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

Yesterday, you turned 5 years old.

At 5, you are a mostly charming, incredibly intelligent, sweet boy. You love all things Star Wars, playing games on the Wii, Legos, dinosaurs, Bakugan, animal toys and shows, reading, writing stories, dancing, doing artwork, science experiments, and playing math games.

At school, they have a special birthday ritual in which both a parent and the teacher talk about the child. The parent goes through different things about the child, including what kinds of things they liked and did during each year of the child’s life, and the teacher adds in their observations about the child now, and also during the time they’ve known the child. (Here’s a place where a 3 year classroom cycle is helpful!)

Yesterday, we shared pictures of you in your age-2 dinosaur Halloween costume, and also a picture from last summer, of you and one of your elaborate gear-spinner construction projects. Ms. T, your teacher, added that you work very hard, you are good at concentrating on complex projects, and that you have always been drawn to the building and counting materials in the classroom.

It is hard for me to believe that it has been 5 years since you were born. Five years ago, you were a delicious newborn baby — big, healthy, and thriving out here in the world. You’ve gone from weighing 9 lbs and 7 oz to weighing roughly 50 lbs.

My sweet boy, you wear me out. But I love you more than I can say.

Love,

That Mommy

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

Yesterday you were 4 years and 7 months old.

This has been a rough month for you. Summer program at school ended, you had to go back to a different day care for a week, then we went on vacation up north, then regular school started and This Mommy left for work. She’ll be gone for another 3 weeks.

You are not a fan of change. In this case, that’s shown up as a lot of temper tantrums, some throwing and hitting things (and people), and an unpleasant round of bedwetting after several weeks of being accident-free, even at night.

You do seem to be settling in to the new academic year at school. In Montessori programs, children from 3 – 5 are in one classroom, so this is your second year with Ms. T. You spent a lot of the first week with your beloved mathmatics, doing bead chains, counting beads by 2s, and yesterday, you brought home a sheet of “plus work,” aka addition, that you were extremely excited about having done. I’m so proud of you. That work included 15 or so problems of single digit addition, with answers that went to about 15.

You continue to work hard at cracking the magical code of reading, and you are almost there. You identify letters and ask what they say or what word something is near-c0nstantly. You are still getting the hang of the idea that the letters are supposed to go in order from left to right, but that technical challenge doesn’t dampen your enthusiasm in the least.

When you are in the mood for it, you are incredibly helpful and charming. You love all things Star Wars, and at bedtime, we often read a detailed book on all of the Lego Star Wars kits that have ever been sold, or a book of Star Wars ship specifications, including detailed blueprints.

You remain one of the tallest children in your class, making some of the smaller new 3-K students almost look like another species of human being. Your most frequent school playmates are mostly boys who are a little bit older: Tate, who just turned 5; Hamilton, who is 6; Evan, who turns 6 next weekend; Matthew & Malachi, who are 6. Darius is closest to your age, turning 5 in October. Only Caleb is on the younger end of 4, and smaller than you.

You also remain a sweet, demonstrative boy, generous with hugs and kisses for your parents and sister, willing to share (at least in a limited way) your toys and treats, and eager to play with friends. You continue to love art projects and you have discovered a new enthusiasm for acting (Mom! It isn’t real! I’m not really Luke Skywalker.).

I love you, Noah. More than I can say.

love,

That Mommy

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

Yesterday you turned 4 years and 4 months old, and your cousin M turned 3 years old. Grandma is leaving to visit M and his baby sister today; you’re going to miss her.

The last month has been a rough one for you. On the one hand, you got a new-to-you, first ever Big Boy Bike, along with an awesomely cool helmet with dragons and flames. On the other hand, you whine and complain, “I can’t do it!” with alarming speed, about everything from riding your bike to standing up from the couch and walking into the bathroom to brush your teeth.

At school, you do amazingly detailed artwork, and your math skills are phenomenal. You continue to hover on the very brink of learning to read. But you’ve also been sent to the administrative office area for refusing to follow adult instructions. You’ve also been spoken to, multiple times, about using inappropriate language.

(Aside: Why is it hilarious to talk about potty activities, the body parts involved, and the results? This is the kind of inappropriate they mean.)

