2.8 or, A Kiddley Divey

Dear Miriam,

November was a fairly relaxed month for you.  Only you, though.  Everyone else had adjustments happening.  But your days seemed to roll along without many speed bumps.

The thing you said the most in November: I want a treat from my Trick-or-Treat bag!

The furniture and boxes from the Madison house arrived, about two weeks earlier than I had expected them.  So everything else was suddenly thrown back into frantic unpacking mode.  The garage went from almost organized to just full of boxes again.  It took the rest of the month to regain any kind of order to the place.  We finally have furniture in the living room.  You like that mainly because you have more places to line up your dinosaurs.  Grandma and I spent a lot of time unpacking kitchen things, and wishing we knew someone who needed kitchen things.  Corbin liked unpacking all of the toys.  You were happy to adopt all of the stuffed animals that we found, but most of the Madison toys are for older kids, and not that interesting to you.

You are still an outside child.  You love to walk to the playground, climb on the big rocks, and climb on the climbing wall.  You like to play Mama Bird and Baby Bird and find pretend worms to eat.  You like to take the dogs to the dog park.  You even like to run errands with us, which is quite a change from your brother.

You do a lot of singing lately.  You know a lot of songs that Grandpa sings to you.  Sometimes you sing the words, and sometimes you just sing nonsense to the tune.  One day I sang you the Little Bunny Fu-Fu song.  You thought it was funny, until I did the hand gestures, too.  Then you said, "I don't like the bopping on the head!"  So then I sang it with just the bunny ears.  Then you would get impatient, and not let Bunny Fu-Fu have three chances from the Good Fairy.  You wanted to skip ahead to the part where I said, "Poof!" and he turned into a goon.  Then there was the time when I paused, and you thought I was done.  You told me, "You forgot the moral of the story part!"  That made me laugh.

Your days got a new routine because of Corbin switching to the new school.  It seems to be good for you, since he's in class when you're getting ready for your nap.  There are still days when you don't nap, but they are growing fewer.  Your bedtime routine continues to be good, as well.  Now if we could just solve the riddle of when you decide to eat or not, it would all be clear sailing.  We tried out some restaurants around us on the weekends.  Sometimes you sit and eat and eat and eat.  Sometimes we have to take turns between eating and wrestling with you because you couldn't possibly sit still.  Some nights, I just went ahead and fed you your dinner for your bedtime snack.

The month ended with Thanksgiving, of course.  We were very relaxed this year.  Grandma and Grandpa drove down to San Diego to visit with Uncle Alex and Aunt Lena.  Corbin and Dad did the grocery shopping, as evidenced by the giant turkey balloon which came home with them.  Corbin named it the Perky Turkey Who Loves Humans, but you mainly called it the Turkey Balloon.  I don't know if that's because you thought the name was too long, of if you didn't actually realize that was its name.  We haven't had a balloon around in a long time, so you two had lots of fun with it.  And then we cooked a small turkey breast roast, which turned out quite well, and had sweet potatoes and pie and it was very nice.  Our first Thanksgiving in our new house.  I look forward to many more.

Love,
Mom

The living room taking shape:

The dining room totally out of shape:

Pig pile on Dad:

The Turkey Balloon:

Happy girl:

5.9 or, The Perky Turkey Who Loves Humans

Dear Corbin,

This month started off fairly relaxed, although with the occasional sugar high from the Halloween candy.  We continued to unpack and sort and clean and organize.  You love unpacking things, especially all of the toys, of course.  You don't love sorting through things to get rid of them.  Grandma and I would make a box of stuff to go to Goodwill or the Mission, and you would take things back out that you wanted to keep.  We would say, "Come look through this stuff and see which ones you want to keep."  You would say, without looking, "We have to keep it all!"

Grandpa arranged for the Madison furniture and things to come out on a moving truck.  I thought it would take four or five weeks, but instead it took about 10 days.  So that created a whole second wave of moving chaos.  Boxes that I had planned on unpacking were suddenly buried in the garage again.  The living room finally had furniture.  The dining room could suddenly seat 22 people.  We could open a store selling gently used small appliances.

