My dear E.J.,
Happy birthday to you, cute stuff! Seven years old! Wow! Does that sound old to you? It sure does to me. And what a year this has been for you, and for us! Lots of things going on in the world, lots of significant changes for our family, lots of growing up for you.
On your last birthday, we were four months into self-quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic. A year later, the virus still dominates the headlines and shapes our behavior much more than I had hoped it would by this point. Oh, don't get me wrong, we've relaxed a bit - we go to public playgrounds now, we've gotten back to visiting with family, and we've taken you into some stores and other places, and to some outdoor events like Jumbo Shrimp games (yay!). But it has been a long year, kiddo. After I wrote your last letter, cases of covid-19 spiked drastically nationwide, and especially in Florida. In the fall, schools offered families a choice of in-person school (with face masks, socially distant desk spacing, lunch in classrooms, plastic desk shields, no field trips or other big school activities) or virtual learning with a teacher from your school. We opted for the latter, and you completed first grade entirely online. We still have not taken a vacation (aside from going to Papa's house a couple of times); we celebrated Christmas with extended family (and visited Santa!) virtually via Zoom; we trick-or-treated minimally for Halloween (focusing instead on a fun Harry Potter-themed house setup to hand out candy to others); we still have not been to a movie theater or church or back to tee-ball or other extracurricular activities. And, no big birthday party for you again this year - instead, we went to the waterpark at Adventure Landing as a family and had Star Wars Clone Trooper cupcakes with Grammy and Heather on the 4th of July. You still said it was the best birthday ever, so thank you for that!
January brought another significant spike in covid cases in the U.S., then things tapered off during the spring as vaccines became available - first to people over age 65, then gradually younger until Daddy and I finally got ours in May. Numbers began to drop and things started opening up even more, and mask mandates fell by the wayside - and now cases are on the rise again among the unvaccinated, which, unfortunately, you and Ellie still are for the time being. We are waiting with bated breath for a vaccine for kids under age 12, and it has been promised by mid-winter. Unfortunately, that means for now, we keep our guard up to keep you kids as protected as we can. You'll be going back to school in the fall, and it makes me terribly nervous, but we're moving forward, for better or for worse.
You have been such an incredible trooper through the past year and a half. There have been disappointments, for sure, but you have been very willing to roll with the punches as we go and make the most of things. I mentioned Halloween - that particularly surprised me, that you were not nearly as devastated as I thought you'd be when I broke the news that we wouldn't be trick-or-treating this year. Instead, you threw yourself into our costume theme and house-decorating idea and had a great holiday. If you were ever upset about our altered plans for any event, I don't believe you ever let it show. I do think we've had a lot of fun this year, even if it hasn't always been our normal type of fun!
You did an awesome job with virtual school this year. It was such a joy for me to be able to be just in the next room for every single one of your school days, so I was able to hear you interacting with your peers and talking to your teachers and participating in class. Your reading ability has grown by leaps and bounds (you've even started reading some chapter books now!) and your math fluency is truly impressive. You were very outspoken in class, always eager to share news with your teachers and classmates. You managed to make friends even in that environment, and often posted encouraging messages to your classmates on the class message boards. You were also just so cooperative with online learning in general - so many kids struggled with it, but you took to it with no trouble. Whenever my alarms would go off to signal that it was time for you to return to the iPad for another live lesson, you'd just yell out "OKAY!", drop what you were doing and run right back to your desk. I was so appreciative of how easy you made all that for me!
The silver lining of virtual school was definitely that you had more time to play and build Lego in between classes and assignments! Lego has continued to be EVERYTHING to you, and you build constantly. Our once-meager collection of bricks has ballooned, and now we have sets upon sets, and drawers-full of other loose bricks. Our playroom is now centered around Lego, with a big building table right in the center and a shelf to the side to display your creations and store all the bricks. You loved your Lego scavenger hunt from your last birthday so much that you requested another one this year (and we obliged with a mini figure hunt). You still love the show Lego Masters, you love looking at/reading Lego books and looking up Lego sets online, and we're still looking forward to a trip to Legoland one day! I love to see your creations - you really are so creative and have such a great imagination. I'm always so impressed by the builds you come up with!
