August 2016: 71 months (5 years and 11 months)

Dear Patrick,

• The Richards came to town and stayed across the street. We had so much fun: meals, puzzles, and a week long play date for all of us that I hoped would never end.
• The first day of real school was Tuesday 8/16 and I had no idea how “social” the world was at 7:30am in the morning. As we walked up the hill, friends passed with hands waving from car windows while other families in the neighborhood joined us on the sidewalks - dogs, skateboards and baby strollers in tow. It was like the Summit Drive Elementary Norman Rockwell parade.
• I remind you to have “an attitude of gratitude” more often than I care to admit this month.
• The second day of real school, we met the famous Mordecai Fink and his mother Anna. When she introduced herself, I had to resist the urge from saying, “Oh wow - can I take your picture to show my husband?” 
• Tennis started back this month, so you get a weekly date with Biggie.
• I love your sense of justice. Over dinner on 9/21 you explained how a boy named Hayden should have forgiven you after you said you were sorry, but instead this kid apparently “punched you in the neck.” Sometimes, in real school, a sorry just doesn’t cut it and there are throat punches instead.
• For the first Show-and-Tell of school on Friday 8/19, you brought Elephant. I asked what you’d say about him and you explained: “This is my Elephant. He has a broken tail and a small mouth so he has to take tiny bites. He is from New York - no, actually Africa.” And then with your hand cupped to the side of your mouth you said, “You know all elephants come from Africa.”
• “Mom, how ‘bout we hold hands so I don’t drift back,” you said on a walk to school. I like watching your vocabulary grow and “drift” is a memorable addition.  
• We asked you to take a bite of mashed potatoes during Sunday’s dinner on 9/21 and you leaned in towards your father and said, “Can I tell you something? When I eat food and it’s too squishy like this in my mouth, it makes me feel like I’m gonna throw up...and then it goes away.” Your face was so serious it was hard not to laugh when we told you to eat the mashed potatoes.
• The newsletter from school said you were working on “sight words,” which this week are colors: red, blue, yellow, orange and green. I wrote the words on note cards and your dad held them up for you  over dinner. Helping you study for your first “test” - seemed monumental to me; the first of many flash-card study aids to come.
• “Mom, they have a store at school,” you told me the morning of 9/22. I mimicked your excitement and told you to save your money. “Oh, I have lots of money - I’m gonna just bring in my dinosaur bank and BUY IT ALL.” (Make it rain, son.)
• You will occasionally ask if you can take my earrings out and you do it so carefully and kindly. 
• Casey and Molly Ingram came to visit the last weekend of the month and you two were fast friends. We ate lunch at Nosedive, ice cream at Spill the Beans, played “Sorry” in your PJs, had a spend-the-night party, made cinnamon rolls for breakfast and you two threw pennies into every fountain we passed downtown. I don’t know Molly’s wish, but I heard you whisper with eyes closed “lizard” each time. (You know that your life is good when your only wish is for a lizard!) And as luck would have it, your dad saw a reptile show advertised in the newspaper that following Sunday and we went. So you got to see your lizard after all. Wishes do come true.