A letter to my first born on Mother's Day

Dear Walter,

You are asleep now--it's been a busy day. This whole Mother's Day weekend has been busy for you, with lots of walking outside in the (finally!) beautiful weather, making me breakfast in bed (cinnamon rolls, scrapple and tea,) eating and dancing and listening intently to Spanish guitar at the cultural festival, procuring and playing and playing and playing with an ice cream bucketful of Hot Wheels (best garage sale purchase, ever,) blowing bubbles, playing with Umma and Baba, baking cupcakes (chocolate wacky cake,) and making frosting (the best vanilla buttercream I've ever tasted,) eating cupcakes, using the potty and wearing underpants, dancing to some Irish fiddle music on the folk show, learning how to spit when you brush your teeth ... whew.

You and me and Sally this morning

You had a lot of fun this weekend, and I had a lot of fun being with you. You are two-and-half-years-old and very handsome, with wavy blonde hair, big blue eyes and your Daddy's incredibly long eyelashes. You are thoughtful; sometimes pensive. You love to sing and will often just spontaneously break out into song. "Don't tell me that it's morning," you sang to me on Saturday morning, "Just keep the curtains drawn!" "If you keep the good times rolling, I'm your boy, I'm your boy!" "It's alright to cry, crying gets the sad out of you." "And the grand facade, so soon will burn. Without a noise. Without my pride. I reach out from the inside." "Take my hand, take my whole life, too. 'Cause I can't help, falling in love with you ..."

There is so much to love about you, Walter Paul.  I love your singing and your dancing. I love the way you are usually so gentle and sweet with your sister, and how you love to make her smile and laugh, and how you taught her how to sign "more" this weekend. She loves to learn from you! I love the way you talk to yourself when you're playing, imagining conversations between you and your King Friday puppet, or between Red and Mokey fraggle. I love watching you run and skip when you're happy. I love baking with you .... you are so good at measuring out the ingredients! Most of all, though, I just love you because you are you.  You are my Scooter, and my love for you goes way beyond the way you look, or the way you act, or the things you do.

And that's a really good thing, because sometimes the things you do, these days, put you and me at odds. I've struggled a lot with how much to write about this.  Most people don't have any real memories of their lives before age 4 or so, so I wonder how wise it is to record these "terrible twos" moments in detail.  It's not your behavior I'm hoping you'll forget, though; it's mine. I get pretty angry, sometimes. I don't think I'm angry in an unusual way ... I think it's pretty normal for parents to get angry and to show it more than they'd like to.  And someday, if you have kids of your own and I'm still living, I'd like to have some very real conversations with you about what it's like to be mad at your beloved little kids.  I want to tell this future-hypothetical-father version of you, "It's OK, Walter.  It'll be OK.  You're human, and you have feelings, and you're doing the best you can.  Keep trying to do better, and to let your kids know that you love them no matter what."

Here's how I know that you and I are OK and, further more, we are going to be OK:

... the way you lean against me, or easily take my hand, or give me a hug just because.
... the way you greet me at the end of the school/work day with a joyful "Mama!" and a hug.  The way we both look for each other and look forward to that moment.
... the way you study me, looking in my eyes, and then smile. Sometimes we make eye contact across a room and smile at each other, and I realize we communicate a lot without talking, you and me.

We communicate pretty well with talking, too, although sometimes words fail us. We're working on it--both of us are. About a month (or more?) ago you asked me to play Legos with you in your room and I said yes. You headed into your room and I followed, making a very quick stop in the kitchen to grab a can of selzer on my way. When you got to your Lego table and looked back, I wasn't right there. You let out a little scream of frustration. I was just coming through the door, saying, "I'm right here!" and you said, "Mama, sometimes I need you and you are not there."

And I said, "I just stopped to get a selzer!"

But I know what you meant, and I'm proud that you could put it into words like that. That's pretty remarkable communicating, Walter.  And it's true. There are times when you need me and I'm not there.  Sometimes it's because I mostly take care of your sister and your Daddy mostly takes care of you ... that's just how it works for us, especially because I'm still Sally's main source of food. We're trying to change that up as much as we can, your Daddy and I, but we've got into the habit of dividing things up that way, so it can be hard (and hard on you and Sally, too, because you've gotten used to it) to make those changes. Sometimes I'm not there because I'm at work.  Sometimes I'm not there because I'm too slow to react or to realize that you need me and what you need me to do. I'm still learning how to be a mom, and because you are my oldest, you are my main teacher.

I wish I could always be right there, the moment you need me, and do exactly what you need me to do. Every parent falls short of that, though.  I don't know that most kids realize that about their parents at two-and-a-half, but you have always been very advanced.