Baseball took a little bit of a back seat for you this year, but that's understandable because you haven't played on a team since March of last year. But, now that we've started going to Jumbo Shrimp games again, and since Daddy played in a Throwback Baseball Game on the 4th of July (in our new neighborhood - more on that to come!), and you watched a little bit of the All-Star game, baseball is making a comeback for you. You've dressed yourself in baseball attire (baseball pants, jersey/tshirt, high socks and cap) every day this week, and the other night you were even sleeping in your baseball pajamas with your high socks on and glove under your pillow. I love seeing you get back into it! And, even with slightly waning interest, you were able to achieve your goal of hitting a ball over the fence at the tee-ball field (while playing there with Daddy), and by the time we moved out of our old house, you could easily hit a whiffle ball clear across the street. We are planning to sign you up for Little League this fall - and it won't be tee-ball anymore! You'll be in the machine-pitch division and you have to be evaluated before the season and everything. They'll even start enforcing outs and keeping score. I hope you love it!
You have a pretty good little competitive nature, although you never admit it. You like to win and you get really upset when that doesn't happen. You've been really into playing the Nintendo Switch (video games) since we got the system for Christmas, and if Ellie is beating you at a game or if you can't figure it out, you get so upset. Sometimes we have to turn it off until you can calm down a little bit. So, I'll be interested to see how that translates to the ball field in the fall. You also have focused a lot lately on your size - that you're smaller than most of the other kids your age. We talk about it as a good thing, because they'll be likely to underestimate you because you're not as big as they are, but you sure can play!
You lost your first tooth this year! Well, you've lost two so far. You were so anxiously waiting to lose your first one - so many of your friends had already lost a bunch. But, it finally happened this spring, and then you lost another one just before your birthday! And you have two more loose ones in there, too. As happy as I am to see you excited about this part of growing up, it's a little sad for me to watch your baby smile changing so much so quickly. But, that's the way it goes, and I know I will love your toothy grown-up grin just as much as that baby smile.
You have been growing and changing this year, of course, but our family has also seen some pretty big changes, too! The biggest one is our new house. After renting houses for your entire life thus far, we purchased our first home in May and moved from San Marco to Springfield. The house is just wonderful - it has so much space for us, and you love so much about it. It is very long, with a straight path from front to back, and you love to sprint from one end to the other over and over again (I believe you're playing a game you made up in your head, but I'm fuzzy on the rules and I think they're not really strictly enforced anyway - it's really all about the running!). You also love that you can run a complete circle around the house, as our front and back yards are connected on both sides of the house. It's all fenced in and you love to run the whole way around. You and Ellie have your own rooms, which is nice, but the really cool part is that both of your rooms open up onto what was once a sun porch, that is now closed in and is currently serving as your playroom! Your bedrooms and the playroom are all connected in a U-shape and it's just the coolest thing. It's lovely and bright (with eight windows in the playroom alone!) and just wonderful for you guys. As you get older we can see that playroom turning into a study room or a hangout room to spend time in with your friends...I think it will really serve us well for a long time!
You were such a good sport during the moving process, which is always just so terrible. You were a great help at sorting through all your toys and books and finding things to sell or donate, and you and Ellie earned a bunch of money from your sold toys at our yard sale. You also had a lemonade stand to earn money for walkie talkies, which you use to talk to each other from your respective rooms after we put you to bed. There have certainly been some adjustments with the move - you've had some trouble adjusting to being in your own room, and we've been doing lots of switching nightlights around and leaving hall lights on to help with scary shadows, reassuring you about various noises, and sometimes you just have sleepovers with Ellie and avoid being alone altogether. I suppose all this was to be expected; it's always hard to adjust to a totally new place, especially since the last one was really the only home you ever truly knew. But we're making progress and we do love the house! We're so excited for all the new fun our new neighborhood promises us, and I think we'll make a lot of really great memories here.
Another big change for us was the adoption of our dog, Ruthie! We got her when she was just a little puppy and now she's a year old. You and she are best buds, and you're her favorite "toy!" When you run around the perimeter of the house (or back and forth inside), she loves to chase you. Whenever you're doing anything remotely active (which is, you know, almost always), she loves to jump in and play with you. She'll tackle you to the ground, bite at your feet, chase you around. You guys love to wrestle and have so much fun together! I'm so glad you're such good buds.
