9/22/2016

The Tobin Times #61

Filed under: — Aprille @ 2:39 pm

Dear Tobin,

I don’t want to speak too soon and jinx us, but it seems like maybe you’re easing out of the second-half-of-the-year period of disequilibrium.  You still have your evening energy surges sometimes, but keeping busy during the day and having soccer two nights a week seems to be helping you get balanced out.  I’ve found myself looking forward to our Tuesdays and Thursdays when you’re home, because you’re mostly a fun guy.

The drives to and from Kinderfarm are starting to wear on me, and we haven’t even dealt with any bad weather yet.  It will be nice next year when you and Miles are in the same school.  You’re already making plans about how you’ll walk home from school together.  It may take me a while to get used to that idea, and besides, I like picking you guys up from school.  It’s the best part of my day when I see one of you kids round a corner and break into a big smile, cheerful from a good school day but happy to see me.

I asked you the other day who your best school friends are, and you mentioned Liam, Jackson, and Chase.  I asked if you were friends with any of the girls in the class, and you said, “Pretty much the only girl I like is you.”  That’s not going to last, but I like being your main lady for the time being.  I’ve always emphasized that you kids can marry whomever makes you happy, male or female, and you’ve decided on Miles.  I guess I should have been more specific.  On the other hand, today you were happy when I told you it’s the day Miles has his after-school class.  When I asked you why, you said, “So I’ll have more time without Miles bugging me.”  You two are best frenemies for sure.

We’ve had some good adventures lately, including our annual apple-picking outing and a trip to Nana and Papa’s farm.  Though the weather has been hot and humid this week, we lucked into a gorgeous Saturday for our farm trip.  You had a great time jumping on hay bales, running up and down the the squishy silage pile, and riding on Papa’s 4-wheeler.  You bragged to me about he let you push buttons and steer.  I remember my Pop-Pop used to let my cousins and me drive his tractor, though I mainly stuck to steering.  My cousin Debi bragged about Pop-Pop letting her use the clutch, and it reminded me so much of your pride in button-pushing.  I don’t know what buttons do on a 4-wheeler, but you were psyched to be in charge of them.

You are, most of the time, a really kind and sweet guy.  You know just when to come and give me a hug and tell me you love me, and Callum thinks you’re about the greatest person ever.  He calls you “Toto” (also his word for tomato, but that’s neither here nor there).  He dreams about you, and more than once I’ve heard him say “Toto” in his sleep.  We stayed in a hotel the night before we spent the day at Nana and Papa’s, and when he looked over and found you sleeping in the same room as him, he squealed with happiness.  You are mostly kind and patient with him, though you could still learn a bit more about prioritizing.  This morning he grabbed one of the two blankets you had, and rather than letting him have one and using the other, you got into a tug-of-war with him.  You’re right—he shouldn’t grab things away from you.  But on the other hand, you need to learn that sometimes it’s a lot easier for everybody if you learn to drop the small things.

We’re taking a mini-vacation to St. Louis in a couple of weeks, and I hope it’s a fun family getaway.  We’re taking you to the City Museum, which I hear is intense and awe-inspiring and perfect for scrabbly little people like you.  I also hope to hit the zoo and the Botanical Gardens, and it looks like there are a lot of good places to see and eat in the neighborhood where we’re staying.  It will be a somewhat long ride in the car, but hopefully some audio books will keep you happy.  It will be nice when you can read well enough to entertain yourself with books, but in the meantime, your dad and I have enjoyed listening to some Roald Dahl and Judy Blume.

You seem to be enjoying school at Kinderfarm so far.  You’re currently working on a nursery rhyme unit, and it was fun for you to play the cow in a reenactment of “Hey, Diddle Diddle.”  You’ve been reciting that rhyme frequently around the house the last few days.

Your current favorites:  Odd Squad, Wild Kratts, waffles, lemonade, the Percy Jackson book your dad is reading to you at bedtime, playing memory games, and jumping on furniture.  We try to keep that last one to a minimum, so it was pretty exciting when you got to jump on the hotel bed.

You’re a fun, energetic, and enthusiastic little guy.  I truly hope the behavior challenges we’ve dealt with the last half-year are waning, and we can get back to enjoying the cheerful, fun person I know you are.  Everybody has a better time when nobody’s yelling.  I think we can do it.

