My dear Miles,

I think your brain has been really busy lately.  You’ve had an explosion in your reading skills and confidence.  Last night you pulled me into your room, jumping up and down with pride and excitement,  to show me what you’d written on your whiteboard.  With zero help, you sounded out the chorus to Harry Belafonte’s classic “Banana Boat Song” (a perennial favorite in our house).

DA O
DA O
Dalight
Kum ind meE
wot too go hom

I was pretty impressed, especially with the word “dalight.”  Nice job, kid.

You are getting excited for kindergarten, especially for school supply shopping.  We have a Target trip planned for this week so you can get all your pencils and markers and notebooks and crayons.  You would rather sit and play computer games than just about anything.  You still love to sing, and you’re looking forward to Family Folk Machine starting up next week.  One of your best preschool friends is joining, and that’s another reason you’re excited.

And yet, your life does not cast pure sunshine on the world one hundred percent of the time.  We just took a mini-vacation to Chicago, and I swear you spent more time whining and grumping than enjoying all the fun things the city has to offer.  We went to the amazing fountain in Millennium Park, but when I managed to drag your feet into the one inch of water at the base, you cried and refused to play because you said it was too cold (it wasn’t really very cold).  You wouldn’t smile for any pictures, you freaked out when your brother got anywhere near you, and you were generally kind of a jerk.

And yet, you  say you had a great time in Chicago.  I asked you last night where we should go on our next vacation, because I always like to have one in the works, and you immediately said we should go back to Chicago.  You loved the fold-out couch bed you slept on in our hotel (oh, the glamor).  You enjoyed Shedd Aquarium (until you decided you were ready to go, at which point no one else was allowed to look at anything).  You loved the Egyptian exhibit at the Field Museum.

So…I don’t know what to do about you.  You have a big change coming up, starting kindergarten at a new school.  I know your brain and body are both growing really fast, and it has to be frustrating to be a kid with so little control over his world.  You have so much love in you.  You can be so sweet and kind to Tobin, and without our nightly stories and cuddles, you would melt into irreparable despair.  I hope you develop empathy one of these years, because right now the missing link seems to be the fact that your behavior influences others.  I’ve told you so many times that when you have a bad attitude, it puts me in a bad mood and makes me not want to be nice.  Your dad frequently tells you that our family is a team, and to succeed, we all need to work together.  As of yet, it’s not computing with you.

But sociopathy is a hallmark of youth, right?  I hope you grow out of this.  You have so many great things to offer, and your teachers tell us you’re a wonderful human being while you’re at school.  I guess you just feel so loved and confident at home that you can unleash all your rudeness and know it’s not going to undo our family.  This is what I get for giving you all that unconditional love.  Oof.

One of your big accomplishments of the summer was swimming lessons.  Your goal was to dunk your head all the way underwater, which you sort of did at your last lesson, and did for real at our hotel pool in Chicago.  As we gazed into the Caribbean Reef exhibit at Shedd, I told you about how when you’ve practiced swimming a lot and are really good at swimming with your head underwater, we can go snorkeling together and see fish like that.  You got excited about that idea, so I hope it’s a good motivator.

It’s hard to believe that we won’t be having lunch together most days starting in just a little over a week.  It’s been our ritual for so long to sit at the dining room table and eat our lunches.  It started with you in the baby sling, and I often dribbled sauce on your head as I tried to navigate the fork to my mouth.  Then you moved to the high chair, eating your purees and later your little finger foods.  Then Tobin came along and you took a regular chair, and you ate many, many noodles and pancakes.  It’s going to be lonely at the lunch table without you.  Geez, when Tobin joins you at Lucas Elementary in three short years, I might have to be a volunteer lunch lady so I don’t eat crying soup every day.

It’s been a good summer, mostly.  We’ve eaten a lot of Flavor Ice (once with your old friend Beanie).  We’ve listened to a lot of cicadas and tended a lot of garden plants.  We’ve painted pictures, read books, visited museums and the library. Most of it was fun.

The world needs grumpy people, I suppose.  Morrissey has made a good career for himself, and Louis Black, and that Picasso fellow seemed to have a pretty bad attitude.  Just remember, my little curmudgeon, all the joy you take in the world when you have the right perspective on it.  There are many successes in front of you, whiteboards full of more words than you can dream.  But there are challenges, too, and you can get past them if you persevere and don’t demand perfection of yourself and others.  A little flexibility helps a lot.

But, as I know you know, I love you no matter what.

Love,

Mommy