Dear Tobin,

It finally happened:  you lost your two front teeth.  You took your time losing them—it’s almost the end of your first grade year, and you’re closer to eight than seven.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look cuter.  To be frank, you’ve been in kind of an irritating stage lately.  You’ve been instigating trouble with Callum, dragging your feet when your dad and I ask you to do reasonable tasks, and doing this annoying baby talk thing.  Still, I have a hard time staying mad at you when your smile looks like this.

Childhood is the one time in life when missing teeth look good, so you’d better soak it up.

The school year is almost done, which means some fun class activities, like a picnic and a trip to our favorite neighborhood ice cream shop.  You’ve had a really good year.  You’ve developed and strengthened some good friendships, learned a lot, and mostly managed to get out of bed in the morning.  It’s funny, because on weekends, you’re usually the first kid up.  On school days, though, you can be a real bear in the morning.  It’s very common for you to fall back asleep sitting at the breakfast table.  You’ve been that way ever since you were a baby—involuntary wake-ups make you very, very crabby.  I used to have to budget extra time in the schedule when I woke you up from an afternoon nap to go pick up Miles.  You needed to sit there and be angry for ten minutes before you’d even let me touch you or talk to you.  It’s not quite that bad anymore, but you would still much prefer to wake up on your own schedule.

Just this morning, I handed you your dot book (a reading assignment you bring home every day, which you usually have no problem getting done before school) and went about doing my other morning tasks.  Ten or fifteen minutes later, I came back to let you know it was time to get dressed and brush your teeth, and you were fast asleep, sitting straight up in your chair, your book open to the first page.  We probably need to get you to bed earlier, but these evenings have been so busy with all the activities you guys do that it’s hard to make that happen.

You and your dad have started a weekend tradition of going out for breakfast together.  You started doing it during the winter before or after your Saturday basketball games, and you both enjoy it so much you’ve continued the habit.  Usually it’s just somewhere for a quick bagel, but sometimes you get fancier.  You’ve even tried some new breakfast foods (thumbs down to scrambled eggs and sausage, but thumbs up to French toast).

Over the weekend, we had one of the first truly warm days of the season, and at your suggestion, I got out the sprinkler and the splort balls.  You and Miles and Callum played outside together for a long time, which brought out your freckles.  We also had cocktail hour and dinner out on the porch, which you love doing.  We can’t do it too often, because it’s hell on Callum’s allergies, but you enjoy doing it when we can.

Your biggest recent accomplishment was testing for your orange belt in taekwondo.  Your forms, kicks, and punches looked great, and you broke your first board.  It took you a while to do it, and I think you were getting frustrated, but then one of your teachers suggested a different kick.  You did a front snap kick and broke the board on the first try.  You seemed startled by the loud noise, but then you were proud of yourself.  We won’t know for another week or so whether you passed the test, but three of the judges told me how well you did.  I see orange in your future.

Next month at this time the school year will be nearly finished, and our family’s activities will have slowed down a bit.  You only have one camp this summer, a multi-sports extravaganza that you’re going to do with your friend Ben.  Ben’s a little older than you, but you two share a lot of interests that have mostly run parallel in your lives.  In fact, we used to refer to him as “Digger Ben” to differentiate him from other Bens you knew and because you guys enjoyed playing with toy diggers together.  Now you share a Rubik’s Cube obsession, and we’ll see if your sporting interests overlap as well.

Your current favorites:  vanilla ice cream, dice stacking, Rubik’s Cube (which you have now mastered solving), watching YouTube videos on the topic of Rubik’s Cubes, playing outside with your friends, and pepperoni pizza.  If the trend continues, I can see you serving pepperoni pizza at your wedding one day.

Enjoy the rest of first grade, my dear.  I look forward to pushing through this crazy-busy time and having a little more of a relaxing summer.  We’ll touch base in July.

Love,

Mommy

Dear Callum,

An amazing thing has happened.  After months and months of being so attached to me that I couldn’t even go to the bathroom alone, you have suddenly gotten excited about your dad.  Nothing has really changed—he’s always been kind to you and taken good care of you, but something shifted in your brain that makes you want to hug him and spend time with him and choose him over me when we’re going different places.  Playing Zelda on the WiiU may have been the start of it.  You love that game, and I can’t do much more to help you in that than turn on the machine.  You and your dad like to play together, and it’s a source of bonding that has carried over into a lot of other areas.  It’s really helped lighten my load.  We still have all day together, so I don’t feel deprived of Callum time (though that may change when you start preschool in the fall), but you ask frequently where Dad is and when he’ll be home.

We spend a lot of our time together playing pretend.  Every morning when you wake up, I go into your room to greet you and find out what animal you’ll be that day.  This morning, you chose kitty, which has been a favorite lately.  Sometimes you’re a dog, sometimes you’re a mouse, and sometimes you’re a bear cub.   You always assign me the role of Mommy Cat/Dog/Mouse/Bear.  Your stuffed animals also join the pack, and we make up voices for them that are a hybrid of their usual voices and whatever animal they are that day.

You’ve also discovered the big bins of Imaginext toys your brothers amassed during their preschool years and have since outgrown.  You’ve been having a lot of fun playing with the dragon, castle, ogre (which you call yogurt), as well as the ones related to the Batman/Joker universe.  Miles also plays with those toys with you, and you think his attention is about the most valuable thing in the world.