You can go from 0 to 60 and from 60 too 0, in terms of mood, in about 1 second flat. If your will is thwarted, bam! If you are successfully distracted, whee!

Of late, your Star Wars obsession has grown, and your sister has begun sharing it. At the end of our new toy moratorium last weekend, I took you both out to a neighborhood store with the intent of allowing each of you one toy that cost no more than $20.

The neighborhood store, which we’d never visited before, turned out to be more of a comic book/action figure store than a mainstream toy store. This was not a problem, since both of you were able to get unboxed Star Wars action figures for $5/each. I even relented and let you each choose 2. You picked Luke Skywalker in his Jedi training with Yoda costume, and a stormtrooper. You tell me about all the exercising you need to do in order to stand on one arm, just like Luke. Josie picked “D-2-D-2″ and “Ku-ba!” (Chewbacca).

In spite of your current whiny tendencies, I love you very much. You are mostly wonderful as a big brother, and as a son. I hope the whining phase passes soon, and that you know how very, very, very much I love you.

Love,

That Mommy

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

On Sunday, you were 3 years and 3 days old.

This has been a rough month, too. Two weeks ago, I had to leave unexpectedly, with baby Josie. Your Great-Grandpapa has been sick for a very long time, but he got much worse, and we knew that he would probably die within a few weeks at the longest. In fact, Josie and I got there the day before he died.

You met Great-Grandpapa when you were about the same age that Josie is; I’m glad that you both were able to meet him. But I am sorry that I had to change plans so quickly, leaving during the day while you were at school.

While I was out of town, This Mommy’s job told her that she needed to travel to Texas for 4 weeks, starting a few days after Josie and I got back from Florida. So no sooner did I get back, than This Mommy left. Both of us hate being apart from you for so long, and we think you hate it too.

This month, you have been having more and more fun with Josie than ever before. You love to hug her, tickle her, and tell her that she can’t play with your cars. Yesterday you sobbed when, after you declared that your chicken nuggets were full of yucky things, I fed part of one to Josie. (Then I ate the rest of them. The alleged yucky things were bits of cheddar cheese.)

You’ve also become simultaneously more independent, and more committed to your claim of “I can’t!” You sometimes insist on pouring your own cereal or milk, choosing your own clothing, or removing your own shoes and socks. In the next moment, or the next day, you are equally likely to insist that you can’t take off your own shirt, brush your own teeth, or put on your own shoes.

At the end of one of your most frustrating recent bedtime tantrums, I told you that you could not come out of your room, and I would not go into your room, until you put on your own pajamas. Five minutes or so later, you sobbed that you couldn’t do it, and when I opened the door, you’d managed to get both of your legs into the arms of the pjs, and you were stuck.

I didn’t laugh, but I told you I was proud of you for trying so hard, and I helped you out and back into the pjs. You’d calmed down and were ready for us to have a nice bedtime story reading.

I’m beginning to suspect that things will improve in the fall when you move up to the Big Kids School. Surrounded as you are by mostly smaller children, who are mostly less verbal than you are, you mimic their way of talking and behaving. When you are surrounded by bigger kids who can do things that you are less skilled at, I think you’ll blossom again. (Your time spent with Freddy and Andy makes me just sure of it; in just a few hours on Sunday, your fear of dogs was dramatically reduced with the help of their peer pressure.)

Well, my sweet boy, I think that’s all I have to say this month. I love you.

love,

That Mommy

Today you are 3 years and 2 months old.

This month, the rest of the family feels like we are settling into our new normal. We live in Milwaukee, all 4 of us. We have morning and evening and weekend routines. We see Grandma and Grandpa on a regular basis. Life is reaching some kind of equilibrium.

Mostly.

You seem to be in the most unpleasant phase of your young life. I can’t even tell you how often you shriek “no!” and throw your whole body into refusing whatever the next thing is: going to school, eating, bedtime, bathtime, brushing your teeth, going to the park.

Unless the thing involves a treat, the odds are only about 50/50 that you will go along willingly. And of those restistant times, at least half of them also involve you throwing something or hitting/kicking/headbutting.

You have even broken two small lamps that used to serve as your nightlight — first one, and when we replaced it, the second one. When you threw the second lamp against your door, the bulb shattered into a million tiny pieces, and so did my brain. I grabbed you from your bed, hauled your barefoot body into the living room, dumped you on the couch, explained what happened to This Mommy, and stalked off to clean your room so that you wouldn’t slice your feet into ribbons.

