Dear Tobin,

Do all kids go through a stage where they must point out any tiny inconsistency or inaccuracy in their parents’ behavior?  I know Miles did it, because it was the impetus for the phrase “Thank you, counselor” that we used when he was being pedantic to the point of irritation.  I thought that was just a product of his personality, but lately you’ve been doing it too.  I don’t know what you think it’s going to accomplish when you say things like, “You said you were going to eat a few grapes, and you ate seven, which is more than a few, which is about three.”  Do you think I’m going to high-five you for your attention to detail and vomit up four grapes in your honor?  I’m sure it has something  to do with feeling powerless and searching out ways to have control in the world, but dang it’s annoying.

Photo by Gary Clarke

You probably do it to impress Miles, who usually sides with Team Kid and comes to your defense when your dad and I try to explain the value of thinking holistically and not being hung up on irrelevant details.  I guess if I take my own advice approach the whole situation holistically, I should be happy that you two are building camaraderie, even if it’s against your parents.

Overall, you’re still a cheerful and fun kid.  You’re active and wiggly, but you’ve done a great job maintaining focus in your taekwondo class.  You’ve got your first testing event coming up soon, and as long as you practice your form a few more times, I’m confident you’ll be a yellow belt soon.  That means moving to the advanced class, which will certainly be more intense, but it will also be good for you.  It will mean later nights, because the advanced class starts later and goes longer than the beginners’ class, but you’ve worked really hard, and I’m sure you’ll fit right in.

Our choir is having an open mic party soon, and you decided to write an original song called “Indomitable,” a reference to the “indomitable spirit” tenet of taekwondo.  The gist of the song is that, in the verses, you describe things that are challenging, and in the chorus, you talk about the value of hard work and perseverance to meet those challenges.  I was helping you write some verses, and you were complaining that the ideas I came up with for challenges didn’t accurately describe things that are hard for you.  I then came up with something that is actually difficult for you:  sitting still at the dinner table.  You rejected that idea because it was “too embarrassing.”  I don’t know why that’s too embarrassing to include in a song when anyone who’s ever shared a meal with you has witnessed your inability to eat more than three bites without getting up to do a lap around the dining room, but you didn’t want to write a verse about it.

We have parent-teacher conferences coming up next month, so it will be interesting to see if you have the same issues with sitting still in school.  I know the current popular theory involves leaning into the idea of wiggly children and letting them bounce on balls and do other things while they work.  I’m not sure if your teacher embraces those strategies or not, but she’s well-experienced and probably has good ideas about how to manage her classroom.  I’d suggest letting you bounce on an exercise ball at dinner, but that wouldn’t work very well on soup nights.

Your current favorites:  YouTube videos in which children pull pranks on adults, pepperoni pizza, playing with your friend Kit, playing your new piano piece (which you love, because it’s a simplified version of one Miles is also playing, and it makes you feel very accomplished), and reading nonfiction books about animals.  You’re still obsessed with Harry Potter, and you watch the movies over and over.  Your dad is on the final book of the series in your bedtime reading, so you’ll be all primed for our trip to Universal (aka Harry Potter World) in January.

You’re fun, silly, creative, and smart.  You’re not always patient with Callum, but he adores you, and when you make the effort to be kind to him, he gobbles it up.  You’d rather be a big kid like Miles than dip down to little kid territory, but you’re also very sensitive to the emotions of others.  When I remind you that Callum isn’t trying to torture you but just wants your attention, you do better.  Maybe that’s what’s happening when you call your dad and me out on obnoxious little details—you just want attention (from us and from Miles), and we need to remember that you’re not trying to torture us.

In sum, I get a lot more love from you than torture anyway.  Let’s not dicker over details.

Love,

Mom

Dear Callum,

You’re 3.75 years old now, and even though it still seems like you’re the new guy around here, I guess you’re getting pretty well established.  I recently learned that there’s a free preschool program for 3-year-olds at a local school, and a person who works there was pressuring me to put you in it.  At first it seemed like it might be a good idea, since Miles and Tobin each had over two years of preschool and you’ll only have one.  I never got around to looking into it too seriously, though, because it’s too hard to deviate from my mental plan of having you with me for another year.  Besides, I think you get a lot of the benefits of preschool in your daily life.  Miles and Tobin give you plenty of social interaction, and you’ve made friends closer to your own age lately too.  You’ve been playing a lot with Tobin’s taekwondo instructor’s son, who is always happy to have you for a playmate while his dad is teaching.

