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:

2.5 or, Where the Sidewalk Ends

Dear Miriam,

This month included many days of playing outside, a few days of camping and Cowboy Tunes every single night.  I came home the other day and you were sitting at the top of the stairs singing, "Home on the Range."  I have a feeling that your Apocalypse Survival plan will eventually be, "Just stay home and enjoy my grass-fed beef."

Grandma and Grandpa took you camping for a few nights up to a campground called Rancho Oso.  You came home with a new little stuffed horse, who you call Rancho Oso Pony.  You liked to watch the horses that they had, and the big pig named Bob.  I'm not sure if you knew why the rest of us thought the big pig named Bob was quite so funny, but we were all very amused.

We took Dad to the South Coast Botanic Garden.  He was the only one who hadn't been there yet.  We spent a few hours there, walking around the various gardens.  We walked up to see the lake, but they had drained it to do maintenance, so that a bit disappointing.  We'll have to go back in January, when they say they'll be done and the lake will be re-filled.  For someone who grew up around natural lakes, it's very odd to think that you might empty a lake for a few months.  Very odd.

We also discovered a new place to visit, the Point Vicente Interpretive Center.  They have exhibits on all kinds of things--whales and dolphins, geology, Native American history, Spanish and Mexican American history.  It's a neat museum.  Hopefully, we'll be able to go back this winter when the whales are migrating and do some whale watching from shore.  They also have a hiking trail, which would be fun to do when you're a little older.

One day this month, I got home from work after you were done with dinner.  You were playing in the living room, but then came around the corner to where I had just walked in the door.  You said, "Oh! I thought you were at work!"  Which made Grandma laugh.

The big news this month is that we found a new house to buy.  You are just a little bit younger than I was when we moved into Grandma and Grandpa Lam's house in Madison.  I have a memory of someone driving a blue pick-up truck to help us move.  I don't know if that's an accurate memory, but it's in my head.  I wonder how much you'll remember of the past year.  In some ways, you've been the luckiest one of us all.  You probably won't remember how stressful this whole process has been, and you're too little to carry any boxes.  You should probably be careful about that karma, though.  My childhood was all spent in the same house, and then after college I moved 5 times in 4 years.  And that doesn't count the number of times I helped other people move, which was many.  Hopefully, we will not move again for a long time, partly because it's much harder when you're older and partly because it's a really nice house.  It's well put-together, in a good school district.  There is a dog park a few blocks south and a playground a few blocks north.  It's a much quieter neighborhood, too.  The only drawback might be that the sidewalk goes all the way down the block, which means when you're teasing us by running off, you'll be able to go that much farther.  That's a problem I'm willing to have.

Love,
Mom

At Rancho Oso:

Bob the Pig:

The new house:

5.6 or, Positively Prepped

Dear Corbin,

This month, we got you ready to start school.  At the beginning of the month, you and I went to Target to do your school shopping.  For this year, that consisted of a new lunch box and a new backpack.  You did manage to talk me into new light-up Batman sneakers, but you were disappointed when I denied you new How To Train Your Dragon dragons.  You settled on a Spiderman lunch box and an Angry Birds backpack.  Someday, you will need a real backpack, a travel-to-different-continents backpack, and then we will truly shop for a backpack.  Because happiness is a great backpack.  A great backpack will be there with you when you need it, won't mind your baggage, and will give you hugs whenever you pick it up.  A great backpack will smell like that lunch you ate on a beach in Australia, will have that grease stain from your bike chain when you rode to classes in college, will have more miles on it than your first car.  A great backpack is a thing of beauty and comfort and pleasure.  But I suppose until then, Angry Birds will have to suffice.

At the end of the month, you had a two week session of morning classes called Jumpstart Kindergarten.  You got to meet your teacher for the year, Ms, Kawaguchi, and get to know your classroom, Room 13.  You brought home a plethora of worksheets, practicing writing your name, practicing cutting and pasting, practicing story comprehension.  It was a very useful program, and a good way to start the school year.

During the month, we went to the South Coast Botanic Garden.  Dad hadn't been there yet, so we had fun showing him the Children's Garden with the tunnel and the troll under the bridge.  I thought it would be a good time to walk up to their lake, since it was just the four of us.  We brought the wagon and the map and went searching for the lake...which they had drained in order to do maintenance.  So, all we saw was dry lake bed with tall lake plants wilting in the sun.  It was very disappointing.  But, we did get to see a huge beetle and a praying mantis in the Rose Garden, and brought home yet more toy lizards, and it was a nice way to get some exercise.

Grandma and Grandpa took you and Miriam up to a campground called Rancho Oso for a few days.  It seems like somewhere we should go back to when you're both older and do the horseback riding.  Miriam liked looking at all the horses, and the other animals in the barn.  They even had a big pig named Bob, which we all thought was a funny name for a big pig.

We discovered a new fun place to visit: the Point Vicente Interpretive Center.  It explores the history of whaling in the area, as well as the whales themselves.  It also has exhibits about the Native Americans who lived there, the Missions that came in to colonize the area, and then geology underlying the whole region.  It's a very nice museum inside, but it also has a hiking trail outside which looked like it might be fun to do.  Cousin Sue Yen has told us that she goes whale watching there in the winter, so hopefully we'll be able to do that, too.

The real news this month was that we put an offer in on a new house, and it was accepted.  So now there's lots more paperwork and things, but hopefully that will all go well.  Moving will be awful, it always is, but then we'll get to settle in to a much more comfortable place and hopefully live there for a long, long time.  The house itself is nice, with four bedrooms, a nice living room and a large dining and family room.  The kitchen has been updated nicely.  The garage is small and needs some work, but we've decided to park the RV in front of it and use it as a workshop instead of parking.  The backyard isn't large, but it's nice and has nice plants in it.  It's large enough for a bigger climber, which will be nice.  There is a dog park two blocks South, and a kid park three blocks North, and we won't have the terrible noise from the traffic any more.  We are all looking forward to getting all of our stuff out of the storage units, both here and in Madison.  It will be a process, but it will be worth it.  I'm saying that now, because I'm sure what I say during that process will not be worth saving for posterity.  Let that be a lesson to you: put positive energy into the world every chance you get.

Love,
Mom


At Rancho Oso:

Bob the Pig:

The house we all liked: