To Calvin, who is five years old today

Our wonderful boy, another year has come and gone in the wink of an eye. You have grown a great deal over the past year and each day I think that you are beginning to look more like a little boy and less like the baby I have known, and is it any wonder? You have accomplished much in just one year. Last fall you were easily frustrated by trying to pedal your bike, while this spring I have to jog just to keep up with you. Last summer you were wary of the water but you've taken several swimming classes now and are improving with each one. You take the stairs one foot to step now instead of two, and you've had your first dental appointment.

There are many things that I would like to tell you, many things I want you to know about this time. When you read these letters years from now I hope that your heart will remember the love and joy that filled our days, but you aren't likely to remember the specifics of those days, and I write these letters to capture those as well as to mark your growth and your accomplishments, because at four years old your days were always filled with joy and wonder and a whole lot of activity.

At this age much of our time is spent together, and we do a lot between eight in the morning and eight at night. Every day we practice the piano, read books, and straighten around the house. Every week you help me with laundry, with emptying garbages, with the shopping for and putting away of foods. Often you help me bake or cook dinner, you set the table, you clear your place. We like watching birds, taking nature hikes, reading books, and painting at the kitchen table. In the past six months you have discovered Legos, and are quite good at following the directions of assembly all by yourself. You have become increasingly independent, especially now that you can read.

This was the year in which you really learned how to read. Last spring you recognized letters and could write your own name and had started reading short phonics books, so I helped you start a journal. Shortly after that you declared that you would learn to read, and you did. You started with short books of few words, quickly moved up to longer picture books, by fall were reading real chapter books. Many of the books that we read aloud together last year, like Charlotte's Web and The Waterhorse, you are now reading to yourself, and you have discovered others as well. Your comprehension is wonderful and your vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds. This one accomplishment has opened many doors for you and has been very empowering. It has also shown us that learning can occur naturally.

This was also the year in which we (more officially) started homeschooling. In general I try to follow your interests, and you have always made those very clear. Mostly we follow topics of interest from the books we read, and those have taken us to places like Africa and China, and to times like ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, and the Middle Ages in Europe. This year you have continued with your love for trains, and have added knights and volcanoes to your favorites. We have read book after book and even watched videos to fill your curiosity, but you are never really sated and your curiosity grows along with your knowledge and understanding. I want to always remember this as the year that we read together all of the books in the Oz series by L. Frank Baum for the first time, and now you have begun re-reading them to yourself. You love these characters as much as you love trains, and as much as other children love the pop culture characters of this era. Your imagination has made them real for you and you hold them very dear. It is the magic of your age. It was the magic of this year.

The cat is realllllly long today

The cat is extra long today, as is the day extra hot.

Today was one of closing chapters and opening doors. This morning we made a final trip to my grandparents' house thirty minutes from here, a day before the house sale is closed. My grandparents passed away some time ago and the house is not an old one, but looking at it brings to mind many years of love and joy, and for me any permanent good bye is bound to be a somewhat difficult one. I'm sentimental like that.

The afternoon was a mess of responsibilities. We cleaned a lot of the house, I signed Calvin up for swimming, we went to two stores (and were only successful at one), we visited the dentist (Calvin's first time), and we got haircuts (mine is a train wreck). The "opened doors" then must be my learning to live with an embarrassing hair cut, and Calvin learning about the dentist. He did a great job and seems to hold none of my reservations about people messing around inside my mouth.

Tomorrow is the day when I get to admit that I've been doing this for five years and still have no idea what I'm doing or what the plan is. This is, however, the first year that I've come to believe that these are good things. I shouldn't know what I'm doing and there is no plan. Five years, though. That's kind of fun. This is the year that we've decided Calvin will be allowed to get a library card, will start receiving an allowance, and will now have to walk instead of riding in the cart at the store (actually, I realized only a few weeks ago that he's pretty well over the weight limit on those seats, so I guess it's about time).

party planning

It is a fine evening. A soft, though not cool, breeze is blowing and the sun is at that stage of warm evening glow. Calvin is in bed. He is reading about bats and The Wizard of Oz as he tries to find sleep. The past week has brought unseasonably hot days and drought-like weather—a slight shock in the wake of so much rain—and between the heat of the days, and the late setting sun at night, there has been less sleep and more grouching around here. It doesn't help that our neighbors put their young children to bed after ten at night, and they all play noisily outside until then. A part of me would love to live by the sun, to go to bed when it gets dark and rise when it's light, but that's not enough sleep for Calvin, as I'm finding lately. That's not to say that we always mandate an early bedtime. I love that the flexibility of this life allows us to stay up late when the night calls us by name (or promises s'mores).