The pieces of glass were so small, and your rugs so sticky with small polyester fibers, that vacuuming was only medium-effective. I ended up rolling up 3 area rugs and removing them from your room. After vacuuming. Then I swept and mopped and debated taking the only things left in your room besides furniture, your books. (I didn’t.)

It is so hard for your mommies. We’ve tried everything we can think of: taking away toys, time-outs, trying to reward good behavior. Sometimes we have no choice but to make you physically do what we need you to do, like sit in the car seat and be buckled into it.

When you aren’t actively resisting something, you can be so charming and sweet. You love to help cook, wash dishes, sort recycling, make coffee, and change Josie’s diaper. You are often affectionate, hugging and kissing us and Josie, and telling us “I love you.”

This month we’ve seen 2 significant developmental milestones. First, you are fully potty trained at school! Way to go! We need to work on remembering to tell someone you have to go at home, but at least we know that you CAN do it.

The other one is in your fine motor skills. You’ve always liked to draw and make things, but there was a huge leap in the last month in your ability to draw what you want to draw. The scribbles aren’t random and wandering any more — sometimes they are dozens and dozens of fluid circles. Other times, you “write their name!” in a special designated scribble on the picture.

You have a newfound love for play dough, and would happily do almost nothing else every afternoon after school. At school, you love to work with stickers, lining up long rows of matching stickers on paper.

You may be driving us crazy, but we still love you. And we love to watch you learn and grow.

With all of my love,

That Mommy

Today you are 3 years old!

It seems so strange to think of it. Three years ago right now, This Mommy and I were hanging out in a hospital room, wondering when you would decide to come out of my belly and join us in the world. We couldn’t wait to meet you! Instead, we were stuck waiting and watching Wedding Crashers and Must Love Dogs on DVD, hoping that I would get into active labor soon! It had already been 29 hours since my water broke!

You were unsure about coming out — maybe exhibiting the earliest signs of the shyness you still show around strange adults. (Maybe you were waiting for our favorite midwife, who had just come back on duty, replacing our least favorite one who had been there during the night.) In fact, 35 hours after my water broke, the midwife and doctor went in to get you.

Back then, you were a big healthy baby, 9 lbs, 7 oz, and 21.5 inches long. You were a great eater, and a great cuddler, but you didn’t do much else.

Now you are a big healthy boy, 38 lbs, and 38 inches tall, and it seems like you never stop moving and talking. There is almost nothing you can’t do!

You love to run, jump, bounce, dance, throw, and climb. In certain moods, you also love to help your mommies, and to snuggle, read, draw, and play pretend. In the last few days, we’ve been pretend dinosaurs, gorillas, race car drivers, and you’ve been a pretend baby — both with baby Josie, and pretending that she is your big sister.

There is nothing in the family of “race car” toys that you don’t love. You spend hours lining them up, racing them around, and conducting elaborate games among the “race cars” and the “slowpokes.”

You’ve also become immensely competitive. You like to go first, be the leader, go the fastest, and most of all, to win. It doesn’t matter whether the activity is running or racing cars, or brushing your teeth, eating breakfast, or getting in the car. Sometimes the only way to spur you into an activity you would prefer not to do, like brushing your teeth, is to threaten to do it faster/better/farther.

We also love to watch you in action as a big brother. You love to kiss and hug “Miss Goo” and to hand her toys. When she cries, you always tell her sweetly, “It’s ok, baby Josie, it’s ok,” or you echo my, “I know, sweetheart, I know.” You advise us on what she wants and how to help her, and you often ask if you can play with her. (Usually yes, unless she is either eating or sleeping.)

Josie, in turn, loves to watch you and talk to you. She laughs and babbles when you pay attention to her and let her touch your face and hair.

You still have your challenging moments, getting angry and either hitting or kicking, or even head-butting. Sometimes you engage in passive resistance, curling up in a ball and insisting that you don’t want to do whatever we’re doing or go wherever we’re going.

But no matter whether you are being charming, sweet, and helpful, or stubborn, cranky, and screaming, we love you more than we could ever have imagined. You are and will always be my favorite boy in the whole wide world.

I love you.

That Mommy