My dear Tobin,

It seems like every photo I, your dad, or Skitter takes of you shows exactly who you are:  adventurous, wiggly, funny, dramatic, and enthusiastic.  I had so many pictures to choose from this month, as we just got back from our biannual trip to the Florida Keys.  Just about every picture of you makes me smile and laugh and say, “Yep, that’s Tobin.”

Photo by Denny

Our trip was wonderful in nearly every way.  You and your brothers mostly got along, and having a solid week of pool time really helped you take off in your swimming.  At the beginning of the week, you rejected the water wings I’d packed but mostly stuck to the shallow end.  By mid-week, you were paddling all around and doing coordinated jumps into the deep end with Miles.  By the end of the week, you were swimming the width of the pool with your head underwater.

Photo by Gary Clarke

You finished up your basketball season with aplomb, making big strides in your skills.  You enjoyed having your dad as a coach.  Baseball starts in a couple of weeks, and even though I’m getting emails begging for parent coaches, I think I’m going to have to strongly discourage your dad from coaching this season.  He’s already coaching Miles’s running team, and with Miles playing baseball as well, I don’t think I can handle the schedule intensity.

That’s one thing that makes you different from your dad and me.  He and I both need quiet and relaxation to feel like normal human beings.  I don’t know if that’s a personality thing or just being old, but you have no such requirements.  In fact, it’s a source of conflict sometimes.  You can get out of control with your wiggliness.  On the plane ride home, you were starting to spin out, and as much as your dad tried to get you to calm down, it wasn’t happening (it may have been related to the entire can of Coke the flight attendant gave you).  He ended up grounding you from Legend of Zelda for a couple of days.

You found that devastating.  You’d been away from Zelda for week, and you were so looking forward to playing again when you got home.  At first I felt like the punishment was too harsh—asking a kindergartner to sit still for three hours after having been up since 5:30 a.m and having been fed exclusively on junk food for a day seemed like a recipe for disaster.  I’m not saying you didn’t deserve some kind of punishment.  You were being super annoying.  I understand that it’s important to follow through on promises of both the positive and negative variety.  I want you kids to trust us when we say we’ll do something, whether it’s coming to your school programs or enforcing consequences for rule-breaking.

You and your dad had a long, serious talk about behavior expectations.  He said he felt like it was a productive discussion and that he’d made some headway.  Then, the very next day, you went back to your wiggly ways.  It can be very frustrating.  I’m sure you have no idea how your dad and I struggle with these things.  You probably think that our mission in life is to ruin your fun.  I hope you read these when you’re an adult and wrestling with your own kids’ complicated needs and behavior and have some sympathy for us at these times.

But really, I’m overstating the case.  Yes, you have a hard time sitting still (as I believe I’ve mentioned here before, I think the last time you sat through an entire meal was the last day in your high chair).  Still, you’re so joyful and spunky.  Miles can sometimes be really harsh with you.  He has a biting tone that I think (hope?) he doesn’t realize he’s using, and if a peer talked to me that way, I’d cry three times a day.  You have a great talent for brushing it off or firing right back.  While I sometimes wish you were more open to behavioral correction from your dad and me, I admire your ability to bounce back from negativity.

As is common with kids, these issues we face at home seem not to be problematic at school.  You nailed your conference.  Your teachers seem to really enjoy having you around, and they specifically called out your sense of humor and ability to predict outcomes in class activities.  They’ve been doing a good job tailoring school tasks to challenge you, while not taking all the fun out of it.

I haven’t measured you lately, but I suspect our next against-the-wall measuring session will show a jump in height.  You’ve been so hungry recently that you must be on a growth spurt.  Most of your clothes still fit, but you’ve busted through the knees of almost all your pants.  To your credit, a lot of them were on their second wearer, and also to your credit, you seem fine with patched knees.  I’m just hoping we can hold out through shorts season, because I have no idea what size you’ll need in the fall.

I love your smile, Tobin.  I can always count on you to bring sunshine into a room.  You’ll master adult standards of behavior one of these years; in the meantime, I’ll keep loving my high-energy little boy.

Love,

Mommy