Dear Noah,

Yesterday, you turned 2 years and 4 months old. On the same day, your cousin Maxim celebrated his first birthday. The two of you haven’t met yet, but you will.

The last month has been rough on you. You left Miss Heather’s home day care and started at “school” at our church. In a somewhat unlucky wave of timing, your slot opened up a week before the church school began its annual classroom transition. So you had a good 1.5 weeks in Mrs. Betty’s class, another sorta-good 1.5 weeks partially with Mrs. Betty and partially in your class for the next year, and most recently, a few days fully in your class with Mrs. Louise and Mrs. Shirley.

I think you’re going to like it, but you are SICK of dealing with change. A lot of mornings in the last 2 weeks, you’ve cried, insisted that it wasn’t actually morning and you weren’t going to leave your room, and asked me to stay with you and not go to work. You’ve also stepped up the arguing and yelling at us, especially at transitional moments during the day (time to go upstairs or downstairs, time to leave the house, time to get in or out of the bath or bed).

We feel really good about your new school. Both the Director and the Curriculum Manager have stopped me to tell me about checking in on you, how you were doing, and in one case, what they did that helped you feel better. (Playing golf, oddly enough.)

In the first class, several of your teachers commented on how verbal you are. In the new class, they’ve already enlisted our help in discouraging your newfound passion for throwing toys that are clearly not toys meant to be thrown. In both cases, I feel like they’re paying attention to you, and that your interests and development are important to them.

We’re going to try to keep your schedule as calm and routine as possible this summer, except for one 4-day trip to Milwaukee for a wedding and time to spend with Grandma & Grandpa, and some of our other friends and family there.

We hope you will feel comfortable and secure in your new environment, with your new friends and teachers, well before your baby sister arrives.

Your mommies love you, Noah. Never doubt it for a moment.

love,

That Mommy