Dear Lucas (4 Years and 2 Months and 2 days),

This last month has been one crazy busy month full of change and lots of adjustments. The first big thing is that you started school. Since you are in school during the day, I've been staying with your Great-Gram more. At least two days a week your Dad picks you up from school and even gets dinner started long before I ever get home. Some times I don't get home until it is almost your bedtime. The first night that I walked in late you looked up at me and said, "Who are you? Oh, are you my Mom?" I didn't know 4 year olds could be sarcastic, yeah pretty much proves you are my kid right there.

You liked the first two or three days of school and then you were OVER it! You decided that you were DONE with school and never wanted to go back. You would beg and plead and fake sick to try and get to stay home. One day we were in the car headed to school and you tried to bargain with me, "If you take me home now, I'll clean my room." When you would realize that we were STILL headed to school you would start digging your heels into the seat in front of you and use your hands to cover your car seat buckles. A few times I even had to get teachers to help me pry you out of the car. Some days it would be one teacher and one day it took FOUR! I think one of the hardest things I've ever had to do was drive away from the school while you were being carried away kicking and screaming, "I WANT TO GO WITH MY MOMMY!" Thankfully, those days seem far behind us!

You still try to talk me into keeping you home from school EVERY SINGLE day. You give up when you see that I am NOT turning the car around that you ARE GOING TO SCHOOL. On the way to school a few days ago you were playing with your Magna doodle and drew little scribble lines and said "Mom, I wrote you a note. I'm going to read it now. It says 'Dear Mom, Please don't take me to school. Turn the car around and go home. Pretty Pretty Please. Love Lucas." Kid, you crack me up. You don't know how tempted I am to just keep you home one day and just do all kinds of fun stuff together. I am even pretty sure that I know that I would enjoy it even more than you would. However, I know that if I do it one day it will just make it harder for you to go back to school the next day. So for right now we just have to make the most of our afternoons and our weekends and count down the days until school breaks.

The thing I look forward to the most is picking you up from school. I love watching you march in line from across the yard and I always know when you spot me. Your eyes light up and you usually wave and squeal "MOMMY!" as soon as you see me. Seriously, this is the BEST feeling in the world. On the ride home I try to get you to spill the beans on what you did at school or even what you chose for lunch. For some reason you HATE answering these questions. We have to wait for you to tell us in your own way. You will start singing some new song we've never heard you sing before or talk about a friend at school (the first few weeks you talked about a boy named Kevin but now all you want to talk about is a cute little blond girl.) I guess my questions are rubbing off on you because at dinner tonight you turned to your Dad and said, "So Daddy, what did YOU do today?"

I miss getting to do all the fun stuff we used to do together before you started school, especially our playgroup. We still try to fit special family stuff in, like going to the park together or planting pumpkin seeds. I also miss laying in bed with you in the morning and cuddling with you while you watched cartoons while we talked about what we should do that day. We've replaced our morning snuggle time with an evening one. This cartoon that you love called Phineas & Ferb, comes on at 6pm every night, so the two of us cuddle up in mine and Daddy's bed and watch it together. Our time together is even more precious now. It doesn't even seem like I had a whole four years with you at home. As cliche as it sounds it seriously feels like you were a baby yesterday and then I blinked and you are in school.

After the cartoons and snuggle time then come the bedtime stories. You have quite the ever growing collection of books. Tonight we had to clear out another shelf so that we could make more room. Lately, I've been buying you books about kids that wear glasses, since the other big change this month has been you've started to wear glasses yourself. I'm hoping the books will encourage you to wear your glasses more since you don't know anyone your age that wears them and sometimes you don't want to wear them. I do know they are helping you because I've noticed when you aren't wearing them you bump into stuff and trip over stuff, which you never used to do. I think you've gotten used to actually SEEING things.

Lately, the book you request the most is Peter Pan. It also happens to be the movie you request the most and what you pretend to be the most. So much so that one night I walked into your room to find your bed sheets sliced to pieces. When I asked you about it you produced a large knife you had swiped from the kitchen and explained that you were being Peter Pan like in the movie when he slices up the Pirate ship sails. It made perfect sense to you. We've since replaced the REAL knife with a plastic pretend one, which you even fell asleep still holding one night.

A few weeks ago we added another member to our family. You and your father decided that we NEEDED a hamster. You both promised to take care of the hamster and that I would not have to take care of the cute furry thing at all. So with the addition of Tinkerbell (noticing a theme here?) we now are a family of 5. So far you guys are taking excellent care of Tink.

Sweet Pea, I love you to the moon and back,

Mommy