Month 3.6 or, Lazy Hazy Crazy Days

Dear Corbin,

We've had a fun month, but you'll just have to take my word for it, because we can't seem to take our camera with us anywhere.

We went to a birthday party for our friend Adrian.  You spent a long time playing with his Matchbox cars, until you found out that there was cake going around.  It was the first party that we've been at where there was a pinata, which you managed to smack a couple of times with the stick.  It was a good sturdy pinata, which is great until you actually want the thing to break.  Cindy ended up beating it to death on the ground, and then a couple of other adults had to help get all of the candy and toys out of it.  You came away with a little plastic pirate guy (it was a pirate themed pinata), a sheet of stickers and a Tigger Pez dispenser.  Every couple of days since then you'll ask for, "some of that Tigger candy," and I let you  put one or two candies in and then eat them.

Speaking of pirates, we went to the Science Museum to see the Pirates exhibit.  It was based on a true story of a ship that was taken by pirates and then sunk in a storm off of Cape Cod.  They had a lot of artifacts, including lots of treasure.  They also had several exhibits about how they recovered artifacts.  Your favorite part seemed to be a video of watching the ship go down in a storm, followed by the model of part of the ship that we could walk through.  You were disappointed that there weren't real pirates, though.

We also went to the Firefighter's Hall and Museum.  My friend Jody met us there with her two kids.  The three of you had fun playing with their train table and sliding down a fire pole.  We all went for a ride on their firetruck, which was very loud and very bouncy.  The most popular thing, though, was being able to squirt water at a board painted to be a house on fire.  You're always happy to be squirting water at something.  Your version of playing in the sprinkler is holding on to it and making it spray on a dirt patch in the yard so you can play in the mud.

Summer session of pre-school ended.  You haven't seemed to miss it when you've had time off.  I'm not sure if that's because you're not socially invested in other kids yet or if you actually don't care.  You do talk about other kids, but not in a very meaningful way.  I wonder if that will change over the course of the next year.

Your accomplishment this month is that you can sing the whole alphabet song.  So now I need to start teaching you to sign along with it.  Then, eventually, you and I can say things to each other and your Dad won't know what we're talking about. 

Love,
Mom


A study in Corbin:

Month 4, or The Long and Short of It

Dear Miriam,

You are four months old, which I totally forgot when I packed for our camping trip.  I was very good about packing pants and socks for you, in case it was colder up north.  And it was, so I thought we were doing fine.  Until I actually tried to dress you in pants and socks and realized that they were all too small for you.  So you spent a couple of days in your pajamas until we got back to the Cottage and it was warm enough for just a shirt again.  The only reason you minded was because you couldn't suck on your toes.

Everyone loved holding you and talking to you, and if I wasn't careful it was easy to lose track of who had wandered off with you.  Aunt Alice tried to use you as reason why her son and his wife should have a baby sooner rather than later; it's not your fault that it didn't work.  We were all speculating on who might be the next baby to come camping, but I think you'll likely be the youngest kid for at least another year.

You are talking a lot now, and starting to get the hang of conversational pauses.  You still do funny little yells sometimes, which always make me laugh.  You complain especially loud when I lay you down and the move out of your line of sight.  These are the sweet days when you actually want your parents to be around you.  We have to savor this time, the time before the teenage years when you'll have those days that you wish you were an orphan.

You're starting on some teething pain, I think, since you spend most of your time now chewing on whatever you can get into your mouth.  It was my finger, most of the time that we were driving to and from the UP, and your little gums felt pretty hard.  So we've got orajel back in the house, and I've got to spend some time finding the teething rings before you chew my finger off.

On a more serious note, I've been feeling intimidated by you lately.  Or rather, not by you, but by raising a girl.  I have been hearing a lot lately about women being treated badly--in video game culture, and in comic book culture, and at various conventions.  There's been controversy around the appearance of a Black female athlete in the Olympics, which is so discouraging when we should simply be celebrating her talent and hard work.  The political arena is still full of people who think that they should be able to tell you what you can and cannot do with your body and your career and your life.  It's hard to think that you'll have to face that in your life, and that I can only prepare you and not shield you forever.  I hope that you will not live your life according to someone else and their ideas of how you should be.  I hope that you are smart enough to believe in yourself, and to protect yourself from that trap.  Gather those people around you who help you see yourself clearly, in all of your beauty and all of your flaws.  A friend who sees both and loves you for both is a true friend.  Or a parent, one of the two.

