Sachs Press

Dear Great-Grandma Faye,

I hear that you have been having some troubles lately and not feeling so well. I want you to know that I think of you most every day and wish that I could come and see you and wave hello to you and untie your shoelaces. Would that make you feel a little bit better? Mommy and Daddy are busy doing things all the time and they wish they could come visit you, too. They said they are trying to think of a good time to come but they don’t know when it will be. I hope it will be soon.

Well, to take your mind off of your troubles for a little while, I will tell you what I have been up to lately. As usual I have been working very, very hard, and I have made some good progress!

I am sure that what you really want to hear is that I have started walking on my own, but I am sorry to say that is not the case yet. However, I am doing a very good job practicing. I love to walk with Mommy or Daddy holding onto my hands, and sometimes they let go of one hand and I walk that way, although that is much trickier! I walk in circles around our house: kitchen, dining room, living room, hallway, kitchen again. I like to push the kitchen chairs around, too, or actually anything I can find that is about the right height. Today I pushed the laundry basked almost the whole way around the house before Mommy found me and told me I maybe shouldn’t do that because I might scratch the floor.

I love to chase my little blue ball around. Sometimes I throw it or drop it and then go crawling after it. Other times I take my spatula and I hit it. I like hitting my ball with the spatula, but I can’t crawl with the spatula in my hand, which makes it hard to chase the ball. So sometimes Mommy or Daddy will help me walk around and chase the ball so I can hit it with the spatula. They say it looks like I am playing hockey or something. I say it is a lot of fun!

I have learned more about that hand waving thing I told you about last time I wrote. I keep trying it out on people and they always seem delighted, so there must be something in it. Fingers up and down, hand in the air–it’s just hard to get both of those things right at once!

Another useful trick I have found is sticking my first finger out in the direction of something I want to go see. It almost always works! Mommy or Daddy will pick me up and take me to see it. Neat, huh?

Something else that Mommy and Daddy have taught me recently is how to turn a lightswitch on and off. Well, okay, I am much better at turning them off. My hand doesn’t really turn around to make it go back up the other way, but that is okay. Every night, now, when it is time for lights out in my room, Mommy or Daddy takes me to the lightswitch and lets me turn it off! I always think it is so amazing that doing something like that makes the room dark. But then there are a lot of amazing things in the world, aren’t there?

I think that is most of the things I have been learning, lately, and they sure have kept me busy. Let’s see, what are some of the things we have been doing?

Well, last weekend we took a trip in our car. We drove a long time and I fell asleep and then BUMP! All of a sudden I was awake and I wasn’t very happy. Mommy told me later that somebody ran into the back of our car while we were driving and it got banged up. But we are all okay. I didn’t get hurt, I was just scared. I think Mommy was, too, but Daddy didn’t seem scared at all. I think I want to be like Daddy when I grow up.

So after Daddy talked for a whle to the person who bumped us, we kept driving, and pretty soon we got to a place where there were a lot of people, and from there on it gets kind of fuzzy so I will just tell you what Mommy told me, which is: We went to the wedding of one of Daddy’s good friends, in Baltimore. Daddy was in the wedding. So we went to the rehearsal dinner and the next day there was the wedding and then the reception, and then we drove back home. We stayed in a hotel overnight. Mommy says I was very, very good so I guess she knows what she’s talking about. I know there was a lot that happened and I got pretty tired but it was all so interesting that I didn’t have time to get fussy! The reception was at a place called a Conservatory and there were plants all over the place. And people. I kind of liked it, but by the end I was ready to be done and take a nap.

My friend Joseph keeps coming every day and sleeping a lot, but Mommy says he won’t come for the rest of this week because his family is out of town. That’s okay, because I like playing with Joseph but I also like having Mommy all to myself.

Mommy and I went to visit a lady last week. Mommy said the reason for that was because she had to interview the lady for an article she was writing. I just know she had fun toys for me to play with! Maybe Mommy will send you a copy of the article once it is published, if you think you would enjoy reading it. She says it is about the Mennonite Women.

I will try to write again soon, but now I must go to bed so that I can be well rested to practice walking tomorrow. My friend Ethan is already starting to walk a little bit. He is a month older than me. So I have to try and keep up with him! By the way, I have decided that maybe sleep might not be as bad as I originally thought. I have been more cooperative about sleeping lately and I don’t wake up quite as early as I used to. It’s nice not to be tired. But you can bet I don’t sleep one minute longer than I have to!

Give my love to Grandpa Al and to the people who come visit you. And if your legs jump around at night like Mommy says they do, think about me untying your shoelaces and maybe they will hold still!

