LizaWasHere

Dear Noah,

You will be 5 years and 6 months old tomorrow. You are slightly obsessed with people’s ages, and with the difference between “X and a half” vs “X and a whole.” For example, in your mind, kids can’t start the next grade at school until they are “X and a half.” The fact that Josie will start 3-K just 2 days after her 3rd birthday is driving you crazy. You didn’t get to start 3-K until you were 3 and a half, and when you turned 4, you were bitterly disappointed that you were not immediately part of the 4-K class.

Last night, you began to ask exactly when you were going to be 5 and a half, and were very happy that the answer was “Wednesday.” I didn’t tell you that I’ve been thinking of you as 5 and a half for most of the summer. Rounding is a mathematical concept you don’t seem to quite grasp yet.

These days, you remain passionately into Legos. You love building elaborate space ships, and peculiar cyborgesque people with 9 heads, and smaller personal vehicles for them to ride. You also enjoy drawing, making things with play-dough, fishing with Jill, running, jumping, and reading. In reading, you are torn between a love of science — especially books about snakes, lizards, dinosaurs, and space — and exciting stories. We’ve recently been reading a book of Disney adventure tales, like Robin Hood and Aladdin. However, you prefer us to read to you, rather than you reading to us. This is a change since the school year ended — and one I miss. I loved having you read to us. Starting next month, you’ll be taking Taekwondo — you managed to break a board in your very first class! They offer family classes, which we are considering doing together.

This summer, you are one of the “big bodies” in the summer program. The oldest child there, Evan, has declared you to be his brother. This makes his mom and I giggle when we hear either of you say it. Josie is not amused. She doesn’t seem to want another brother. Strangely, you both get annoyed when the bad guy in the Spiderman vs Lizard uses the word “brothers” to describe the reptiles at the zoo, and identify that as a lie.

You’ve begun announcing that various friends are losing their teeth. I hope you aren’t sad that none of yours seem loose yet. Your first baby teeth grew in late, compared to many of your age-peers. And I didn’t lose my first baby tooth until I was 7. You and Josie will probably be similarly slow to grow your permanent teeth.

In terms of your personality, 5 and a half is quite a mix! From moment to moment, you might be helpful, whiny, stubborn, loving, clingy, independent, pseudo-babyish, or pseudo-parentish. In your clingy moments, you like to touch me with as much of your body as you can manage, especially pressing your feet to me and wrapping your fingers around my upper arms. Those are not my favorite moves — especially your feet. I love to have you snuggle next to me, most of the time. (While sitting with Josie in the hot sun, on the asphalt, at State Fair, was not one of those times.) But we are actively negotiating what works for a big kid and a mommy, and that physical space is different from a baby or toddler and a mommy.

I can’t wait to see what the next school year brings, and how you continue to grow and develop.

I love you.

Love,

That Mommy

Dear Noah,

On Sunday, you turned 4 years and 8 months old.

This last month has been mostly good, with some real challenges. This Mommy was gone for the month of September, and you really didn’t like that.

Sometimes, you expressed it sweetly. Like when This Mommy spent a Saturday visiting our friends Dave & Liz, and their son Alex. You’ve met Alex once, but you spent most of the time that This Mommy was gone telling me how much you missed Alex, how you wanted him to come to visit your house, and how you wanted to go to his house.

Other times, you expressed it nightmarishly. You got time outs at school and at home, almost every day. You screamed, you hit, you delayed, you threw things…and it was hard.

Likewise, with Josie, you were more helpful than ever before. But you teased her and gloated about the things you had when she didn’t have them.

At school, you are shining in your academic subjects. You are officially doing the 100 bead counting chain today and tomorrow; you do addition; your handwriting is improving, you and N. write elaborate, complex stories using the movable alphabet; you love sounding out words everywhere you see them; you brought home a beautifully colored and traced map of Australia and all of the states and territories within it.

Unfortunately, you’ve been a little naughty there, too, and there have been a lot of time outs at school as well.

You love all things Star Wars, Lego, and art or science. Every night, we read at least 2 Star Wars books, and most nights, then you look at the Lego Star Wars visual encyclopedia until you fall asleep. For Halloween, you originally wanted to be Luke Skywalker, but now you’re leaning towards Darth Vader.

My dear, sweet, beloved boy. I am so proud of you, and I love you so much.

love,

That Mommy

Dear Noah,

Today you are exactly 4 1/2 years old.

The last few weeks have been some of the hardest we’ve had as your parents. You get frustrated and angry so quickly, yelling, throwing, hitting, and kicking.

At the same time, your creativity has grown enormously. You draw amazing pictures, especially robots, space ships, and aliens. You build elaborate bristle-block ships, play super hero games, and love to get silly.

You are starting to really read, sounding out letters and painstakingly pronouncing them as words. You get very upset when it is time to stop for bed.

You also have a sweetness with your sister, that is exactly what This Mommy and I hoped. I love you.

Love,

That Mommy

Dear Noah,

You turned 4 years and 3 months old 5 days ago. It has been a crazy month, but things are calming down now, at least for a moment.

This month, you’ve become obsessed with fast food restaurants. This is a little bit embarrassing at after-school pickup, when you have loudly asked if we can go to Burger King every single day this week. You go to a school, after all, where parents are asked not to bring cake for birthdays, but a “healthy snack.” And when I say no, you correctly whine that we never go to Burger King.

(We do occasionally go to the Other Big Fast Food Chain and you are a very big fan of the dragon toys, yes 2 of them, that you got with meals there.)

You are also solidly in the developmental phase where you are aware that you might be being judged, and maybe found wanting in some way, so you announce multiple times each day, “Don’t look at me!”

That one is tricky. Sometimes you say it in the middle of the room, or while blocking a hallway we are trying to traverse. Other times you say it after we’ve spent 5 minutes nagging you into the bathroom to brush your teeth, and another 2 trying to get you to actually brush them. We are suspicious that if we stop looking at you, you will immediately go back to playing with some toy instead of brushing your teeth.

You are right on the edge of reading. You can sound out words, but you get impatient after 1 or 2. You’ve memorized the Star Wars book we bought you, and nightly “read” it by reciting the text from memory — with about 90% accuracy,  and a little extra prompting near the end. You are so sweetly shy and proud of yourself for “reading” the whole book “all by myself with no help.”

I think you might be developing into a serious intellectual geek. (Note: I don’t say this as a bad thing!)

The reason is mainly because you get unbelievably impatient with people who tell you things you already know. For the non-geek population, this is often called “making conversation.” We know that you know it is raining, for example. The socially correct response to, “Wow, it looks really wet out this morning,” is not “I know that already!” but rather something like, “It sure does!” or “I like rain so I can splash in the puddles.”

One of my favorite authors, Neal Stephenson, explains the difference between young geeks and older geeks in his book Cryptonomicon. Young geeks, he says, consider declarative sentences acts of aggression, implying that you are telling them something they don’t already know. Older geeks know, either that you are making conversation, or that sometimes people just need to say things out loud in order to think them through.

You also love to tell jokes; so far, I’m sorry to say, none of them have actually made sense. (Why did the chicken cross the eyeball? To get to the other eyeball!) That doesn’t stop you from telling them with enthusiasm, or us from laughing.

Today, you started T-Ball. This Mommy is so proud and excited. We took pictures of the two of you getting ready to go this morning. She says you were the fastest 4 year old running the bases during the warm-up, and that you were also faster than lots of the 5 year olds. You glowed with pride when she told me that.

We love you, Noah.

love,

That Mommy