Dear Jake-o, Jakey bear, Jake-a, Jake,
It's been another wonderful year watching you grow up and learning to deal with the world around you. Just this weekend, we've spent time building up New Shanghai (our small village in the woods), making a grandfather clock for your room out of an old cardboard box, kayaking on Ayer's Lake with your new paddle and reading/listening to endless stories of the Magic Treehouse.
It won't be long till you're reading me those stories (and indeed, you're already bringing chapter books home in your school bag), so I relish each day that I get to be part of story time. To be fair, I can't see that wrapping up any time soon as you love books, both reading and writing them, and you definitely have a preference for non-fiction. The coolest thing about your reading is how independent you are, whether it's being able to read the selection of ice creams at Golick's or telling me interesting facts that you learned about whatever topic you're studying at school. If you get stuck on a word, you only need to be told about it once and you'll remember it next time. It's been a little while since you made a book (probably since the last vacation), but we've got a growing bookshelf of your first books, from Extreme Buildings to Wolves. Your focus and concentration on these works spans over many days, and the space and time of this upcoming vacation promises more stories to come. Maybe we'll even get you to write some more fiction stories about Marlowe and Kellogg!
Your sharp brain continues to amaze us. Each week, you bring home math homework (how are you old enough to have homework!) and you sit and do it independently. If there's a conversation that could involve math (like working out that you woke up 1 hour and 39 minutes after me this morning, or that you are 52 inches tall after hearing you were 4'4"), you'll work it out, and fast. On a car ride to see Molly, Tom and Henry, you sat and did two digit addition for fun, and have started working out that multiplication is just repeated addition; I don't think you'll find it hard to learn your math facts! You like to be smart, which is good, but you can sometimes get bummed out if you're not the smartest one, or if someone makes you feel less smart than them. You'll get used to this, and you need to remember that you are you, and that you are loved no matter what reading level you are or what score you get your on your tests.
Away from school, you're a total homebody. Even on the sunniest days (like today), you'd rather play inside, though when you're out there you remember how much fun stuff there is to do! You love Lego, mainly building Lego sets, and you'll munch your way through a new Lego set of instructions in an hour or two, completely independently. My favorite thing is to watch you then adapt and change the design, improving a bit here, extending a bit here and creating your own version of the models. You've got a good eye for engineering, and love projects that involve things that move. We spent ages making a pulley system for your teds over the bannisters, and created a zipline that ran almost the length of the house.
You've made some more solid friends this year. We've hung out multiple times with Jack and his family over the year, and more so as hiking season has arrived. You and he are goofy together, and just seem to have an easy time of it. You're learning how to solve social problems by using your words, but you can still come home upset from school if you feel that someone was unkind to you or that you were treated unfairly. This sense of justice runs strongly inside you, and it's becoming a way for you to stand up for yourself and others. Even with Jack in another class, you've collected some good friends in your own class, and it's been fun watching you bond with Brandon over the year. Who knows how the classroom shake up will turn out for second grade, but I'm confident that there will be some old friends as well as opportunities for some new buddies.
Finally, this has been the first year for organized sports (as well as some unorganized ones, like hiking and ice skating). Soccer, floor hockey and instructional baseball have all been fun and while I've not coached you, I can see you working out each sport and developing preferences. We even have an indoor floor hockey arena in the basement set up, perfect for snowy/rainy days. You hiked all the way up Mount Major last summer, making me think we can set our sights a little higher this summer. The view at the top seems less important than the journey for you, which is a good reminder to everyone who goes hiking with you. On our last hike, your environmentally conscious nature was horrified that people would leave trash, and this desire to save the planet will see us doing something to reduce, reuse or recycle over the summer.
Above all, you're just fun to hang out with. You have interesting things to think about, you're ready to talk about your feelings and opinions, and you have a great sense of empathy. While Mom's been hard at work this year learning to be a teacher, you have accepted that she's spent more time studying than hanging out, shouting the words "live your dream" up the stairs so many times that she and I use it as our family motto. So here's to the next year, little bear, and a hope that you live your dream too.
Lots of love
Dada.