Love,
Mom

 Waiting for the new tire on the camper:

With Grandpa Lam at the Cottage:

 Fun with Alligator in the car:

3.5, or Free Range Child

Dear Corbin,

I am very late writing your letter this month.  I delayed in order to include our family camping trip, because other than that, we've had an uneventful month.  It's been crazy hot.  We didn't do much except fantasize about moving somewhere with nice weather, like Siberia.

Your last set of molars are finally coming in.  They were late enough that I asked the dentist about it at my last appointment, and of course that night was the night I noticed them appearing.  They aren't giving you any trouble, but they are giving rise to conversations about what will happen when your baby teeth are replaced by your adult teeth.  I tried to convince you that other parts of your body would fall off and be replaced, too, but you weren't buying it.

You're able to write the first two letters of your name, which is kind of exciting.  So far, your penmanship is the opposite of your Uncle Alex's.  His is small and cramped and hard to read.  Yours is huge and sprawling.  Also backwards.  We'll work on that.

You began the month with a trip to Madison, over the 4th of July.  I took a couple of days off to hang out with Miriam so that you could go to, "Grandma and Grandpa's big house."  You've started playing with the Lego sets there, kicked off by the battery-powered train set, of course. You brought a little forklift home with you but I hope you'll wait to get really obsessed until after we buy a bigger house.

And you ended your month with the camping trip to the UP.  We were at Bodi Lake, by Whitefish Point, and we had a fabulous time.  The weather was great, with only one rainy day, and the beach by the lake was perfect for you and the other kids.  It was a little hard for you to play with the other kids this year.  They were all old enough to ride their bikes around the campground, which isn't a skill that you've got yet.  So there were times that you got frustrated and felt left-out.  I think you'll probably have your own bike next summer, and then we'll have to worry about you riding it off of a cliff or into a tree.  We borrowed the Ross's tent camper, which was great.  They had just bought a new 5th wheel-er and offered to loan us the pop-up.  It did manage to get a flat tire on the drive up, but other than that it worked out really well.  It was far more comfortable than a tent, and gave us lots of room to spread out our stuff.  You slept with Dad one night and with me the rest of the nights.  You are a terrible person to share a bed with right now.  You actually crawled on top of Dad in your sleep, and there was one night that I had to pick you up and move you off of my pillows.  Twice.

You had fun playing on the beach with all of your diggers and with a bunch of trucks.  You didn't swim with the other kids, but you had fun watching them jumping in and splashing.  We did s'mores around the campfire one night and omelets in a bag one morning.  Your favorite thing, though, was going fishing with my cousin Brian.  He had a little plastic container of worms, which you loved playing with, and we did actually manage to catch some fish.  It was the first fish I had caught in about 25 years.  Funny enough, the last time I caught a fish was with Brian's dad, my Uncle Steve.  So I felt very accomplished as a mom, being able to meet your expectations that of course we would catch fish.  Between us and the kids in Uncle Steve's boat, we caught enough fish for a fish fry dinner.  You got to witness the fish cleaning, and my uncles and cousins made fun of me when I was showing you all of the internal organs on one of the gutted fish.  You ate two helpings of fish for dinner that night, proving that you are a good fisherman, according to Aunt Karen.  So it was a successful camping trip, which made it really hard to come back to hot, humid weather, and to go back to work the next Monday.

You drove to Madison with Grandma and Grandpa Lam to clean up their camper and leave it in their garage.  When you drove past Oshkosh, the EAA was having their annual air show.  You saw a blimp and a bunch of helicopters.  You were very excited.  You told me on the phone later, "Someday I'm going to ride in a blimp, Mom!"  I hope you do, sweetheart.  I hope you do.

Love,
Mom


Too hot for shirts:

 

Building a mini Cornhole game:

Lego train!

Changing the flat tire on the camper:

 Kayaking with Dad on Bodi Lake:

 At the Lower Falls at Tahquamenon Falls:

Fishing with cousin Brian:

  Watching Uncle Mark gut the fish that we caught:

Playing on the beach:

Squished into Grandma and Grandpa's camper in the rain.  Why is Dad making that face?

Helping clean up Grandma and Grandpa's camper in Madison: