My dear Miles,

So quickly, your second grade year is over.  You ended the year happy and confident, with some new interests (baseball, the board game Clue) and plenty of goals for the summer.  We worked on a list, and you’ve already accomplished a lot of them.  We still need to do some trips to the Splash Pad and the pool, but the summer is young, and there’s hot weather in the forecast.

You’re taking a few classes, the first of which you started this week.  You’ll have two weeks of computer programming, then a week of chess, then a few weeks of break before you begin Crime Scene Investigators.  It’s fun to take you to Willowwind again.  That place always feels like an old friend.  Tobin is looking forward to joining you there next summer when he’s eligible for camps and classes.

You decided to continue piano lessons through the summer, which is nice because it lends some structure to our less-occupied weeks.  You truly enjoy it, too.  Your current project is a song from the game King’s Quest IV:  The Perils of Rosella.  That’s a computer game I played as a kid, and we found a version online that you can now play.  You love it as much as I did, and upon your request, I captured the audio of the song that Rosella plays on the organ in the haunted house after she gets the sheet music from one of the ghosts.  Your awesome teacher, Tara, transcribed the music, and we’re working on helping you learn it.  You’ve nailed the first half, and now you just need to get confident with the second half of the song.  I’m sure it won’t take you long, since I often hear the strains of the spooky song coming up from the basement, even outside your normal practice time.  I credit Tara with keeping piano fun for you, because you don’t seem to dread practicing the way I did as a kid.  She does a great job finding a balance between challenging you and not overwhelming you.

You really loved your second grade teacher, Mr. Turnquist.  He had a cool approach to homework.  You had math worksheets a few times a week, but you also had weekly creative projects.  They were technically optional, but since you’re Miles, you did every single one.  The last one might have been the best.  You had to think of an invention, draw and describe it on a poster, and then make a model of it.  You said that most of your classmates did things like time-traveling cars and other fantastical inventions, but you took a different approach.  I suggested that you think of a problem, then base your invention on a way of solving that problem.  The problem you came up with is the fact that you’re always dropping Cheerios on the floor, and your dad and I get irritated when we step on them.

To solve the problem, you invented Cheerio Duck.  It’s a robotic duck that scans the floor with cameras in its eyes and munches any Cheerios it sees.  You even planned for a trap door in the duck’s belly for Cheerio removal.  I thought that was a practical and original idea.  Now, every morning when you drop Cheerios, you call out “Cheerio Duck!”  Sadly, your prototype isn’t a working model.  Tobin has even taken to yelling “Laundry Duck!” in the hopes that a robot duck will come pick up the socks he always leaves on the floor.  Maybe that can be your next invention.

We’ve been busy over the last several weekends, with our Family Folk Machine concert, a trip to Ames, and a family wedding in Albia.  You did a great job at the concert.  For the first time, you not only sang a solo but also did a spoken introduction to a song.  You worked every night for a week leading up to the concert so you’d have your blurb memorized.  On the day of the show, I offered you a cheat sheet with the text, but you declined.  And, of course, you nailed it.

Harry Potter remains your favorite topic of just about everything:  reading, movies, discussion.  The final book is broken into two movies, and you’ve reached the point in the book that the first movie covers.  We’re doing to have to rent that soon.  You had a play date with another Harry Potter-loving friend yesterday, and the two of you were throwing spells and hexes at each other all over the Ped Mall.

Photo by Gary Clarke

I’m just now getting used to your face with those big adult teeth in it, and next week, we have an appointment with an orthodontist.  I don’t know what she’ll recommend, exactly—it might not be braces just yet.  You seem to want them, though I’m not sure why.  I’ve tried to explain to you that while they’re good in the long-term, braces are sort of a hassle, but you still like the idea.  That may change the first time you have them tightened.  I remember that painful process well.  We’ll see what she says.  You may try to use it as a negotiation point for getting more ice cream.

One of the goals I’ve set for you for the summer is to eat a piece of pizza.  It seems like a low-threshold food for you to explore, and it would make things a lot easier at birthday parties and other pizza-centric events.  There’s also a cool arcade/pizza joint in town that would be a great family dinner destination, but we have never been there because there’s nothing you will agree to eat.  Pizza, Miles.  Pizza is your friend.

You have a lot of summer left in front of you, my sweet boy.  Let’s do all kinds of fun things and invent a duck to clean up all our messes.

Love,

Mom