We also read lots of books and do creative activities at home.  You’ve gotten really into Robert Munsch lately, an old favorite in our household, and you love doing art projects.  You especially love any art project that involves cutting things up with scissors.  With two older brothers who seem to get a new set of school scissors every year, our home has ended up with many small pairs of scissors, and you have commandeered the lot of them.  You like cutting ribbons into tiny pieces, cardboard boxes into tiny pieces, papers you find around the house into tiny pieces, and you would have cut your hair into tiny pieces if your dad hadn’t made a flying leap and stopped you at the last second.

Miles loves to quiz you on planetary facts, and you’re becoming quite knowledgeable about them.  We garden (when it’s not too soggy, which has been rare lately), take walks, run errands, and play pretend games with your toys.  Your stuffed animals Curious George and Spummy (a name you gave the blue-footed booby) have long conversations and are always falling off the bed and hugging each other sympathetically.  In short, I think you’ll survive with just one year of preschool.

You’re becoming more and more observant, too.  I was cleaning out the refrigerator and dumped out a container of old almond milk from iced coffee days of yore, and you looked at the label and said, “Hey, just like Nana crackers.”  Nana crackers are actually Nut Thins, made by the Blue Diamond company, just like the almond milk.  I was surprised and impressed that you recognized the pattern.

You love helping me in the kitchen.  You did a good job helping with the frosting for a recent batch of pumpkin bars, and today you did pretty well taking the leaves off the Thai basil plant.  We’re going to have a frost in the next few days, so I harvested the more tender herbs to freeze for later use.  You got to use scissors to take leaves off the stalks—I myself just pulled them off, but you take any opportunity you can get to use scissors—and put them in the freezer bag.

Photo by Gary Clarke

The hardest part of cooking with you is finding a balance between letting you do things by yourself and not completely sacrificing the quality of the final product.  You have no patience for leveling off flour or baking powder measurements, and baking requires some precision.  You really enjoy stirring and do it vigorously.  Sometimes the contents of the bowl fly everywhere.  Oh, and cracking eggs.  You love that.  Oh boy.

Our old iMac bit the dust a week or so ago, and while you sometimes watch a video or two on another piece of hardware, your screen time has gone down noticeably.  That’s probably good for you, though it drives me crazy how everything you pick up that’s longer than it is wide becomes a gun.  I don’t know if you got that from Tobin (who is obsessed with Nerf guns) or the larger culture.  Yesterday, we were picking the big boys up from school, and you grabbed a stick from the ground.  I tried to engage you in some imagination play about picturing it as a tree with leaves that could change color and fall off in the autumn, but that lasted about thirty seconds before it became a gun in your hand.  Gross.  I know I can’t completely insulate you from that kind of play, because whether you get it from your brothers or elsewhere, it’s going to enter your sphere.  But I don’t have to like it and I’m not going to stop encouraging alternate ways to play.

After a brief swell of heat, in which we played in the sprinkler and with splort balls (my non-violent alternative to squirt guns), I believe we’re transitioning into cold weather.  That will mean a drastic reduction in your outside time.  The late summer/early fall was a lot of fun, with many trips to the park and other outside playtime.  You love to get out, but I’m sure we’ll find good things to do inside too.  We might have to make more pumpkin bars.  Maybe you can even learn to crack an egg without violence.

Halloween is coming, and you’re excited to be a witch again.  I don’t know when you’re going to realize that most people choose a different costume every year, but I’m not complaining.  Your brothers always want super complex costumes, and they would prefer that I make them rather than buy them (though often their choices wouldn’t be available in stores anyway), so at least yours is quick and easy.  We have a variety of Halloween events to attend, and you’re going to be pretty darn cute in your oversized witch’s hat.

Have a good month, my little pup.  We’ve got some good adventures coming up, and I’ll do my best to do just as well by you as any preschool.

