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: