Monthly Newsletter #42

Dear Landon,

This month has been particularly hectic, at least for me, although, I’m not sure it has made much of a difference to you. You have a new love of doing anything that requires not just my supervision, but also my participation. You have apparently inherited my love of board games. In fact, a few nights ago you combined your love of tools with your love of board games and created your very own tool related board game. Technically, you came up with the plans, because we don’t have a piece of wood big enough for both of us to sit on – which would be required for the real thing.



You have always had an affinity for tools, and your discovery of Handy Manny has done nothing but enhance your obsession. You are more interested now in figuring out what’s wrong with things that are broken and how they are put together and which tools you would use to put them together. I have no doubt that in the years to come that between your two grandfathers you will learn how to use just about every tool in existence – and some that I’m sure haven’t even been invented yet.

For almost a week this month we moved in with GUL and Kimmie on a day by day basis while our house was being re-piped. We were mostly able to follow our normal routine, and you did really well with not being at home, except by the 3rd day you hadn’t been home in a while and I had to take you over to the house to let you smell the PVC glue smell and see the lack of toilet for you to really understand why we couldn’t just go home. Anyway, you did something at GUL and Kimmie’s one night that you’ve never done before and I have a feeling you’ll never do again – so I feel I need to record it for posterity’s sake. We were all watching TV and playing cars and you announced, “I tired, I want to go night night.” I looked up at Kimmie and said “he’s never said that before?!?!” And before you changed your mind, I scooped you up and took you off to bed. I fully expected you to hit the sheets and announce “I not tired anymore.” But you didn’t. You went to sleep. It was eerie.

If there’s one thing I’ve really been lax about in your life, it’s professional pictures. I take a bazillion pictures of you, but you’ve only sat for professional portraits a handful of times. Three of which were arranged by your school, two of which came out insanely awful. And one of those was this month. I mean, seriously, every other kid in your class had 2 or 3 pictures on the website to choose from. And they smiled. You sat on the mushroom looking like a zombie. I can only guess that you were uncooperative and that they decided that one stoned zombie look was the best they would get out of you and they moved on to the next kid.

And last, but not least. Easter. I have yet to learn my lesson about buying eggs. As in, I shouldn’t. I should take the eggs from the first couple hunts (provided by others) and use them for the hunts where I must provide eggs. And actually, we ended up missing one of the five hunts you were supposed to have this year, because you got sick. I lucked out though and I managed to turn 44 eggs into 25 by bringing them with us to a hunt where I was not requested to bring eggs, but thought I should anyway. Anyway, remind me next year not to buy any eggs, and also that you were happier about the little trinkets in the eggs than the candy – so more stickers, erasers, and rings, and less candy. It’ll probably just piss you off next year, but I’m going to do it anyway.

Love,
Mama