You and I are going to go through times of trouble in our relationship.  I am almost positive that this current troublesome time will not be the last. I promise you that I will always do my best to be there when you need me, to be gentle with you, to help you if I can. When I fall short and let you down in these ways, I hope you will still know and trust that I love you with all my heart.  And God, who is always there in your times of need, who will never let you down, will help us get through these rough patches, forgive each other, and forgive ourselves.

I love you, Walter.  I am so proud, and glad, and grateful to be,

Your Mama

Walter builds towns

Sean and I both spent much of our childhood playtime building with wooden blocks. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that blocks were my favorite toy, and that I'd prefer building with blocks to any other common game/activity (playing school, playing with dolls ... dress up would be a close second, I think.)  It was something I liked doing with my Dad, although he's so good at it I'd mostly watch him while he built (this is still true ... Baba is ridiculously good at building with blocks. I just sit back and watch in awe.)

We got Walter a set of wooden blocks for his first birthday, and at his birthday party invited people to decorate the blocks with messages for him as a kind of guest book. Over the past year he's been interested in them off and on, in spurts.  First, he built walls, carefully lining up the square blocks end to end, creating a barrier across the living room floor.  Then, he built towers.  He got very good at stacking the tallest blocks higher and higher, far higher than I thought he'd be able to go.  You could watch him learning about balance and gravity, getting the feel right and figuring out how high he could go.

These days, Walter builds towns.  They are sprawling and expansive, incorporating every block-type object we own. They usually have steps and ramps up to different levels.  They are wider than they are tall--he's recently gotten nervous about the blocks falling, even though we've been encouraging him to take the falls in stride and see them as creative opportunities. "It going to fall a little bit," he warns me as I add a small block to the top of a sky scraper.  There are outlying suburbs in these towns, and downtown skylines.  He builds walled gardens and libraries.  He builds churches.  Lots of churches. He builds small, one-block homes for the people he loves, all right next door to each other.  "This is baby Sally's house," he tells me, putting down a square block.  "Look, Mama, I build you a house!" he says, putting down another square.

Walter talks to himself while he works.  "Right here. Over here just a little bit.  Just in case. OK. And another one."  When all available blocks are in use, he walks his fingers around the town, or takes his toy cars up the ramps.  He likes to find good parking spaces for his cars.  He flies his fingers from the top of one building to another, narrating his progress from church, to school, to park.  I ask him what he's doing at each place. Usually, the answer is "eating cookies." The other day he threw in some broccoli for variety (and to please me, I think.)

I asked Sean if he ever built towns with his blocks. "No, I built castles," he said.  That's what I built, too.  And simple, functional lodgings for my Barbies and My Little Ponies. Never these city scapes. Never these marvels of urban planning and civil engineering. It never occurred to me that a single block could represent a whole building.

I don't know what it means, that Walter has this big picture, zoomed out approach.  I just know it's a lot of fun, and liberating for me in a way that's hard to describe.  I always worried about the logistics of buildings: big and heavy blocks down first to create a foundation, windows and doors tall enough and spaced correctly to allow for roofs, etc. But when you build a town with Walter, you are free.  Any block can go anywhere and be anything. And we can collaborate without me taking over ... when we bake together, for example, Walter can participate, but he has to follow my rules.  When we build together, we work side by side, complimenting each other (literally and figuratively, "Mama! That is beautiful!  Is this beautiful, Mama?") and building on each other's work without either of us dominating or being in charge.

I treasure our time building together, and Walter does, too.  I've noticed that he works hard, these days, to recreate happy moments.  When something good happens to him, he tries to make it happen again and again. "Mama!  You sit on the couch here. Right now. You hold baby Sally.  Dada, you sit on the chair.  Walter here, with blankets."  As you may know, it's hard to re-create a spontaneous happy moment.  Even when we manage it, there are diminishing returns, there is disappointment.  A nostalgic two-year-old is a sad two-year-old, ultimately.  And there's some of that going on when we build together (he's remembering fun we've had building together in the past, which is always "yesterday," no matter how many days ago it was.)  But he's also learning how to live in the moment, I think, because each town is so different. And when our skyscrapers fall, there are tears, but there is also opportunity for building something new.

When he's bored and tired, Walter can be destructive.  He throws things, he deliberately hurts himself. It's not anything unusual for a two-year-old boy, but it's hard on all of us. My mom described it the best: "He's over the edge and having a hard time finding his way back."  So, we're always looking for projects, something he can focus his energy on in a positive way, so that he doesn't get lost out on the edge of destructive behavior.  Baking and cooking with us, play cooking in his own kitchen, Legos on a table in his room ... these are all good, but blocks are the best, I think.

He'll probably move on to something else, soon (I'm thinking playdough may be the new blocks, but we'll see.)  For now, I'm just happy to sit on the floor next to my boy, while he works and snuggles sweetly up against me now and then, casually reaching out to hold my hand for a minute or rest his foot on top of mine, doing something that is, really and truly, constructive.