Some more about E.J. at seven years old: you still love Halloween, spooky things and bad guys; we've been reading the Harry Potter books (we're almost done with book five right now!), and Voldemort is your favorite, of course. Your favorite things to eat for lunch are Nutella sandwiches or macaroni and cheese, and you love Pop Tarts for breakfast. You live for snacks and are always downstairs RIGHT at 3:30 p.m. (designated snack time) to help yourself to something. You also love eating at restaurants and playing at the playground (you especially love climbing and jumping off things). At our old house, you liked to climb up on the backyard fence and inch your way around the perimeter of it, and at our new house, you love to climb around the outside of the porch railing. You are starting to take on more responsibility around the house (not necessarily happily, but you're doing it!), and you have been doing daily chores all summer which include things like cleaning bathrooms, putting away some of your laundry, changing your bedsheets and cleaning up Ruthie's...uh, messes in the backyard. You love Star Wars, and this year have particularly enjoyed The Clone Wars and Rebels series. You like reading and writing and particularly enjoyed writing a report on bats (the animal) in school this year. You got your very own library card this year; you enjoy reading the Magic Treehouse books, but your favorite book is currently Clone Troopers in Action. You like the color blue, and you love Beanie Babies (sometimes you carry them around in a fanny pack with just their heads peeking out!). You're currently very into In The Heights and listen to the soundtrack daily (your favorite songs are probably "96,000" and "Benny on the Dispatch"). You keep changing what you say you want to be when you grow up: sometimes you say a Lego set maker, sometimes a baseball player, sometimes an engineer, sometimes a costumed Star Wars character at Hollywood Studios. You love to be silly and are all about putting on a show these days. You love video games, especially our Harry Potter Lego game and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. You sometimes get grumpy when you don't get your way (who doesn't) but overall, you certainly laugh far more than you sulk. You love to have visitors and cry when they leave. You like to climb trees and play with Nerf guns with your friend Krishna, and you ran your first 5k this year. You love to swim and play in the waves at the beach. You are kind-hearted and thoughtful, outgoing and friendly, bright and creative.
And, you're growing up. I know, I know. I say it every year. But every day you look a little taller, a little leaner, a little more like a Big Kid and less like a Little Boy. I am still so thankful for those fleeting moments of Little You that still show up from time to time - when you climb into my lap out of the blue, or wrap your arms around mine and lay your head on my shoulder, or grab my hand when we're walking. Each of those is becoming increasingly rare and one day, you will do each for the last time and I won't even know it in the moment. Perhaps you already have done one for the last time and I don't even realize it. It breaks my heart to know that, as I have loved being the mother of Little E.J. for all these years. But Big E.J. is going to be a really great boy, and then a really incredible man, and I'm so excited to get to know him as we go. And E.J., no matter how big you get, I'm always here with a mama hug if you're scared, or a hand to hold, or a shoulder to lean on. You can get as big as you want, but that will never change.
I love you so much, nugget. Thanks for another really great year of being your mama. It is such a privilege and you are so dear to me.
Happy birthday, buddy.
All my love,
Mama
* * * * *
My Dear E.J.,
Happy birthday, little buddy! Birthdays are such a big deal at your age and I am so excited for you to turn seven! I think your Mama has done such a great job planning parties and making you feel special that the anticipation just builds and builds throughout the year. It seems like you are always planning for either Halloween or your birthday party.
The truth is, while you hit some amazing milestones (keep reading!), this was a crazy year. Most prominently, we kept you guys at home all school year due to the pandemic. It was far from ideal, but we felt like it was the best decision. Your teachers were organized, and your Mama built out a school room in our dining room and was really on top of helping you troubleshoot technology issues and check things off your assignment list. It also felt like you were making consistent progress–you can read now, which is pretty awesome! One of my favorite things is to see you sitting on the couch working your way unprompted through a book. You’re currently digging the Magic Treehouse series, and most recently finished the one about Jackie Robinson. You can also read the dialogue for the Harry Potter characters you voice, including Neville Longbottom and Dudley Dursley. We are on book five of seven and I know you will have other ones before we finish the series together!
One cool thing about working from home while you were schooling at home is that I got a chance to pop in and see you thinking your way through assignments – you (and your teachers apparently) especially liked math mysteries where you had to solve math problems to decode letters that formed clues that helped you solve the mystery. It was particularly cool to hear you think your way through addition and subtraction problems. You completely mastered facts up to 10 and, without prompting, break down larger problems into ones where you already know the answers. I will say that I am a little nervous about you realizing your math potential because Ellie loved math first. I don’t know if you sometimes pretend you don’t like it to make her mad or if you think you can’t both be good at it, but you have a great number sense and I hope you don’t ever let other people define what you love and how great you can be.
