Sophie at 9

 Dear Sofa, Sofa-dofa, Lopins, Mamsie, 

What a year for you! You've changed before our very eyes from a little kid into this confident, tall (!) girl who is comfortable in her own skin. I think the coolest thing to watch this year is your appetite for everything that life will give you. For example, you spent your fall doing archery, soccer, piano and horse back riding (yes it was as crazy after school as it sounds!) and then switched to basketball in the winter and Girls On The Run in the spring. In your own words, you like to be busy (but you also love to lounge around the house with your brother and the chickens!) and you've somehow inherited my energy levels to keep going through a full school day to all of these after school activities. 

You've also got a great appetite for learning. In piano, you've finished the "primer" level books and have progressed to level 1, which you're very proud of. You have moved to in person lessons with Miss Mary which is a much better fit for you instead of Zoom, and Momma sends videos of the two of you playing these complex duets together with a big smile on your face. You've been enjoying horse riding with Savannah, and again Momma (who knows more about these things!) says you're doing great. When we get back from our trip to England, you'll be starting to canter, and we'll support you for as long as you want to ride. In school, you decided for yourself that you wanted to be the first to learn all the states and their capitals, and you finished the official test (with 100% accuracy!) before anyone in the class even started it. It's been incredible to watch your brain absorb all this stuff like a sponge, and listening to you piecing together your world and coming out with little nuggets of information that you heard and remembered from months before continues to put a massive smile on my face. 

You've got a tricky decision coming up for your sporting life. You absolutely fell in love with girls only basketball (and it was cool watching you use your strength and game vision as the season progressed) and this was continued with Girls On The Run. Running the 5K through Concord with you was an absolute highlight of my year; just spending time with you, chatting and running and making little goals for ourselves made me so proud to be your dad. So now we're talking about fall sports and you've told me you want to do soccer again (though there's also an email about archery just popped in my inbox!). Originally, you've talked about wanting to do girls soccer with Rochester, but then your best bud Harlynn isn't sure about it, so I don't know if you'll end up back in Strafford for the fall season. Maybe we'll come back to girls soccer in the spring, but as always, the choice will be yours.

Speaking of best buds, you've got a lovely group of friends around you. Your birthday party this year was a sleepover with Harlynn, Nacora and Norah and you guys had a blast. We used the bouncy house for a while, went over to Nana and Papa's to play with the go-karts and put the tent up in the living room for some fun, as well as playing pie face and eating yourselves silly on chips and candy from your treasure hunt. It was lovely to see you calm and relaxed with your friends, and there was no drama and a lot of giggles for the whole time. You also like to hang out with Anne, and her parents described you as sweet, polite and easy when you went for a sleepover party at her house. You're still naturally friendly with everyone you meet (you're currently pestering us to meet up with kids you met at Jim and Claire's wedding last year!) and your goofy side helps you make friends easily.

It's been another year of watching you become your own person while maintaining your strong relationship with your brother. You asked for a Switch for Christmas to be like him, but have a different taste in games (and to be honest, you rarely use it in favor of your tablet or watching stuff on the TV). You've developed a good strategic brain which you use to get better at Clue (though apparently it's still all about the vibes) and to beat me and Jake at Everbutt more times than not. For your birthday, you had no particlar wishes beyond have $100 in $1 bills so you could make it rain, and even then there was no real thought of what you wanted to buy with it. You're a content kinda kid, and I hope that you stay that way. 

Above all, you're just fun to be around, whether it's endlessly wrestling (with your glasses stored somewhere safe), throwing you around in the lake or trying to outwit you over a board or card game. I can't wait for another summer of hanging out with you, and another year of watching you grow and change some more.

All my love,

Dadda

Jake at 12

 Dear Jako, Jake-a (and now Forbes, apparently your nickname from your friends!),

 I always starting writing these letters by looking back at last years, and this year has definitely seen you continue that journey between being a kid and becoming a teenager. Our favorite example of this was when you decided you wanted a serious haircut (instead of cheap and cheerful at Great Clips) and we found this funky barber with skulls on the wall and a big Man United tattoo. You're still young enough that he offered you a juice box while we waited (you accepted, of course), but you were also able to hold a conversation with him for an hour, and were offered some cologne to finish the haircut. You also have taken to coming food shopping with me, and take a delight in going off on your own shopping mission while I'm getting the "boring" stuff. This drive for independence is great to watch, but it's also coupled with what goes in your cart - as many sugary snacks and cereal as you can get away with. 