It was chaotic, but also very satisfying.  Grandma is so happy to have her scrapbooks back.  Once we did find the kitchen boxes, we finally have the kitchen mostly done.  We had some fun going through the cedar chest from Madison, looking at all of my old school work.  You definitely love getting to play with our old Transformers and G.I. Joe toys.

You started at your new school this month.  It's a different schedule, since you are in the afternoon class, but you all seem to have adjusted well.  Grandma and Grandpa are glad not to have to drive all the way back over to Fern every day.  You seem to have integrated into Mrs. Hedley's class just fine.  So, once again, I seem to have worried about you for no reason.

Changing classes has not improved your outlook on homework, however.  You still crab about it all the time.  Out of our homework time each night, about 50% of the time is you complaining.  30% of the time is you actually doing work.  20% of the time is me making you do it over after you did it badly because you were too busy complaining to do it well the first time.  I don't love encouraging unthinking obedience, but there is a certain skill to learn about just getting the paperwork done.

There is some writing that you like to do: your question journal.  When we started it at the beginning of the year, you told me your answers and I wrote them down.  Now, most days you do your own writing, which is pretty cool.  You also draw a lot of pictures, so I think your next journal might have to be a sketch journal.  You once said to me while watching me write down your answer, "How do you do that so fast?"  I said, "Because I practiced, just like you practice when you do your homework."

And then it was Thanksgiving!  Grandma and Grandpa went down to Uncle Alex's house in San Diego.  We had thought about all going, but it worked out better for us to stay home.  You and Dad went out that did the grocery shopping.  You came back with a nice little turkey breast roast, some sweet potatoes, an apple pie, and a giant turkey balloon that was almost bigger than you.  You named it The Perky Turkey Who Loves Humans.  I thought you might just call it the Perky Turkey, but no, you called it by its whole name.  It made me laugh.  You did all of your usual helium balloon things with it: towed it all over the house, tied various things to it to see they would pull it down or be lifted up, and then showed us every day how much helium it had lost.  I don't know what it is about helium balloons, but you still love them.  We went to the dog park, and the playground, and dinner turned out pretty well, so it was a nice day and good beginning to the holiday season.

Love,
Mom


Volcano in mixed media:

Unpacking:

Pig pile on Dad:

The Perky Turkey Who Loves Humans:

2.7 or, Letting the Days Go By

Dear Miriam,

We moved!  We finally moved to the new house, which is what you still call it.  We were going for walks after dinner sometimes, before it started getting dark so early, and when you were ready to head home, you would say, "Let's go back to the new house."  If you were tired, you would say, "Let's go back to the new house and take a nap."

We did most of the work in one weekend.  Uncle Alex had the day off on Columbus Day, so Dad and I took the day off as well.  We scheduled the furniture movers on Saturday.  While they were moving furniture, we moved boxes.  On Sunday, we moved more boxes from the old house in the morning.  In the afternoon, we sorted through the boxes in the garage to organize them and make more room.  Then on Monday, we moved all of the items from the storage units here into the garage.  It feels so good to have all of our stuff in one place, even though it's still disorganized and not totally unpacked.

Then it took the next few weekends to get the rest of the odds and ends, and to clean.  But now that's done, and our lease is over, and we only have to worry about where in the world we're going to fit all of the furniture coming from Grandma and Grandpa's house in Madison!  We still do some running back and forth to Torrance, because you still have gymnastics classes there.  By the end of November, I'll be the only one driving back to Torrance every day.

The Long Beach house already feels much more welcoming than the Torrance house did.  Dad and I were doing a run back to the old house, and when we walked in he said, "I didn't realize just how claustrophobic this house felt.  I like the new house so much more."  One afternoon, you were playing by yourself in the backyard.  Grandma looked at me and said, "I love this backyard.  I'm so glad we moved."  And you and Corbin and I can walk around the block, or down to the park, and we have sidewalks and streets that aren't busy.  It's so much more relaxing.  Although, you scared the daylights out of me one day when you and Corbin were running ahead of me.  He stopped at the corner, and you kept going right into the middle of the street.  I ran and grabbed you, and did the typical scared parent yelling.  That was one time I wished you were riding in the wagon.