We are gearing up over here for a fifth birthday celebration. Calvin turns five on Thursday. We will celebrate on that day just the three of us (just the two during the day, in fact), and on Saturday we will have his grandparents and some other family over for dinner. He is planning the party himself—a Wizard of Oz spectacular. He has a mulititude of plans, some of which will be possible, others that are pretty pie-in-the-sky. I love that he is helping plan, I love that he is excited about the event, and I love even more that he is perfectly pleased to keep it as the small affair we've had every year since his first (small affair, of course, referring to the number of guests, not to the extravagance of the celebration he is actively planning).

Do you know how hard it is to find Wizard of Oz accoutrements that are not based on the movie? They are, for all intents and purposes, non-existent. Which is probably best, since that will keep everything homegrown. I will be playing with fondant for the first time ever this week.

So, next time, stop me before the cliche

The day is as hot as the cat is long...

...and it was a hot, hot day. Temperatures in the low nineties, heat index topping one hundred. That's thanks to ground saturation and the amount of water in the air—it's wet here. I'm loving the heat. The house is open and the breeze, because thankfully it was also a windy day, is blowing right through. With each dry day I gain hope for our new trees, though only time will tell.

Speaking of the passage of time, If you've ever wondered what has become of Calvin, now 26 years later (think: Calvin and Hobbes), I came across a pretty spiffy npr post today that pointed in the direction of that answer...on a blog by the name of Pants Are Overrated. Krulwich at npr wasn't thrilled, but I enjoyed the updates. Calvin marries Susie after all! Although I think naming the little girl Francis instead of Bacon would have been equally as meaningful, and would have kept them miles clear of the whole internet bacon meme, which I can't believe Calvin would have fallen for. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster maybe, but not bacon.

My own Calvin is four, with five coming on in just over another week. Sometimes I catch myself saying things like "look how big he is" or "I can't believe it's been five years" but I'm not sure I mean those things. They are clichés, things I'm expected to say, things I expect to hear from myself, but I'm pretty sure it feels like it has been five years and I know exactly how those years were spent. I had all the baby clothes up here this weekend, the ones that didn't sell at the garage sale last year, and I could smell the past in them, the sweetness of babyhood and the preciousness of growth, but these did not evoke in me anything more than memory; no nostalgia, no yearning for baby skin, or baby diapers, or baby sneezes, or baby sleepless nights. I don't even miss naps. I have enjoyed every new step and have carefully put away the ones behind me for later reference, but not later tears.

We had a pretty normal day today. He had swim lessons this morning...and jumped into the pool all by himself, something he wouldn't have done even a month ago. Then we went to the library while I sorted books for an hour and he read books to himself the whole time, something he couldn't have done four months ago. On our way out we checked out a book we'd had on hold—The Royal Book of Oz—and he read the title and explained the whole series he's read to the astonished librarian, then read part of the first chapter in the car on the way home. Time, you see, is passing.

We spent the afternoon in the little pool at home (because, as I mentioned, it was HOT), Calvin often with his head entirely under, blowing bubbles, something he wouldn't have done last week. He rode his big bike to the park after dinner and practically flew down the slide.

His feet touch at the bottom now. I don't remember when that happened.

These pictures seem so very boy to me. He looks so very boy to me. Not like a gender thing (I don't go for that) but like an age thing. Boy as opposed to toddler. I'm good with that.

The next size up

It's a holiday weekend, and we can't survive those without some amount of work, some project to do, so today we cleaned out the garage. Maybe the title of this post is referring to the amount of stuff in our garage, and that we really need the next size up to fit it all. But we cleaned up and cleared out, and I've mentioned Freecycle before, but I'll mention it again. We might have had garbage bag after garbage bag to throw away or drop off somewhere, but between Craig's List and Freecycle absolutely everything we were done with is now at a new home with a new family. That's far better than now residing at the dump. Because the other thing to which the above title might refer is toddlers becoming little boys, and needing bigger toys. Bigger play sets, bigger balls, bigger gardening tools, bigger bikes...and now there are a few happy families with smaller children out there. And we can move in our garage.

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And so out with the smaller and in with the next size up. That is the reference I was making above. In many cases we already had the next size or the next stage up and just got rid of duplicates, but we've been waiting for good weather to replace the clown bike and decided today that if we didn't just go we could find ourselves waiting forever. When I was growing up my grandparents traditionally bought all the grandkids' bikes. It was a moment of pride, a rite of childhood, to go pick out the new bike. I remember a pink bike with a banana seat, and another bike with a white basket. Later it was a rose colored 12 (not 10!) speed that I loved for years.

My parents wanted to continue that tradition and today we all went to pick out Calvin's new bike in the next size up. I can't say the weather was good, or that the sun was shining, but I can say that Calvin quickly and easily zeroed in on the bike for him. We brought it home. Calvin, dad, and grampa assembled it. When he tried it out he looked alarmingly grown up to me. And that's when the tornado sirens went off. Like I said, these days, if we waited for good weather to do anything we'd be waiting an awfully long time.