Love,

Mommy

9/13/2016

The Callum Chronicle #20

Filed under: — Aprille @ 9:01 am

My sweet Callum,

You have had an explosion of language lately.  It’s so cute to hear you say all your words—not all of them are traditional, but you say so many consistent things in perfect context that we know just what you mean.  One of the best phrases is “thank you,” which you say now every time someone gives you something.  It’s not just an immediate Pavlovian response either.  A few minutes ago I gave you a cracker, and after eating it, you realized you hadn’t thanked me.  You got my attention and said, “Tankyoo.”

You have new words for your brothers, too:  Mamou and Toto.  You’ve known and loved them as people for a long time, and now you can talk about them all the better.  I’ve even gotten you to say Cal a couple of times (no mooing).  The other day we were sitting at the table and I was leafing through a Food & Wine magazine.  I turned to a page with a photo of penne pasta, and you looked at it and said, “Mamou!”  I thought that was pretty smart:  you recognized the food and wanted to let me know that you’d spied Miles’s favorite.

You like penne too, but I think your favorite food is pizza.  We went out for dinner last night and ordered with the plan to have lots of leftovers, because tonight is going to be busy, and I wanted a quick and easy dinner.  Little did we know that ordering a small thin-crust pepperoni, a small thick-crust multi-topping, and a bowl of pasta (for Mamou) would leave only two measly slices left over.  This was thanks largely to you, since you got through more of the pepperoni than we expected.  We’re having sandwiches tonight.

You’re adventurous and friendly, quick to shout “hi” to passersby, human or otherwise.  We went to Wilson’s Orchard earlier this week, and there was a friendly cat whom you loved petting.  You also really like Stella, the big St. Bernard at Kinderfarm.  Now you take umbrage when neighborhood cats won’t come let you pet them when we’re out for walks in the stroller.

You’ve been enjoying the outdoors on these nice fall days.  We hung around at Miles’s school playground today after pickup for an impromptu playdate, and even though you didn’t have any shoes on because I wasn’t expecting to take you out of the stroller, you loved it.  You cried when I stuck you back in, because apparently walking barefoot on wood chips is a-okay with you.  You love music and dancing, even the silly little songs I sing to pass the minutes and hours of our days.  Most of the time you request “more, more!” even if it’s nothing more than “wiping off your little buns” to the tune of “London Bridge.”  You do a good job making me feel like an accomplished song parodyist.

The whole family has been suffering from allergies this year, particularly in the last week or so.  The weather has cooled off enough that we’ve had the windows open, which is great for breezes but not so great for allergens.  I give you children’s Zyrtec every night before bed, which helps a lot, but we’re been going through lots of Kleenex regardless.  You finally cut the canine teeth that had been hovering under the surface of your gums for what felt like months, so that’s helped.  You’ve been sleeping well, all cuddled up to me.  I love having you next to me, even though you can be a bit of a bed hog.

You love doing dangerous things like climbing up to the top bunk of your brothers’ bed and trying to slide out with no help.  You want to climb step stools and jump on the futon and mess around with video game controllers.  Just now, I told Miles to come downstairs and practice piano.  You were perfectly happy playing with Play-Doh, but as soon as you heard me say the word piano, you ran over and took up a spot on the piano bench so Miles couldn’t practice.  You are a stinker, but you’re awfully cute.

You have developed a strong bond with Skittergramps lately.  You love talking with him and Mubby via Skype, and whenever we pass the computer (“pupu”), you ask for Giga (Skitter).  I usually tell you that I’ll check to see if he’s online.  You get so disappointed if he’s not.  You actually shook your little fists with rage when he wasn’t there to talk to you the other day.

As usual, you go wherever the gang goes.  Tonight you’re coming to a PTO meeting with me, which may or may not be a disaster.  They’re serving pizza since it’s the first meeting of the school year, so maybe that will keep you busy for a while.  Tobin’s soccer season is starting this week too, so I’m sure I’ll find myself running around the park trying to keep you managed.  We went to Tot Time last week and plan to go again, because now you’re old enough to really enjoy it.  Life is getting more and more fun now that you’re becoming an active participant.  Tankyoo very much for being my little guy.

Photo by Denny

Love,

Mommy

9/12/2016

Monthly Miles Memo #104

Filed under: — Aprille @ 1:35 pm

Dear Miles,

Third grade has begun, and suddenly you’re a big kid (a “tween,” some might say).   This is the designation at your school:  you have certain new privileges, like checking out five library books at a time and being allowed to walk to and from school on your own (we haven’t let you do precisely that yet; more on that later).  I’ve noticed changes in your demeanor, too.  The most obvious is your wild hair.  You have avoided haircuts all summer, and your dad and I decided you should get a cut before school started.  We got busy and it didn’t happen, so we adjusted the deadline to before school pictures.  A couple of days before school pictures, we mentioned it to you, and you were so firm in your disinclination to get it cut that we decided to let you keep it crazy.