Part of the fun of unpacking is finding all of the toys and books that were packed away from Grandma and Grandpa's apartment in Minneapolis.  We've found two whole boxes of books, so now when you pick out your bedtime reading, you tell us, "We haven't read this one in a long time!"  We've found stuffed animals, too, which you've happily adopted into your growing pile of stuffed animal friends.  We've found puzzles and art supplies and all kinds of fun things.  Anyone who didn't know us could be forgiven for thinking that we are actually a daycare center.

One of the changes that I've noticed since we've moved is that you go to sleep a little better.  I'm not sure if there's something about your new room that is helpful, or if our routine is just going well, or if you've reached some kind of development stage that's made a change.  At the Torrance house, we had gotten into a pretty good routine, but you would still cry for a few minutes when I said goodnight and left your room. Since we've moved, you seem to have reached a point where you just lay yourself down and fall asleep.  I hope that's the ongoing pattern now.  Your bedtime routine has been the most frustrating adjustment of becoming a two child household, and I've always felt badly for that.  I think that's the biggest way that you've been shortchanged by all of the changes over the past two years.  Your whole life has been a series of changes in living situations, accompanied with stressed-out caretakers and changing routines.  I hope that our lives are stable and routine now, for many years to come.

You got to go back to the dentist this month.  It's always interesting to see the x-rays of your teeth, although you're not always interested in actually doing the x-rays.  This time, we could see your adult teeth starting to form down in your jaw bone.  Your tooth fragment hasn't moved, which is fine.  I swear, your dentist will never think that I'm a competent parent--she's always very stern about I should bring you back if we ever see any swelling or soreness where you're missing that tooth.  She shakes her finger at me and says in her Eastern European accent, "You come immediately, you see that!" and I always feel terribly guilty that I let you have such an accident in the first place.  You would be modeling children's toothpaste, if not for your terrible, neglectful mother.  You poor baby.

Maybe I can set up a Miriam's Missing Tooth Fund, and then you'll be able to afford college.

Love,
Mom

PS: I forgot about Halloween!  You went Trick-or-Treating for the first time.  It was highly amusing.  We put some finger lights on you, for safety, so you kept walking very slowly so that you could watch what you were shining the lights on.  Dad was holding your bag for you, and he had to hustle you along so that you would keep up with Corbin.  You had lots of fun telling people "Trick or treat!" and "Happy Halloween!"  We went around about three blocks, and then you told me, "Let's go back to the new house and take a nap."  You even skipped the last two houses that Corbin went to, because you were tired.  It was a fun night.


Snuggling with animals in your "cave":

"I'm a dalmatian dog!"

The silly family:

5.8 or, Who's House?

Dear Corbin,

We moved!  It was a crazy few days, but we moved to the Long Beach house.  Uncle Alex had a long weekend because of Columbus Day, so Dad and I took that day off, too.  On Saturday, a moving company came and moved the furniture, while we moved boxes.  Then on Sunday, we moved more boxes in the morning and then spent the afternoon sorting through everything in the garage.  Monday morning, we moved all of the things from the storage units here, and then everything was finally in the same place.  Except the Madison furniture, but that will come later.

It was nice to feel like our stuff belonged to us again, but you kept getting frustrated because you wanted to find the toys and unpack them.  And once you've unpacked them, you want us to stop and play with you.  I understand the feeling.  I started unpacking my books, and it was hard not to put them on the shelf and not sit and read them instead.

We did a lot of running back and forth to the Torrance house in October, partly to keep moving the last things to the new house, and partly because you were still going to school at Fern.  We had thought we might wait until the end of the semester to transfer you to Los Cerritos, but Grandma and Grandpa got tired of driving around so much.  So I emailed with Mrs. Hedley, who would be your new teacher, and you and I and Grandma went over to visit her one afternoon.  You'll have a very different schedule; you'll be in the afternoon class instead of the morning class.  You won't eat lunch at school any more.  We also found out that LC students wear uniforms, so I had to do some quick online shopping for you.  Mrs. Hedley seemed very nice, and not at all dismayed to have another wiggly, energetic boy added to her class.  So now you're all enrolled at the new school.

I dropped you off at Fern on the Monday of your last week there, to let Mrs. Kawaguchi and the office know that we had moved.  I thanked Mrs. Kawaguchi for the great start to your Kindergarten year.  Your handwriting skills have improved very much, and you already knew the sight words that the new class has learned.  So I said that you should be able to transfer well, and she was glad to hear that.

