A Letter to Teddy at Five

Five. You’ve been counting down to this milestone birthday for months, and to be honest, so have I. All birthdays are worth celebrating, but this year has had more than its fair share of bumps and bruises (and doctors and nurses) for you, which makes marking this day with cake and candles and maybe even a surprise celebratory call from your Paw Patrol buddies (shh!) all the sweeter.

I haven’t written much this year, but I couldn’t let today go by without reflecting on what’s been such a full year, in ways both great and less so. There were the surgeries, and the stitches, and far too many trips to the doctor. (On the brighter side, you did score a LOT of Minions swag from the nurses, and you learned a mean game of tic-tac-toe while sitting in a lot of waiting rooms. And, reader: don’t worry. The surgeries were for a benign, but stubborn, cyst. All good now.)

Looking back, I’m amazed that you were able to keep your sweet demeanor through it all. You fought us and the doctors – with good reason! – but you came out smiling. You fell asleep while getting stitches in the back of your head. That’s more than I could have done.

I do hope that when you look back on this year, though, you remember more of the good and less of the bad. There were trips to Philadelphia for the Please Touch Museum and Sesame Place (where you were a bigger fan of the rides than the characters), Lancaster for Dutch Wonderland and the Strasburg train ride (your train obsession continues nearly unabated), and Massachusetts for lots of fun with your cousins and your grandparents.

Closer to home, there’s been backyard baseball and a backyard pool and bike riding and scooter riding and so many visits to the playground. The tooth fairy came for a couple of earlier-than-expected (and lucrative) visits. Legos have arrived, and you’ve used nearly every free inch of space in our house to build and create. Your mind and body are running, always, with new ideas and stories, new places to go and things to check out.

I’m so grateful to have been able to be by your side for all of it. Here’s to a very happy – and healthy – year ahead. FIVE!

Love,
Mom

P.S. Maybe you could have stuck with Momma for another year?

Here are my letters to Teddy after he was born, at one, at two, at three, and at four. 

A Letter to Teddy at Four

You’re 4. Well, if we’re being all specific and accurate, you’re actually 4 years, 2 weeks, and 4 days old. Because your mom is a little belated on this year’s birthday greeting.

Not your actual birthday – we were all over that, with days of celebration featuring cake, ice cream, and donuts (Katie really liked the chance to sing “Happy Birthday” over and over again). This year featured your two favorite things: trains (yes, still) and dinosaurs (a new, but deep and abiding love), with a side of your smaller fascination with Paw Patrol. You were okay when we celebrated not with the proper-noun TV show Dinosaur Train, but with the lowercase mash-up of dinosaurs and trains, surely due in no small part to the fact that it meant you got yet another new train to accompany your dino-decorated cake.

This year’s party felt like a bridge to me, as we move firmly into your “full-blown kid” years. I was so glad that we were able to celebrate with your old daycare buddies – despite all going to different schools, you’ve remained a tight little bunch – and with the new school friends who you were so excited to have at our house.

They’re part of the reason why you’re so happy on Mondays, too. As much as you always enjoyed going to daycare, you adore school. You’ve developed a French accent that my high school French teacher would be proud of – as when you said “Bon appetit” at dinner this week – and school has given you so many new ways to engage your curiosity.

I’ve loved seeing your brain in action over this last year, laughing at jokes and funny shows, creating elaborate narratives for Thomas and all of his friends on your many (MANY) train tracks, and putting complex puzzles together faster than I can find four corner pieces. I had fun on our momma-Teddy dates when school was closed, and I smiled upon realizing that you’d picked up my love of the Christmas season, as you wore your Christmas pajamas and asked to read Twas the Night Before Christmas all year long.

And of course I’ve loved seeing you with Katie, teaching her about the finer things in life, like donuts, popsibles (aka, popsicles), and Daniel Tiger. (I could have done without you also teaching her about climbing along the back of the couch, but we’ll let that slide.) The day she finally learned to say “Teddy” – instead of her previous name for you, “Gut” – ranked right up there with hearing mama and dada.

She’s so lucky to have you as her big brother to follow, and we’re lucky to get to watch you steam ahead.

Je t’aime,

Momma (or as you like to call me now, Mommy)

Here are my letters to Teddy after he was born, at one, at two, and at three.

Rediscovering Babar, on The Manifest-Station

More than seven years ago, in a hotel in Paris, I found out I was pregnant. We spent the early days of that vacation thinking ahead to life with our baby, and we bought a book about Babar for him or her to remember the trip by.

As I remember in an essay for The Manifest-Station:

It was the book, written in the little bear’s native French, that I bought in a cute Parisian boutique in March 2009, just a few days after getting my first (and second, and third) positive pregnancy test.

And just a few days before I’d miscarry the baby Babar was meant for.

I lost that baby – and two more after – but I kept the book. Read the rest of “Rediscovering Babar” here.

A Letter to Teddy at Three

Today, you’re three.

Three seems so much bigger than two. You no longer qualify as a toddler – though let’s be honest, you haven’t toddled for a long time now. The phrase “crazy toddler” really had a ring to it, though.

Never fear, I’m pretty sure that we’ll have plenty of excuses to swap out “preschooler” for “toddler” in that phrase.

When you’re two going on three, every year brings big change, but these last 365 days have been particularly momentous. You welcomed your little sister. You traded in diapers and your crib for “big boy” undies and a bed. You graduated from the only daycare you’d ever really known. You walked through the doors of the school that will be home for the next eight years.