This year, you continued to be ultra-passionate about things. Being super into one thing has been pretty consistent your whole known life. From Spider-Man and superheroes to Star Wars bad guys, then baseball and back to Star Wars, you have added Lego, and two Lin-Manuel Miranda musicals to the list. Your birthday party last year was a scavenger hunt for ten Lego sets. You built them all in under a week and you have not stopped since. You love mini-figures–building them, thinking about different arrangements, and imagining other ones that could exist. You have given me many creations this year to keep in my office, but I usually give them back after a little while so you can have the bricks to build with, but I have kept the minifigs you made of me and you in my office for months. You have a great eye for detail and it is so fun to hear you talk through the things you build. Even when they look similar to other things you’ve built, you always add something interesting!
Another thing we started doing as a family during the pandemic is watching non-kid TV shows. The first full season we watched all the way through was LEGO Masters–a Lego building competition show where teams of two complete a themed challenge in a set number of hours. This is a time where I wish I was a great writer, because I bet such a person could paint the picture I have in my mind of what it is like to watch you watch the show. You are so intent on what’s happening and are so transparent with your emotions–awe, nerves, surprise, disappointment. It’s like you have such empathy for what they are experiencing on the show. You had a favorite team from the first season and cried when they got sent home. The second season just started and I hope your new favorite team fares a little better. Either way, it’s a lot of fun to watch with you.
One last thing I want to talk about is our extracurriculars. Having to miss in person school this year we tried really hard to give you some structure. Mama and Ellie played some piano; you, me and Ellie went to the driving range a few times and you guys even rode with me for 9 holes one time; but the most consistent one was the weekly trips you and I took to the tee ball fields. We got matching Angels shirts and hats and everything! You particularly loved when we stopped for a Gatorade, candy or ice cream snack and I loved the chance it gave us to talk one on one in between drills. You are such a great learner and practice so hard every time we are out on the field and other times when you are working on something yourself. I worry sometimes that I am not the best teacher for you because I hear myself getting frustrated when you take more than two tries to get something right, but you give me more grace than I deserve and seem to have fun anyway. Maybe it’s the snacks? I don’t know, but I hope I can strike the right balance between making sure it stays fun for you and helping you improve so that it makes it easier for it to be fun. My favorite football coach used to say that he wanted the game to be fun, but that he couldn’t think of anything more fun than winning. The other thing I need to mention this year is how competitive you are! I’m not saying that anyone should like losing, but you get so upset and angry as soon as it looks like you are not going to win something. Even after you may have just won a few times in a row, you really struggle to tolerate losing. I think this can be productive if it fuels you to work harder, but it seems like it is something that has to be taught and I am hoping I can help you channel that energy.
My favorite memory from our one-on-one team practices has to be the time you hit your first ball over the fence! The Little League where we play has three different baseball diamonds: one for T-ball; a medium field where you’re going to start playing this fall; and a full regulation Little League field with a mound for kid to pitch from. We always end our practices with me pitching you a mix of tennis balls and soft baseballs. Well, one of the days your swing was on point and you blasted a tennis ball to straight away centerfield. Your sister (who sometimes came to do art and watch) and I went crazy. You seemed more surprised than anything, but has a huge smile on your face. No bat flip or finger pointing home run trot like you sometimes do at our house when you hammer a whiffle ball across the street. After a pretty long pause, you rounded the bases, gave us a short interview about how you couldn’t believe it and then we walked around the field to take a picture with the ball. You have said you want to hit a home run on every field you play on and it’s pretty cool that you are one for one so far.
E.J., for a year that feels like we didn’t do anything because a global pandemic kept us home for so much of it, you were productive and eventful! You learned to swim underwater, started losing teeth and playing video games–you and Ellie beat Star Wars Lego game for the Wii and earned 100% completion in Harry Potter years 1-4 for our new Nintendo Switch. You ran a 5k in under 35 minutes with planned stops for you and Ellie because it was your first time. We got a dog whom you adore and who loves to play with you, and we bought a house that is perfect for running laps around and sprinting inside. You made a difficult year so much better and I hope you can feel in the letter how much fun you are to have as a son. I love you so much, am so proud of how hard you worked to accomplish so much this year, and hope, hope, hope I can help you channel your passion and energy into something amazing.
I love you!
Daddy