You have been working on those skills at home, too, although I think the real skill we're working on is, "sit in the chair and do your homework."  You get frustrated when I won't let you embellish your letters and numbers, to make them into aliens or robots.  You had some school work come home with notes on them like, "Corbin finds it difficult to focus on simple, familiar tasks."  Which I interpret to mean, "Corbin finds it difficult to remain focused on things that are boring, too easy, and repetitive."  This, my friend, is going to be something that you will probably struggle with your whole life.  And I sympathize, I really do.  That's a hard skill to learn and practice.  But that is the skill which will gain you so much in life.  It's hard to be bad at something new.  It's hard to feel like you're doing boring work with no way of making it enjoyable.  I keep telling you, as we sit glaring at each other across the dinner table: right now, you need to demonstrate competence before creativity.  Show your teacher that you understand the lesson.  Learn the rules first, because then you can break them meaningfully.

One night, you had to write a sentence using the sight word, "like."  You wrote, "I do not like homework."  I hear you, buddy.  I hear you.

We did have some fun this month, since it ended with Halloween. You decided to be a skeleton again, which made it easy.  You did a Halloween parade at school (which was actually your last day at Fern), and then that night we all went Trick-or-Treating.  It was your first year going door to door, which you thought was super fun.  We went around three blocks, and saw lots of other families.  You liked seeing other people's costumes and seeing the decorations.  After every house, you had to shine your flashlight into your bag and show me how much candy you got.  It was a really fun night, like so many of our nights together.

Love,
Mom

Skeleton!

The silly family:

We got your school pics back:

2.6 or, Dinosaur Princess

Dear Miriam,

At the beginning of the month, we had an argument about your dinosaur pajamas.  You love them so much that you never want to take them off.  One day, you didn't want to change your shirt in the morning, so, of course, by bedtime it was dirty.  You were so upset that I wouldn't let you wear your dirty triceratops pajama shirt that you cried for 20 minutes.

So I joked with our friends Marc and Becky that they needed to buy their daughter Sofia more dinosaur shirts for you to get as hand-me-downs.  Marc noted that they didn't have dinosaurs, but they sure did have a lot of sparkles.

Several days later, I was getting you dressed in the morning.  I managed to get your pajama shirt off, and then you decided to hide in your closet.  Then we had this conversation:

Me: Come and pick out a shirt, Miriam.
You [inside the closet]: I don't want to pick out a shirt!
Me: Do you want to wear a dress?
You [opening the closet door]: I want to dress like a princess!

So I grabbed one of the many dresses that we got as hand-me-downs from Sofia, one plastered with Disney princesses on it, and you thought that was fantastic.  Marc and Becky thought it was hilarious.

We have moved on to the two side pony-tails for your hairstyle, which only happens if you're out of bed before I leave for work.  Otherwise you end up with crazy hair all day.  Grandma's hands are too bad now to do a pony-tail, and Dad just hasn't had enough practice yet.  I don't know if Grandpa has even tried.  I'm looking forward to when it's long enough to cut it all one length.

You had your very first pony ride at a horse show in Palos Verdes, the first weekend of the month.  They had a petting zoo and games, too, but you were less interested in those.  You sat and watched the big horses doing jumping rounds with me for a while.  I don't know if you were actually interested or if it was just something to watch while you ate your granola bar, but I thought it was fun.  Whenever we walked past a horse, you would say, loudly, "Look at that horse!"  Then you saw a gray horse and said, "Just like Merrylegs!" which is the gray pony in the Black Beauty movie.  That made me laugh.

You've been doing lots of counting lately.  Grandpa got you a lift-the-flap book where you count to 100, and you've made me read that a bunch of times.  So now you know a lot of numbers, but you don't always get them in any kind of sequence.

You've been doing a lot of reading, too.  You know some of your books so well that you really can appear to read them.  Which doesn't stop you from trying to get us to read them to you.  Your favorite new delaying tactic at bedtime is to run into Grandpa's room with a book and ask him to read it to you.  You have to bring books with you to brush your teeth, or to eat breakfast, or to ride in the car.  Which we don't mind, really.  It makes a break from you bringing five dinosaurs with you, or three horses, or any number of stuffed animals.  You're very, "Have stuff, will travel," these days.

