The Laura Blog

 Dear August,

Happy 9, my baby boy. My soft spot for you grows bigger every single year. To know you is to love you. Your goofiness, imagination, your inherent need for everyone around you to be happy, always the peacemaker and comedian.

You’re still a night owl and love to sleep in just a little bit more than either of your siblings. You're forever invested into whatever it is we’re reading to you at night, putting you at the top of your words read for your 3rd grade class. We joke and say your brain is 85% football facts, and your favorite game to play before bed to stretch the night just a little bit longer is to name a football player from every single NFL team. Your bedtime wishes to the universe are for the Steelers to find a decent quarterback this year. I often say goodnight and dim your lights, only to watch you finish out plays in a whisper with your football minifigures on your nightstand as I walk away.

You love a theme and an outfit, usually dressed head to toe in football or baseball gear. You got glasses this year and look impossibly cute when you wear them to watch TV or to see the whiteboard in class. We call you a golden retriever, always wanting to be outside.  You’re happiest when someone is throwing passes to you in the front yard and could do it forever.

You played travel soccer, flag football, and basketball this year, slowly growing more confident on the field. Your soccer team got pummeled playing a year up, but you always shrugged it off, especially if you were able to get the ball in the back of the net that game. You led your team in that. Your flag football season was your favorite and every time you made a catch or got in the endzone your celebration dances were the highlight of my month. In basketball you really came out of your shell and scored a layup during your semi-final game that made you the proudest and will remain a core memory for you. You just decided you wanted to try baseball this spring for the first time, joining a group of kids who have likely played since toddlerhood. Overall, I’m always so proud that you’re not scared to try. You never have to be the best at something to love it, and that’s something that I admire about you the most. 

3rd grade has been so good to you, folded under the wing of the most empathetic and caring teacher, surrounded by so many of your best friends in the same class. Math is still a challenge for you and something that we work really hard for you to master. Giving you all the credit where credit is due because you take your seat at our dining room table and study for hours with us the nights leading up to your tests. Sometimes it's not the natural talent, but the work ethic, that produce long term results and something makes me feel like this is a quality of yours that will really set you apart.

You love spaghetti, Nutella, and salami and could easily live on all 3. Forever a chocolate guy since you could talk.

We took a trip to the Dominican Republic for Oskar’s 10th birthday and you absolutely loved playing in the sand and sun. You’re already dreaming up where you want to go when you turn 10 next year, looking up 2026 football schedules and when the Vikings might play the Steelers. Something tells me we’re going to be heading to Minnesota as a family.

Recently we surprised you with a puppy, coming home on your birthday, and nobody needs a dog more than you. I know that your bond will be so special and he will love you more than anything. After all, who could be a better friend for a puppy than a boy who lives outside.

Your 9th birthday party will be the perfect one for you: a group of your best friends and a turf field with footballs to throw around and soccer balls to pass. We got you a 3D printer for your birthday so you can run off all of the fidget toys and gadgets to play with—a very August coded thing.

My biggest wish for you is to love yourself and to be confident in yourself. It’s not easy being in the shadow of a big brother and second in line to a still very needy little sister. With a laugh and a giggle that could change the world, there’s no reason to ever doubt yourself.

I will never forget the day you were born. How full of excitement we were, how easy the day went. You came into the world so quickly but so peacefully, and sitting there staring at your newborn face is etched into my brain forever. There’s no love greater than a love like the love I feel for you.

August, I love you forever. Happy 9.

Love,

Mama

Dear Maren,

Today you’re 5. You’ve been crossing off days on a self-made countdown calendar for a month now, giving me what should have been a gracious amount of time to prepare. On one hand, I always feel like the time is slipping through my fingers, always just out of my grasp. On the other hand, you’re so ready to be 5. Brilliant, vibrant, and full of life. We who get to watch our babies grow up—we’re the lucky ones.

Your happiest days are spent outside, imaginatively playing with neighborhood friends and stopping just long enough to grab a snack before heading outside again. Our backyard retaining wall has been transformed into a mud kitchen where you mix and bake dirt, grass, and sticks together for hours. You learned to ride a two-wheeler this year, dead set on breaking just about record in our family after learning how to swim just a few months before. You’re never not moving unless you’re coloring or beating someone at a board game. God bless Crayola.

Still early to rise, you’re up with Oskar on most mornings before the world wakes up, peddling art projects and flying through reems of paper. I wake up most mornings to rainbow and heart cards with "I love you mama" scribbled inside. I started a pile of them which got so overwhelmingly large that I recently had to pare it down. My favorite card lately is one written out to "My 2 hearts", meaning to me and your dad. Not sure I’ll ever get over that one.

You spend most weekdays in a kindergarten class even though you’re 4, both because you were ready and because we certainly weren’t signing up for another year of a forced nap time at school. Through this classroom you've learned site words, addition, subtraction, and the beginning stages of reading which you enthusiastically demonstrate through a few books you’ll read to us at bedtime. You'll go roaring into your first year of official kindergarten this fall.

Your favorite foods list has been cut quite short as compared to my chubby cheeked toddler who would eat just about anything. Now when we play "best part / worst part" at dinner time and you have to tell us your least favorite part about your day, it’s always the food in front of you.

You love unicorns, hearts, smiley faces and rainbows, and want your hair in a loose pony every morning. Your hair is incredibly long, and it’s been a staunch refusal to cut it for 2 solid years—we’re currently in negotiations.  You love puzzles, board games, and reading, and remind me a lot of Oskar in that way. You have no stranger danger and will talk to anyone about anything and still remember people or conversations you had such a long time ago. You hold your own, and in a house with two big brothers, its them who are a little scared of you.

You’re girlie but you’re not, preferring soccer to babydolls but want to wear pink shorts while scoring goals. You still play with August who has the last remaining traces of childhood imagination in him. I always stop to watch you together because I know this time is fleeting.

We recently surprised you and your brothers with a puppy who is coming home at the end of March. You loved holding him and petting him, and when we asked you how you felt about getting another brother, you said, "As long as it’s not a human for God’s sake."

Some of my favorite time with you is at bedtime, snuggled up and reading together. We’ve finally graduated to falling asleep on your own, contentedly drifting off to the sound of stories on your Tonie Box despite your emphatic insistence that "sleep is boring".

Maren, you’re larger than life and we are obsessed with you. Your personality fills the room and the stories about you are endless, never not making us laugh.  May you always feel this confident, this powerful, this strong.

To my last baby, you’re one of my biggest dreams come true. I’ve loved you for five whole years—here’s to forever more.

Love, mama