Change is tough, and true to form, parts of this last year have been hard – for both of us. There have been tears and tantrums, and not always just from you. We’re learning this growing up thing together. I’m confident that we’ll come out ahead (assuming we make it through the terrible threes).

I get that confidence from you. Because despite how hard some of these days are, you’re happy. Happy to climb into that big boy bed, teddy bear in hand; happy to strap on that backpack and walk up the hill to your school. And never happier than when you’re with Katie.

I knew adding a new baby to our family would disrupt our equilibrium in a lot of ways. I knew I’d have less time to devote just to you, I knew I’d be tired, and I even expected that I’d have less patience to go around. Let’s just say I was right on all counts.

I totally underestimated, though, the joy that Katie would bring you, and the joy that seeing you together would bring me. The days of fighting over toys are upon us, but even still, I can see that there will be more days of the two of you against the world (and against your parents) than against each other. Katie will gladly (and quickly) scoot across a room to be wherever you are; she is still the first person you look for in the morning. No matter your mood, a kiss for or from her never fails to make you smile. And I challenge anyone, anywhere, to find a sound better than siblings making each other laugh. I am so proud of the big brother you have so quickly become.

This year you went all in. All in on Daniel Tiger, before leaving him and his tribe of trolley-loving friends in the dust for Thomas and the accident-prone trains of Sodor. All in on baseball and your baseball jersey, until the Patriots and your Gronk jersey and fatty football came calling. All in on wearing your Bruins jersey to bed until your Thomas PJs arrived.

Of course, you didn’t trade everything old in for new this year. You’re still going strong with blueberries for breakfast, even if you tell us that “coffee and donuts” are your favorite foods. (I don’t know whether to be ashamed or tremendously happy at that. I take it as an endorsement that you, like your parents, really like weekends.)

You live intensely and deeply. I’m not sure what form that will take over the next year, but I hope it will still include your big teddy bear hugs and “I love yous” even if there’s more pulling away as you assert your growing independence.

“I can do it, momma!” you tell me over and over again.

You’re absolutely right. You can do it. I’m so glad, and so, so lucky, to have a front row seat to watch.

xoxo, momma

Here are my letters to Teddy after he was born, at one, and at two.

The Middle of an Era

The day before Teddy started daycare, I knew we needed to look for a new provider.

The offer we’d put in on a house in D.C. had been accepted. We were moving in six weeks. The in-home daycare in Alexandria that I’d found two months earlier that seemed like a great fit would only be temporary; Teddy would only be six months old when he left. He’d have no memory of that townhouse on the way to Old Town, where the teachers cooed to the babies in Russian.

The next week, just back from maternity leave, I set out to find our daycare replacement. I joined the new neighborhood’s listserve, asked for recommendations from friends, and put out feelers at work. Teddy’s short-term daycare was an in-home arrangement, something in between the small nanny shares and the larger corporate daycare centers that we’d also considered. Although he’d only been in daycare for a couple of weeks, it seemed natural to look for something similar near our new house.

I found a promising lead on the neighborhood listserve and emailed the mom who’d posted that her son’s in-home daycare had an opening. She raved about the owner, about the care her son was receiving, about how happy the kids seemed. I called another mom whose first son was among the daycare’s first babies; her second son would be starting there in just a few weeks.

A few days later, I hopped a bus just outside my office and headed a little over a mile north to meet the owner and check out the daycare for myself. As Maria took me through the house, she told me about the games they played and the songs they sang and the food that she cooked each day. And then she said, “This is my family. If you come here, you’re my family.”

It was as much a pledge from her as it was a test for us. She wanted to know that we’d be a part of the community she was creating, full of kids who cared about each other and parents who did, too. It sounded lovely and warm. We signed Teddy up.

He quickly settled in to his daycare routine, surrounded by a bunch of other babies within just a few months of his age. It took his parents a little while longer to settle in to the daycare community, consumed by the chaos of moving and being back to work and life with a baby.

That September, the parents put together a party — part thank you, part playgroup, part “hey I see you every day at dropoff, but it would be nice to say more than hello.” And suddenly, that day, Teddy’s friends’ parents became my friends, too. We left with hugs and promises to get together.

And then we did – for meetups at the playground, for tot soccer (aka “hey, don’t lay down in the goal, hey, put those sticks and rocks down”), for backyard playdates, for birthday parties. The moms trade emails and go to brunch; the dads have gotten together for beers and pay-per-view fights. We’ve been there, too, when there have been bigger needs: babysitting during work emergencies, meal trains during pregnancy bedrest, overnight stays when a new sibling made a surprise arrival.

These families have become my neighborhood family.

A few weeks ago, we gathered for daycare “graduation.” Teddy and seven of his buddies are saying goodbye to daycare, bound for preschool. It’s been a process over the last couple of months; a few have already left, but tomorrow’s the last day for four of them – kids who together learned to walk, talk, sing songs in Spanish, use the potty, fight over toys, say sorry, and give hugs. They don’t remember a time without each other.

Tomorrow will be bittersweet. It’s not the true end of an era: we all live just down the street, so the playground and backyard playdates (and brunches and nights out) will continue, as will the hellos at dropoff and pickup for a bunch of us, who are still dropping off the younger siblings of Teddy’s crew.

But next week won’t be the same. There will be new friends, new teachers, new routines that will take us in slightly different directions.

I have faith, though, that some things won’t change. After all, your family’s your family, even when you’re not all in the same place.