You started a gymnastics class this month.  Grandma takes you on Monday mornings, and then she's exhausted the rest of the week.  You enjoy it, of course, so we'll have to see what classes we can find in Long Beach.  It would be nice if you and Corbin both ended up doing gymnastics.  Maybe we'd be able to double up on lesson time, instead of having to deal with two totally different schedules.  But we'll see what you each end up liking.

We finalized the purchase of the new house this month, got the keys and even moved some boxes in.  So it's really happening; we have a new home.  I look forward to doing house projects with you.  After all, you love painting.  I'm sure you'll do a lovely job helping me repaint the upstairs hallway.  "Little dabs of watercolors" has to be some kind of art movement, somewhere.

Love,
Mom

First pony ride, at the horse show:

 At play:

Morning story time with Grandpa:

"I have monkey feet!"

Stick to your ribs:

Dinosaur Train:

The side ponies:

Wearing a "space helmet:"

5.7 or, Back to Life

Dear Corbin,

This month, you started big kid school: Kindergarten!  Your dad was excited to get to do homework with you, which would probably be news to most of the teachers who used to assign him homework when he was in school.  I was excited to see the Scholastic Books order form, which was one of my favorite parts of school as a kid.  In fact, I think I scared Grandma with how excited I got.  But it's books!  Good books!  Cheap!  How can you not love that?!

I took the morning off on your first day, so that I could meet your teacher and make sure you were settled.  But since you had those two weeks of Jumpstart Kindergarten, you knew right where your classroom was, and some of the kids already.  So as soon as we got your backpack hung up and your snack in the bin, you were off to see what the other kids were doing.  I barely got a hug and a kiss, but I guess that's better than having you cry all over me for ten minutes.  Once again, my fear of your reaction was far worse than your reaction.  Someday I'm sure I'll stop worrying so much.  I'll be in a coma, but I won't be worrying about anything.

Dad and I both made it to Back to School Night.  Your teacher demonstrated her smart board, which was pretty cool.  She talked about the expectations that she has for her students, and they seemed high, which I liked.  She talked about the types of homework she'll be sending home and how we can help you develop the skills that she'll be measuring.  She talked about the report card and how it would look very different than the report cards that we got as children.  She was funny and seems smart and engaged.

You seem to be liking school.  You have gotten to know some of the other children.  One of them is a rather rowdy boy, who has already become the boy to avoid if you don't want to get into trouble.  But part of school is learning those skills, and better sooner than later.  You've already started demonstrating new knowledge and skills.  Your writing is getting better, you and Dad have been working on memorizing sight words, and you taught us how to sing the days of the week to tune of, "Oh My Darling, Clementine."

We did have this conversation on a Sunday night:
Me: It's Monday tomorrow.  Don't forget to wear your school shirt.
You: I don't want to wear that shirt.
Me: You're supposed to wear you school shirt on Mondays, for assembly.  Or another purple shirt.
You: Other people don't wear purple shirts, and I decided I want to be like them.

I guess paying $10 to find out that you're a non-conformist isn't that big of a deal.

The first weekend of the month, we went to a horse show up in Palos Verdes.  It was a fundraiser for a Children's Hospital.  They had lots of games and food, but also a little petting zoo and pony rides.  You had fun playing the games with Dad, and you thought the animals in the petting zoo were funny.  You decided not to do the pony rides, and you thought watching the big horses do their jumping rounds wasn't very exciting.  Probably if there had been jousting, you would have been interested.

You started gymnastics lessons again, on the weekends, and you started soccer lessons after school on Tuesdays.  It's good to get you moving around.  I'm looking forward to being able to walk to a park after dinner and on the weekends.  Especially in a neighborhood with sidewalks on the whole block.

We got the keys to the new house, right at the end of the month, and started taking boxes over.  I am looking forward to having all of our stuff back, and being able to work on projects again.  There is a lot of painting to do, and a lot of organizing, but I can't wait to get my favorite artwork back up on the walls.  And then we will start a shrine to the patron saint of Not Moving Again For Many Years.

Love,
Mom


First day of Kindergarten:

With the goats in the petting zoo at the horse show:

At play:

Morning story time with Grandpa: