The Luckiest No Matter What!

Dear Nolan, HAPPY HAPPY NINTH BIRTHDAY!!!! WHAT?!?! I can’t believe it. This year yours is my last letter I’m writing. I am knee deep in the middle of birthday week and a lot of other busy things and I am pooped, but in a good way.  I barely saw you today. I had to teach all day today so I came downstairs early to spend some time before I left. Carter and I worked on a red-eyed tree frog project while you were watching some TV. We said goodbye to each other. When I got home, you were just two or three minutes away from leaving for baseball practice. Directly after, you had soccer practice. You got home at 8:15 and got ready for bed. The end. Wednesdays are quite nutty right now. I say all that because there was a time, not very long ago, where we had nothing to do and nowhere to go. The thought of there being a day where I’d hardly see you was laughable. There was also a time, longer ago, when you were tiny and basically never left me alone. Again, if someone would’ve told me that ...

Dear Judah, HAPPY NINTH BIRTHDAY! Nine feels so big… way bigger than eight. I can’t deal with it. You and Nolan made me a mom and will always make your birthday extra special to me as well. It’s funny how even though nine years have gone by there are some things about you that are just you. Those are the things I hold the most dear. This Year I feel like you and I have made huge gains this year. Working together is hard for us sometimes and boy did we have to figure it out! Online school shoved us together and we did a lot of hard work, compromising, and listening to figure out how to make learning positive for both of us. I love working with you- seeing you excited when you get a question right, hearing you remember things from days or weeks ago, finding and correcting mistakes. We do things differently, you and I, but we’ve been able to get into such a good groove of sitting down and working together and I am beyond grateful for that. Judah, you’ve been working so hard this year, SO ...

Dear Carter, YOU ARE SEVEN. WOWEE! You are not my oldest, but somehow you are getting old too and I’m having a hard time accepting it. A YEAR OF CHANGE This year from six to seven has been huge for you… full of so much change. When you turned six, you had only been in school in person for a few weeks. You had barely seen anyone, tried anything, got any socialization. Fast forward a year and each day you are coming home telling me about some new pretend game at recess, a new friend you are playing with, a new thing you’ve learned. It is truly mind blowing sometimes. During recess, you bing around playing with many different groups, but probably your favorite thing is to make the girls laugh or play games where there are teams chasing each other.  In other school news, you do not fit into the mold of traditional expected behavior. Sitting the right way in a chair is hard for you; sitting in a chair at all is hard for you. Being still and quiet for long periods is hard for you. I can ...

Dear Preston, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! This birthday seems really special, I think, because it’s the first one you’ve really been talking about and looking forward to. We even have a countdown on the wipe board near our calendar. This will likely be the first birthday you will remember and your understanding of getting older and getting bigger is more for this birthday than any other one you’ve had.  GOODBYE THREE! B eing three is often very hard for both the kid and the parents and you were no exception my sweet boy. I think you were our hardest three-year-old, which is actually saying a lot ;) This last year or two have been filled with a lot of big emotions, tantrums, destruction, and many unkind words. We have ALL (this includes your brothers) been very patient with you and have really been trying to teach you how to label your feelings and be able to handle them in a way that doesn’t hurt people or things with your words or your body. It surely hasn’t been easy. I say all of this not t...