To Elijah

Dear chub-chub (that’s what you want to be called, as opposed to jah-jah, chubs, li-jee, jack-jack, or Elijah),

You’re smack in the middle of your terrible two’s.

There’s a striking sort of transparency about it for you. I remember this phase being muted for Ellie (or maybe I’ve just forgotten how it was—hard to believe!), and disproportionately tempestuous for Eric, but it’s like I can see your struggles right under the surface. You can’t decide if you’re big or little; you vacillate between furious independence and irrational clinginess, you want to be heard yet can’t get your words out right all the time; you’re sensitive to being slighted or left out yet wish to declare your need for privacy. If it sounds exhausting—well, it is.

You like that Veggie Tales song: “you’re big, I’m little / you go, I stay / why can’t little guys do big things too?” You go on interesting monologues describing why “I’m big—right?” (because you can reach your arms high, go to a BSF class, pretend-read books) or why “I’m still little” (because you want to get carried to bed, get help eating, prefer diapers).

You insist on doing certain things by yourself even though it takes ten times as long and makes us all wait (like put on your sandals by carefully un-velcro-ing and re-velcro-ing every single strap, or repeatedly attempt to buckle yourself into your car seat). You want to go everywhere but insist on being carried all the time. And I mean all the time. Everything is just a little bit emotional, because it’s all a statement about your identity and independence, and when you don’t like how things go, it comes out in tears and stamping of feet and shouting (“no, not like that!”). It’s either, “you can haf it—your whole life” or “I’m not playing with you anymore!” Not much in-between. I’ve been explaining to Ellie that “your whole life” for you means “until I feel like getting it back” which is on average about three minutes.

But, you know, this is you changing, saying goodbye to infancy forever, becoming your own person with a new sense of self. I sort of miss the laid-back baby with the rolls of chub, but you know, you’re so entertaining now in your wide-eyed, earnestly serious expositions upon the world and how things work (usually I’m nodding while actually understanding about a third of what you’re saying). I won’t really miss the tantrums and emotional lability, but I am looking forward to seeing who you become.

Love,

Mommy

Letter To Ellie

Dear Ellie,

You did something pretty amazing yesterday and I want to tell you about it.

So a few weeks ago, you and your brothers were playing with the train set on the floor. Esme came over and toppled everything over and you yelled at her. You had sort of been off the whole afternoon, just tending to complain about things. When I ask you these days about school, you tend to give me the “I don’t want to talk about it” line, but just then you told me about something that had happened at gym. You didn’t hear the instructions for a game, so you didn’t know how to do the game right; you had to do it over, which made your team lose, and everyone laughed at you. You were crying as you told me and I felt so bad for you, at the thought of everyone making fun of you. You hate gym as it is and dread every Monday and Wednesday because of it.

We debriefed—you didn’t hear the instructions because everyone around you was talking too loudly. You tried to tell them to stop talking but that didn’t work. The situation was such that you couldn’t raise your hand to ask the instructions to be repeated.

We talked about how sometimes you have to let hurtful things slide off and not get stuck deep inside your heart. We even talked about how maybe God gave you this experience to help you understand how other kids feel hurt when they get made fun of or chided, like maybe even how you had yelled at Esme a few minutes ago. You said being made fun of at gym had only happened one other time this whole year, and that it happens to other kids too. You said you never laugh at anyone, but everyone else does. I made you promise that the next time this happened, you would go up to the kid and give him or her a hug.

Yesterday was a Monday; as usual I asked about gym but you didn’t want to talk about it. Then today you told me that yesterday, a second-grader had made her team lose, and everyone started laughing at her. But you went up to her and gave her a hug. And after that, everyone else in your class started saying sorry to her. You didn’t want to tell me about this right away because whenever you talk about it, you feel like you want to cry.

I am so proud of you! I told you I’ve never been more proud of you. You did something really kind, something that took courage. I love how your heart is so soft, Ellie, that things touch you so much, and that you can sense how other people are feeling and care about them. You let me tell Daddy about it when he got home from class tonight, and Daddy said the person most happy about what happened was God, who loves that second-grade girl just like he loves you.

Love,

Mommy