Monthly Newsletter #71

Dear Landon,

This month has been busy. So much has happened. Stuff that started this month will be continuing for years and years to come. It was big. Lots of official changes.

We went to our first triple A baseball game. It was quite possibly the longest 9-inning baseball game I have ever been to. They did cutesy stuff between each inning and during team switches…it was unreal the amount of time they wasted. Not to mention the power blip that caused a 30 minute delay at the beginning of it. Anyway, despite the length of the evening, it was fun and relatively cheap as sporting events go, since we won the tickets and they actually offered kid sized drinks at a reasonable price.

Mike proposed to me this month. He surprised me and did it on the radio on 93Q (92.9FM). He called them and they called me. They told me I had to answer a trivia question and then put him on to ask the question. Of course I said yes. We recorded it on a Tuesday and it aired on a Wednesday. When I found out the time it was going to be on, we set up the iPad and hung around the house that morning to listen. You are very excited about Mike and Mike is so very excited about you. More so, you are excited about getting brothers! 2 of them!

Mohawks were actually specifically mentioned as forbidden in the handbook, (that I had to specifically ask where to find), so I took you to your very first actual barbershop. You look way older with so little hair. You were not happy with the results, but I told you that your hair would grow and we would cut it or not cut it with time and that was up to you. The only thing was that whatever haircut you got has to follow the dress code at school – which mean, no Mohawks during the school year.

This was your last month with Kids R Kids. While I loved the care they provided you while they had you in classrooms, and I credit them with teaching you so much during those years, once you got to the gym area with the older kids, it kind of went downhill. So as sad as I am to leave them in the rearview mirror, I do think it’s the best thing for you.

You started kindergarten this month. The school district promptly started the year by providing little to no information on things they wants me to sign off on as agreed to (just sign off here that you agree to the handbook, but no handbook or even a link to the handbook was provided, go ahead and put money on your child’s lunch account, here’s everything but the last digit of the number you need to do that), and several items of information were just blatantly wrong (the cafeteria lady will be available at these times, but she wasn’t, if your child brings cash they will not put the change on their account, but they did). All of that has been ironed out though and it seems like your teacher, Ms. K, really loves teaching. You are doing well in extended day. We had a rough start on the first day of school, but as time goes by you are getting more into the routine of things and are really beginning to like it.

You are a bit perturbed by the homework assignments, not because you don’t want to do them, but because you don’t think they’re enough. They wanted you to practice counting to 20…you said you’d prefer to practice counting to 100. I told you that was fine and to go ahead, it’s always okay to do more, just not less. You sighed and said “nooooo, I’ll just do what my school tells me to do.” They want us to read at least one book a night and they provided a sheet of paper for us to keep track of the titles, we’re on night 2 and have written down 9 titles. The sheet only has 20 lines, and it’s supposed to last us a month! I guess we’ll be adding some notebook paper to it. One book you didn’t want to include, you said it was too short and it didn’t count. So yes, when I got the information about the gifted and talented program, I quickly filled out the necessary paperwork for them to be allowed to test you.

Your problem solving skills are coming out as well. After running out of a body wash that comes with a pump, I replaced it with a new body wash that doesn’t have a pump. I forgot to remove the old bottle, and the next time I got in the shower you had taken the pump of the old and stuck it in the hole of the new so you could pump it out.

I’ve been building some large yard games based on board games lately. I finished battleship, and you are very interested in learning to play. So for the last couple of nights we’ve been playing the regular board game of battleship instead of watching TV. It’s pretty nice, and I’m trying to teach you some strategies…like once you get a hit, maybe finding the rest of that boat should be your priority instead of trying to keep finding other boats. We’re also establishing rules, such as the fact that there is no move where you “launch an airplane and it hits one hit on each of your opponent’s boats.”

I hope the rest of this month continues to improve, you really do seem to be enjoying Kindergarten and extended day.

Love,

Mommy