A high school teacher of mine once said that for her kids, she let them do whatever they wanted with their hair.  Hair choices are always temporary, and they allow a person a sense of self-determination without any long-term consequences.  I thought that was a pretty smart attitude, so I decided to adopt it with you too.  Honestly, in my opinion, your hair would look a lot better if you got the sides trimmed up.  I tried combing it into a reasonable style after you shower the other night, and it looked even worse.  You’re just going to rock the untamed mop, I guess.

You’ve also taken on some big-kid affectations, like saying “Whazzup?”  I don’t know where you heard that, but it might have been from an older friend you made during your summer classes.  Andrew is a sixth grader at a different elementary school, and you’ve been psyched about texting with him.  He also enjoys Harry Potter and Pokemon Go, so you have plenty to discuss.

At dropoff outside your classroom on the first day of school, I got the sense for the first time that you’d rather I didn’t hug and kiss you goodbye.  We did a high five and I hugged and kissed you extra when you got home from school that afternoon.

We were at the library a couple of weeks ago, and you saw a poster advertising an upcoming program.  It was an interactive screening of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, complete with prop bags and prompts to chant along with spells, boo Malfoy, and cheer during Quiddich.  You got really, really excited, and my first instinct was that I was going to have to disappoint you, because it was part of the “Totally Tweens” series.  Then I read the details and learned that “tweens” refers to third- through sixth-graders.  Lo and behold, you qualified.  It’s hard for me to fathom that you’re a tween (for one thing, it’s a fake word, but I guess it’s useful), but I’m glad you got to go.  You met your friend Esmé there, and Andrew showed up as well.  It was pretty much the highlight of your life.

We’ve done some good outdoor adventuring over the last month, including trips to Maquoketa Caves and Wilson’s Orchard.  I was really excited to take you to Maquoketa Caves, because I went there as a kid during my Cousins’ Week time in eastern Iowa, and I remember thinking it was about the coolest place on earth.  It was pretty crowded when we went, so we had to do a lot of yielding to oncoming fellow cave explorers as we wound our way through the caves.  It was still fun, though.  You and Tobin and I ventured past the main, easily-accessible cave and tried out some of the slightly more remote ones.  We didn’t do any full-on spelunking, but it was exciting nonetheless.  Next time we’ll bring our head lamps.

September 2016

September 2009

Wilson’s was a good time as usual.  I was looking through my old photos, and we’ve been taking you there since you were just a little guy, just Callum’s age.  You don’t need a boost to pick the apples anymore, and you’re much more discerning about which ones you pick.  I had to convince you that an apple doesn’t have to be 100% pristine to be a good choice.  It was a beautiful day out in the orchard, and we enjoyed some local cider and wildlife too.

August 2009

It’s harder and harder for me to see glimpses of the baby I fell in love with, though I love the big guy you’re becoming just as much.  Sometimes I see that baby in the way you still hold your pinky up when you eat and drink.  It’s easy to see your baby face in Callum, who looks so much like you.  But you’d rather read comic books in bed than have me read you bedtime stories, and you think I’m hopelessly out of the loop for not installing Pokemon Go on my phone.  You’re taking a 3D printing class in the afternoon once a week about a block away from your school.  You loved your first class last week, and you’re really motivated to continue.  Fortunately, two of your 3D printing classmates are also students at your regular school, so we’ve arranged it so you’ll walk together.  That will save me the hassle of waking Callum up early from his nap, walking to pick you up, taking you there, walking home, and doing it all again an hour and a half later.  I think you can handle it.  I admit it’s a little scary for me to let you do it, but you’re a smart kid, as are your walking partners.

You’re turning out pretty well, Miles.  I don’t know if I’m emotionally ready to be the mom of a tween, but since I don’t have a choice, I’m glad that tween is you.

Photo by Denny

Love,

Mommy

 

 

9/2/2016

Prefab

Filed under: — Aprille @ 8:38 am

Callum accidentally stepped on Tobin’s hand.

A:  Was that red mark already there, or did it happen when Callum stepped on your hand?

T:  I think it just came with my body.

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