On General Musings

Boys,

I’m pretty sure I’ve started other posts like this before, but sometimes I just want to talk to you and not have it be some kind of big life lesson or story — rather, I just want to catch you up on who you are and what you’re like at this point in your life. Maybe we’ll end it with something profound, or maybe it’ll just be another midwestern, “Welp, I guess that about does it.” Stick around I guess, right?

We recently got a new dog — Oakley. Hopefully, by the time you’re readying this, Oakley is older and you all are best friends, but right now she’s a 50 pound, five month old terrorist who thinks that you two are her chew toys and that our house is her personal bathroom. We have gates at the top of the stairs by your rooms, and on the way down to the playroom. If we leave those open and lose sight of her for more than a few minutes, well, you can guess what she’s doing. The first week we got her, we left the upstairs play room open, and she basically ate a potted plant, which was fun.

You’ve also both been back at school for a month or so — Koen in preschool (second rotation) and Reagan in 1st grade. You both do great at school. I’m not sure what all there is to tell other than Koen, you’re in class with Lucy and you guys go in a lot together. You hold hands when you walk in and everyone thinks you’re pretty cute. Reagan, you’re in class with Will and a few other friends from the neighborhood, and you do a great job. It’s tough to pull out of you what you do each day, but sometimes you manage.

Reagan, you are very into watching Youtube and your mom and I have to keep tabs on what you’re watching and how long you’ve been watching it for. Otherwise, you might be locked in for hours and not know where the time went. You watch this show called “Unspeakable,” where some guys do dumb and/or over-the-top things and film it and just act like whatever they’re doing is wild or the “craziest thing ever.”

At the risk of sounding too, “get off my lawn”-ish, the show is very hard to watch for me and I wish that you’d get more into something else. For example, your cousin Finn, we’ll get to visit them and he’s watching some sped up reply of an NFL game. Mind you, he’s watching this in the middle of summer sometimes, not even during football season.

I also recognize that I can’t expect either of you to like the exact things that I liked when I was growing up. If you did, you’d like playing baseball, reading Matt Christopher books, collecting Barry Sanders, Reggie Miller, and a trunk full of other baseball cards, watching the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving and whatever other time they might be on basic-channel TV, and making forts in the woods.

Reagan, you drive your mom and I crazy sometimes. And I think the reason that is comes down to how smart you are vs. how childish you act sometimes. And I get it — you’re six not 16. But it’s tough to handle how emotional you can get sometimes about the tiniest things. But last night, I was putting you down, and you asked me if something was fiction or non-fiction. I asked you what the difference was, and you said “fiction means that the story is made up and non-fiction means that the story is true.” I don’t know why that caught me off guard, but it did and I was very, very proud of you in both asking the question and also knowing the difference.

Koen, you turn four in two days. You’ve also been growing your hair out for a few months. These two things have nothing to do with one another, other than to say that you’re four-year-old pictures will look very different than other pictures. But you’re getting the an age where you are more thoughtful about the things you say. Three-year-old Koen was someone who just saw and reacted. Four-year-old Koen still sees and reacts, but he also, from time to time, will think about something and speak about it thoughtfully. And also, your hair looks really cool long and I’m jealous of how well you pull it off.

So, you boys keep doing what you’re doing. Me and mom will try to keep Oakley from eating our house one pillow or shoe at a time. And like always, I can’t wait to see what you guys do next.

Love you both,

Dad