Love,

Mommy

Dear Miles,

As we’ve known since your first weeks of life, you can be easily perturbed.  You’re a dynamic person; one day or hour you can be kind and sweet, and the next you’re crabby and brimming with negativity.  I’d blame it on your pre-teen transitional life stage, but frankly, you’ve always been that way.  We’ve seen plenty of examples of your friendly side lately.  You and Callum have a routine you do at bedtime in which you quiz him about the planets.  He knows which one is the biggest, which ones have rings (it’s not just Saturn, which you made sure he knew), which is closest to the sun, which is the smallest, and all kinds of facts.  You’re still clinging to Pluto as a planet, which seems silly to me, but it has provided some good discussion opportunities about the role of change in science.  One thing I admire about scientists is their ability to admit that they’re wrong, and that new evidence isn’t something to hide from, but rather an exciting chance to reevaluate previously held beliefs.

Nobody, myself and you included, likes to admit being wrong, but maybe if we can reframe things as new evidence and evolving thought, we can grow rather than be stagnant.

The weather has been weird lately, almost like a wrong-hemisphere monsoon season.  We’ve had unseasonably warm temperatures, buckets and buckets of rain, and a handful of chilly days.  We spent one of them volunteering with Family Folk Machine at Oktoberfest emptying trash cans.  To the organizers’ credit, there wasn’t much trash.  They did a good job creating a system of reusable rather than disposable drinkware, so really all we had to manage were food containers.  We spent most of the time pushing around a big, rolling trash receptacle, peering into trash cans, and deciding they didn’t need emptying.  Still, it was pretty fun, and we hung around after our volunteer shift to enjoy SodaFest, the kids’ sub-festival with soda tasting, games, and activities.  You tried the climbing wall for the first time and did a good job.

Music continues to be your top extracurricular (only, in fact, since Let Me Run got cancelled due to low participation).  You’ve really taken to the trombone, practicing more than necessary and working out notes you haven’t yet been assigned.  It’s looking like we will probably need to replace the loaner trombone you’ve been using with a permanent one, though we should probably wait a few more months to see if your enthusiasm wanes.  Piano is also going well, and you’ll participate in the fall recital soon.  You’re still active in the choir, and we learned at dinner last night that you’re on cowbell duty for at least one song in Orff Club.

Photo by Gary Clarke

We took a mini-vacation to Dubuque last weekend, and we saw some prime examples of your dynamic nature.  First we visited your cousins, and you had a great time having Nerf blaster battles with them and staging a YouTube video that involved taste-testing various flavors of Ritter Sport chocolate bars.  After that, we went to a hotel with a waterpark.  As your dad and I managed Callum in the toddler area, we marveled at how nice it was that you and Tobin could have so much fun together.  You went down waterslides, climbed around on rope bridges, and scrambled all over the place.  We didn’t have to worry about the two of you at all.  Later, we went to the Mississippi River Museum, which you loved the last time we visited.  There was even a special exhibit about Leonardo DaVinci, who was a personal hero of yours in your youth.  You spent almost the whole time pouting and grumbling and being rude to the rest of your family.  What’s the deal, dude?  I don’t know if you were just worn out from the earlier activities, but it wasn’t cool.

The longer I know you, the better I’m getting at not taking your moods personally.  It’s hard for me, because I’m very mood-absorbent, and other people’s negativity brings me down.  If a coworker or friend acted like you were acting, it would ruin my whole day.  I can’t say that your moods have no effect on me, but I’m improving at shrugging them off and waiting for them to pass.  When you were a baby, I remember writing in one of your memos that you were very forgivable.  After a rough night (of which you had many) or high-crying day (also common), you’d give me a big smile and I’d immediately get over it.  Maybe that’s just what loving one’s baby/child/pre-teen/teen/adult means.  It still works.  When I hear you put on your sing-song voice and say, “Which is the smallest planet, Callum?” I’m so happy that I don’t even bother to argue the Pluto point.

You’re in a time of great growth and development, and I know it’s harder on you than it is on me.  I remember being your age and not feeling sure how to respond to the world or how to suss out my role in it.  My challenge is to help you understand that your actions have consequences, and not everyone is going to forgive your poorer choices as readily as I do.  That’s hard to do when we’re surrounded by examples of crappy people ending up in positions of power.  You are so smart, with such capacity for kindness.  I love you forever and will help you find your way.

Love,

Mom