I'll always take you on these trips however, because your current favorite tug on my heart strings is "there will be a time when you won't be able to do this with me". Now whether you're thinking long term about you leaving home and going to college, or the idea that in a few years time, you'll want to spend less time with me as friends and jobs and driving around take over, but I'll always take whatever I can get. Me, you and Sophie spend time together every evening when I read stories to you, and you always beg for one more chapter (even coming up with "we're mad, we're sad, this is totally unrad" as your favorite complaint!). We've hoovered most of the Andrew Clements back catalog, the entire Land of Stories and are currently motoring our way through the 39 Clues. I love to read to you, and you're slowly picking up books that aren't Calvin and Hobbes or Big Nate, but to be fair, as long as you're reading and invested in stories, I'm not really bothered what or how you read. 

You decided to switch things up for your birthday this year. Each year, we give you a budget to split between your party and your presents from us, and this year you put 100% of it on an all out day at 6 Flags with 5 of your buddies (you would have done more but the Sienna only holds 7!). It was honestly one of the best days out I've ever had with you (even though we're both exhausted today), and watching you in the thick of it with your friends was glorious to watch. You've surrounded yourself with non-matcho, easy going people, and the day was fun because you're all goofy, but you're all interested in making things work for everyone. For example, you were able to persuade Judah to go on Batman (after we freaked him out on Superman!) but Brandon was an immovable rock, so you decided to find one last ride to go on together. I messaged the parent group chat with how delightful you all are, and that I wasn't ever nervous or worried about taking a group of 12 year old boys out in the wild for a day - in fact I would do it again in a heartbeat.

This is also the group of friends who decided one day that you were going to make a conscious effort to include a boy who doesn't always play basketball with you (Robert?). You came home from school talking about how good it felt to include him, and to cheer him on. I see this side of you more and more, wanting to reach out and make more connections. You've recently told us that you're trying to make more friends at school so that if your normal crew isn't around, you can talk with people about stuff that they like. It's part of that bigger piece of growing up and expanding your horizons, and we love the fact that you've looked around you and decided to make that change for yourself. 

On the subject of making changes, you made a big call just after your birthday last year to try out for the Revs, a travel soccer team where you would end up being towards the bottom of the pile in terms of ability and therefore playing time. It's been a good journey for you, especially as you've made some friends (and invited Michael to come join you!) and you're developing your skills. Recently, you'd found Lucas wasn't giving you much playing time, and you asked about extra training to build your skills. It's now become part of our after school routine to go to the National Guard and work on your first touch and your shooting skills. You were so proud of yourself when you scored a goal in the last game (Lucas said it was a great finish!) and it's given you motivation to do more. You again decided that you didn't want to play basketball with your friends, but it seemed less weird this year as I think they've accepted that you're a soccer kid. You're also talking about doubling up on the Revs and the school team in the fall which will help you figure out how seriously you want to take soccer moving forwards.

At school, you had your first (and hopefully last!) detention this year for being overly chatty in class. We made a big deal about being respectful to your teachers, especially given your parents, and you've pulled yourself back into line. Your grades continue to be spot on,  but you were offered a place on an advanced math program but didn't want to push yourself with it. Given your continued dreams of being an engineer (or an architect, given your ongoing love of Lego and the massive Lego city downstairs!), at some point you'll find the drive to go for these things, but for now stories of school continue to be about the sports at recess and goofy things that you and your friends got up to.

Finally, one of my favorite things about this last year is your ability to notice and be amazed by the small things in life. You've made numerous comments about how beautiful you find things in nature, from a good snowfall to a gorgeous sunset. You're also finding pleasure in small things at home too, and you'll often get to the end of a weekend with a reflection that we didn't do much (i.e. there were no big exciting outings) but that you still had fun hanging out. You love to be at home with your things, and you also like to be out and about doing stuff with your friends. It's easy work being your dad as you're fun to hang out with, easy to talk with and you've got a lot of different interests to pick from. I hope that you keep this ability to be amazed and amused by everything that life throws at you as the teenage years loom ahead.

All my love,

Dadda aka Web Bolfson