just tonight, you got tired of a song we were listening to in the car, and you said, “No more like it.”  The songs we’ve been playing the most are the ones from the Family Folk Machine practice CD.  Family Folk Machine is the choir Miles and I are in, and I think when you come to our concert, you’re going to be singing along in the audience.  It’ll be fun when you’re big enough to join.

You really enjoy helping your daddy make his tea in the morning, and you’ve recently branched out into helping me make coffee, too.  For the tea, you like to push the numbers on the microwave and dunk the tea bag into the mug.  For the coffee, you like to sit on the counter, help me pour the water in, and flip the power switch on the coffee maker.  I get a kick out of sharing these rituals with you, and they’re a good way to entice you away from climbing into your brother’s bed and sitting on his head.

You’re starting to learn some of your letters, using the magnetic letters in your room.  So far you consistently identify F (both upper- and lower-case) and X.  You know a lot of animals, too, even though you usually think dogs are horses.  We’ve taken a couple of trips to the Natural History Museum recently, and you’re crazy about the giant sloth.  You call it a dragon.

You also like the mannequin representing a native Iowan.  You call him Mommy.  Is it because he has long hair?  That is weird, because I don’t even have long hair.  Really, I look nothing like him at all.  You like his belly button.  I guess he and I have that much in common.

Photo by Gary Clarke

The biggest phase you’re in right now is “MY TURN.”  You say that all the time, whether the thing you want to do is age-appropriate or not.  If I’m eating something, I’m usually happy to share it with you, but you are not content to let me feed you bites.  You yell, “MY TURN” and grab the fork out of my hand.  It’s gotten so that I automatically bring two utensils if I think you might be interested.  Another thing you say a lot is, “Let go peepees.”  Can you guess what that might mean?  I’ll give you a hint:  you’ve heard it a lot from your dad and me at diaper-changing time.   There comes a point in the process where we can’t continue until you fulfill that request.

I hope that isn’t too embarrassing for you to read down the road.  I’m assuming you’ll care about reading these someday.  Maybe you won’t.  Maybe you’ll continue at your current pace and be out adventuring with no time to stop and reflect on your babyhood.  That’s okay.  These are for your dad and me, too.  It’s so easy to think we’ll never forget these funny things you say and do, but brains get so busy, and new memories come in and muddle up the old ones.  I want to have a record to look back on and remember when you were my sweet little Chub-Chub.

I noticed yesterday you’re not so chubby anymore.

But I still love you.

Love forever,

Mommy