Looking for the Moon & Building Castles: The Summer You Were Two

To our son on this year’s autumnal equinox:

This might be the last summer you won’t remember clearly so I wanted to make sure I wrote a few things down.

This was the last summer you were an only child and the last time we would be a family of onlys. We’ve had three great summers making memories with just you, and next year, we look forward to having two people to make memories with!

This was the summer I was pregnant with your sister, who you called “Baby Bee” at first. This was the summer where she moved and flipped and rolled, and I taught you to say “Hi baby!” to my protruding belly. This was the summer I was pregnant for the last time. I entered the third trimester the week we would’ve been at the lake, but I couldn’t travel. Having experienced HELLP syndrome two weeks into the third trimester of my pregnancy with you, this final trimester brought a lot of trepidation during a time of joy.

Because this summer was full of joyful moments, even amid my own wary anticipation. It was the summer I had normal pregnancy issues like heartburn and fatigue, and it was also the summer I ruminated over lab results, irregular heartbeats, tension headaches, and trace proteins.

Oh, and it was the summer I totaled the van….

It was also the summer all our grandfathers were gone. Your father’s grandfathers both passed away in January two years apart (2016, 2018), and both mine in May ten years apart (2009, 2019). When your father and I started dating, we were lucky enough to have eight living grandparents, which is no small thing.

So at times, it seemed like a summer of mixed fortune, and yet…

This was the summer I worked on your great-grandmother’s personal history, and I cut and redrafted my own writing project. It’s also when I read a dozen Agatha Christie novels. It’s the summer your father got promoted at work and completed his second summer of umpiring. This was the summer before he started graduate school, the summer he turned 31.

It’s the summer we discovered you loved castles and wondered about the moon.

You worried about where the moon went when you couldn’t see it and wanted us to tell you stories of castles at bedtime. Your imagination seemed to be growing with each passing day.

This was the summer you learned to jump with two feet, catch a ball, and hit a baseball off a pitch (in the house, I might add…). You started mimicking the umpires when you watched baseball and delighted in calling almost anything a “Foul ball!” (even successful basketball goals).

It was the summer you would sit and color or work with Play Doh at the table while I did dishes. Sometimes you wanted me to color, too, and when you did, you consistently wanted me to only use brown.

This was the summer of your first salon haircut and you sat in the chair so well (with the sweet request to hold my hand)!

It was the summer you pretended to bake us marshmallow (“fahfallow”) muffins using real food (like trail mix, applesauce, and milk) and unconventional ingredients like a bright green soccer ball.

This was the summer you started using your name (and attempting to write it, even spell it), counting everything (often starting with your favorite number 8), and speaking simple sentences. It was the summer you first expressed “I hurt” and “I scared.” You experienced fireworks this year with both fascination and fear. All loud noises became “fireworks.”

It was the summer Bronn had his 10-week obedience training at the park and you switched from calling him “Dawdoh” to “Bwun.” And Bwun was a good sport when you piled all your stuffed animals on him at once.

This was the summer when you stopped calling oranges “ooses”…and I was a little sad because “oose” is still my favorite of your lingual inventions. We had a good time referring to orange juice as “oose juice” this spring. I’ll miss that.

It was the summer of potty training…!

This was the summer you switched from exclusively watching Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood to Paw Patrol. You also formed your stuffed animal “crew,” which included “Baby” the lion cabbage patch doll, “Tigey,” Big Mickey Mouse, Little Mickey Mouse, the entire Paw Patrol, and your blanket, also known as “Blank.” You and your friends took up most the couch, but you still wanted (demanded!) your morning daddy snuggles.

It’s the summer you would only wear your hat if you got to wear it backwards. You also tried to put me in timeout many times for applying the dreaded sunscreen. At one point you thought you were clever to claim that sunscreen was “ouchie!”

This was the first summer you were curious about ants, bees, worms, caterpillars, butterflies, rolly polies, and fireflies. You called them all “buggies” and you’d say, “Shoo buggy, shoo buggy, shoo!”

It was the first summer we had a family zoo pass, which you loved more and more each time we went. You loved talking about zoo animals at bedtime. On our third visit, you bravely touched a giant python three times!

This was the summer you ate more blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries than we thought possible and you developed a true appreciation for cake and ice cream. Especially chocolate cake. Mostly just chocolate. You liked sharing pretzels with me at ball games. You would eat anything that even resembled chips (“pips”) and popcorn. If we went anywhere where we pulled up to a window, including the bank or pharmacy, you would call out your order of, “Fries!” You didn’t like peanut butter, yet you ate homemade salsa verde made with jalapeños. You continue to surprise us with your interest in spicy foods.

It’s the summer you wanted to play in the car at least every other day for a month. You only wanted your songs played in the car, including “Kicky Star” (“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”) and you would sing it, “Kick, kick…STAR! Kick, kick…STAR!”

This was the summer you knew all your letters, but for awhile, you called N “ness” and W “bubble.” If you were reading out “NOW” it came out “ness-o-bubble” and, once again, I pretty much adored it. We tried to explain that ! was not i, and though you couldn’t grasp “exclamation point,” you came up with “fall-down i,” which seemed reasonable in the interim. You liked shouting all your letters and numbers.

It was the summer you started saying “thank you” and “please.” We’ll never forget the time you said “thank you” unprompted to the waitress when we went to Olive Garden after a swim lesson. It’s what will likely sustain us through your “terrible twos.”

Because this was the summer you really honed your powers of autonomy by making the nonsensical demands of toddlerhood, the most important of your demands being that you would do whatever it was by yourself with no help, especially not from us! You told us often to “walk away.”

This was the summer of 2019, when you were just two years old, when you began to notice and imagine other worlds…with hidden moons and magical castles….