Dear Tobin,

You are such a wiggly guy.  Last night, by my request, we had a family movie night in which we watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.  I think you liked it, but it was hard to tell since you spent the final third of the movie flipping a plastic lantern, standing on your head, and dribbling a basketball (not at the same time).

We were at the library the other day, and since the spring days are starting to become tolerable, we took some time afterward to play on the playground downtown.  You saw a couple of kids you know from taekwondo, and when I looked over, you guys were doing pushups on the ground.  That’s a very Tobin scenario:  find a friend, be wiggly together.

Another very Tobin scenario:  I can’t remember how it came up, but the other night we were trying to solve some problem, and I asked you what 350 plus 350 is.  You thought for about three seconds and said, “700.”  We moved on to the next step of whatever we were discussing, but later, I realized that you’d come up with that answer pretty fast.  As we completed our nightly hugs and kisses ritual some time later, I asked you what your thought process was to come up with that answer.  You said, “I took fifty from each of them, which made a hundred, and I knew that three plus three is six, so three hundred plus three hundred is six hundred, plus another hundred.”  It took you longer to explain it to me than to run through the steps in your head.  Much like your body, your brain runs fast.

You’ve been enjoying reading a lot lately too.  You’ve gotten excited about the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, and when we went to the library, you wanted to check out a stack of about twelve of them.  I talked you down to six, since spring break is almost over and you’re not going to have as much time to read.  It’s great that you’ve gotten the reading bug, because summer is coming, and I’m going to need to find you some good non-YouTube distractions.  Your wonderful teacher and school librarian gave some good recommendations for other books you might enjoy, so we’re going to have to give those a try.

I’ve been trying to introduce you kids to some of my favorite movies from my youth (c.f. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure), and when you got the cool red vest pictured above, I thought you looked a lot like Marty McFly.  You guys enjoyed Back to the Future, but your favorite Michael J. Fox vehicle remains “The one where the guy is part wolf and is really good at basketball.”

Your own basketball season finished up not long ago, and I think you’ll do one more session of taekwondo before taking a break for baseball season.  I’m hoping you can test for your orange belt before your break, because it will be good motivation for you to get back later in the summer.  As much as you love taekwondo, baseball is such a time suck that it seems unlikely you could do both at the same time.  You’re excited to move up into the pitching machine league this season.  It’s also fairly likely that you’ll run alongside (or slightly ahead of) Miles in his Let Me Run 5k later in the spring.  While you’re still too young to be on the team, you’re a good runner, and you enjoy a getting a finisher’s medal.

I think we’re going to keep the academic camps and activities pretty light this summer and maybe take a mini-vacation or road trip.  We haven’t settled on any specific destinations, but since our plane ticket budget is already allocated for next spring break, we’ll probably have to keep it close.  I’m hoping to get out to Maquoketa Caves again, one of my favorite places to explore from my childhood.  I bet you and Miles will want to spend another week at Mubby and Skitter’s house, too.

Your current favorites:  dice stacking (using a special cup and dice set you got to magically make the dice stand in tidy stacks), talking about cars, reading, watching YouTube, and going on weekend bagel dates with your dad.  Your favorite order is a plain bagel with honey-walnut cream cheese.

And how could I forget?  You lost the first of your two front teeth.  You’ve lost a few others already, but there’s something about the gap-tooth grin that is just the cutest thing ever.  You’re a smiler, so I get to see it a lot.  Thanks for being such a sunshine face, my little Tobin.

Love,

Mommy