Another really fun thing you and Miles do is airplane rides.  He hoists you up on his back and goes through a whole routine about buckling up, warning you about turbulence, and guiding you safely through various storms.

We’ve been able to play outside more in recent weeks due to the emergence of spring.  We’ve been to our backyard park and Mercer park, as well as using the multipurpose path that cuts through our neighborhood to walk to Heyn’s for a treat.  While the extra outside time has been glorious, the downside is that your spring allergies are starting up again.  Usually they don’t get bad until May, and I was hoping the long-and-late winter would put them off a bit this year.  No such luck; you’re already sniffly and getting red-eyed.  I picked up a refill of your prescription eyedrops yesterday, and maybe this year you’ll tolerate them better.  I have never been more grateful for our prescription plan than I was last year when most of those eyedrops ($130 before insurance) dribbled onto the bed beneath your head as you thrashed.

Your brain has been growing a lot lately, if your surge in language and sleep are any indication.  You’ve regularly been sleeping for twelve hours at a stretch, and you’ve been extra chatty and articulate.  I think your brain has been working really hard, processing the world around you, forming thoughts and opinions about it, and articulating those ideas.  You’ve been hungry, too.  Usually you just have a few crackers for bedtime snack or skip it entirely, but last night you asked for waffles.  Even though you ate a reasonable dinner, you finished both the waffles I made you and asked for more.

Your current favorites:  steak (“the kind I like,” which is thinly-sliced flank steak), wheat toast with butter, PJ Masks, Laura Joffe Numeroff’s If You Give a… book series, helping me with baking projects, playing Zelda with your dad, irritating Tobin an attempt to get his attention, and taking long baths.  I’m glad you enjoy baths, because during allergy season we have to do a full bath with hair-wash every single night, and it’s actually kind of handy to put you in the tub and let you play for half an hour while I complete other evening tasks.

You’re becoming a really fun and interesting kid.  Now please stop grabbing Tobin’s face in the car, and we’ll really be on track.

I love you, my little kitty/doggy/mouse/cub.

Love,

Mommy

Dear Miles,

Our family ebbs, our family flows.  It seems like there’s always at least one kid in a difficult stage, but mercifully, there’s usually at least one in a great stage too.  I am glad to say that at this moment, you’re in a really wonderful stage.  That’s not to say everything is perfect—the more challenging aspects of the world still get to you sometimes—but overall your dad and I have been so grateful for the ways you make our family better.

You have been especially kind, patient, and helpful with Callum lately.  You play with Imaginext toys with him, staging complex battles between Batman and Joker.  You read books to him, including this elaborate March Madness-style book bracket tournament in which you and Tobin read him books and he has to pick his favorite.  He’s not always good at sitting still for all those stories, but it’s so cute I try to hold him down to make him listen as much as I can.

Your school got enough participants to have a Let Me Run team this spring, and that’s been a very good experience for you so far.  You’ve never been a big sports guy, which is fine.  As a fellow non-sports person, I am happy to encourage your interest in the arts.  But I also recognize that physical fitness is one key to longevity and quality of long-term life, so I am glad you enjoy Let Me Run so much.  You’re learning goal-setting and perseverance, and I think you feel proud of yourself when you can complete your training runs without any walk breaks.  You’re not too interested in pushing yourself in the speed department, and once again, Tobin is likely to beat you in the 5k next month.  You don’t seem to care, though.  You’re happy to be doing something fun outside with your friends.  Let Me Run also has important emotional and social health elements, so you’re learning positive strategies to deal with emotions and how to treat people respectfully.

You’re becoming more and more independent.  You enjoy a good mug of hot chocolate, and you’re good at making it yourself (with marshmallows AND whipped cream, of course).  Recently you were acting in a way that used to be pretty common for you but has been less so lately:  huffy and touchy and blowing up at your brothers over small things (which all sounds very Big Bad Wolf as I re-read this).  I could see you needed a break from the situation, so I invited you out for a hot chocolate date at the Java House, just the two of us.  Hot chocolate is always a good lure, and we had such a nice, quiet, relaxing chat.  You said Tobin was stressing you out by being so loud.  I can understand that.  He’s taken up some particularly loud hobbies lately, and I know it can work my nerves too.  It was nice to have a low-stimulation environment in which to hang out with you.  You even insisted on sharing your muffin with me.

You continue to do well in all your musical hobbies.  I’m sure I’ll have more to say next month, because you will have just finished your spring band concert when you’ll have the honor of performing with both the fifth and sixth grade bands.  You’re also really excited for some other upcoming band events, including a “tour” of east-side elementary schools.  It’s rare for a fifth-grader to be involved in that, and you can’t wait to show off for your friends.  You also have an ice-skating party for all band-members.  You’ve ice skated before, and your approach to skating is similar to your approach to running:  don’t push it speed-wise, but persevere.

Your current favorites:  trombone, Let Me Run, giving Callum airplane rides, pasta, orange chicken from Panda Express, the trampoline park, and taking the side of some YouTube music channel from India in an Internet rivalry that I don’t understand at all.

The spring weather has finally come, and it’s given us all the boost that we need.  Thanks for being such a great kid, Miles.  I promise I’ll keep paying attention to your signals and making time for some quiet hot chocolate with you.

Love,

Mom