Love and kisses,

Isaac

Dear Great-Grandma,

I have been thinking about you this week! I got your letter last Monday, and I sat down right away to draw a picture of my hand for you. Mommy helped me hold the pencil. I am afraid it doesn’t look very much like my hand. Maybe if you use your imagination?

Anyway, so I drew that right away, but then I didn’t have any more time to write to you! It was a busy week. I was practicing all of the things I am learning every day: I have to keep on learning to balance, and something else I will tell you about in a little bit. I am learning about picking very tiny things up and putting them in my mouth. I am also learning about the ceiling fan in our kitchen. Daddy lifts me right up to it and I touch it and pull on the cords! Of course he doesn’t lift me up when it is running. That would be scary!

I am also trying to figure out what a certain something is that people do, and how to do it. It involves hands, and they sort of flap around in the air–well, maybe not flap, just wave–and their fingers open and close sometimes, and it seems to be maybe when people are coming and going? I am not sure. So I can move my hands in the air like that, and I can open and close my fingers, but I can’t always do it at once, and I am not sure when to do it, or what it means. Do you know?

Last Sunday we had lunch at church and then Mommy and Daddy’s Sunday School class made applesauce together. Mommy says they made over 100 quarts. Is that a lot, do you think? I hung out in the fellowship hall with all the other kids my age. It was kind of fun because it was a big room with lots of space to crawl around, and there were some new toys to play with. And I have been eating the applesauce, and it is very delicious!

On Wednesday morning we had an adventure, Mommy and I. Joseph did not come in the morning. Instead, Mommy and I went down the street to the church and saw lots of little old ladies and these big cloth tents. I crawled around under the tents and pulled up on the ladies’ knees. They were all sitting with their knees under the tents and they were doing something on top of them. Mommy let me sit on her lap for a while and she had something sharp and shiny in her hand that she wouldn’t let me touch, and something long and bright-colored attached to it. She poked the shiny thing through the top of the tent and then brought it back up again and then did something to the long stuff. I didn’t know what was going on, but I wanted to play with the tent stuff, and she wouldn’t let me. Eventually I got bored so we went home and I took a nap. But it was fun to see all those ladies and smile at them all. Some of them reminded me of you.

Then on Friday, guess who came to visit! Grandma did! It was so good to see her. She played a lot with me while Mommy was doing something else in the kitchen. In the late afternoon we all got in the car and drove to a big open place with lots of people and buildings. We walked around and around (well, I was in the stroller) and we saw all the people and lots of things I didn’t understand. There were horses, there, though! They were pulling something behind them. Man, they were really big! I think horses are something else. Wow.

So Mommy said the place we were at was called the Relief Sale. The different buildings were places to do different things. Mommy dropped off her things at the Bakery building. She says she made bread. (I haven’t eaten any bread yet. Is it good?) There was also a place with lots of pretty things to look at–shiny things, wooden things, cloth things, and TOYS! We spent some time in the toy section, and I saw Mommy give the ladies some money, but she didn’t give anything to me. So I don’t know what happened there.

We met Daddy in a different building and had some supper. Mommy and Daddy and Grandma had food on trays, but I ate what Mommy brought along for me. That was okay with me, because what they were eating looked weird.

Then Daddy took me home, because I was very tired, but Mommy told me about what happened later at the sale. She said I should tell you a few things about it. So I will try, although I didn’t understand everything she said.

She said that lots of people got together in a big hall and they all jumped up and down trying to buy things. Some man talked really fast for a while and all the people jumped up and down and said they would give him money for the things he had. Wait, Mommy says it wasn’t exactly like that. Well, you probably know better than I do how it was. Anyway, some of the things that were being sold were very, very pretty. Mommy says they sold “quilts” and “comforters” and all kinds of other things, too. Mommy tells me that some of the quilts were sold for more than $3000. Is that a lot of money? 

She also wants me to tell you about one special quilt they sold. It cost the nice person who bought it $6100. It wasn’t very big, but it was very special because it had feed sacks in it. Is that what they feed animals with? Why would that make a quilt special, great-grandma? I don’t understand. Wouldn’t it just make the animals want to come and eat it?

Well, anyway, that was the relief sale. I liked what I saw of it, but I think I will enjoy it more next year when I can run around on my own without Mommy or Daddy or Grandma. Then I will be able to see the horses up close.

So remember how I said at the beginning that I was going to tell you about something else I am learning? Well, I should first say that I am still not walking yet. But I have decided that I am going to focus on learning how. So I am practicing balancing a lot more, and I can do it for half a minute sometimes. (I don’t know how long that is. I asked Mommy.) And I am practicing walking while holding on to somebody’s hands. It is a lot of fun! Mommy holds my hands, or sometimes Daddy, and we go across the room, and down the hall, and wherever we want to go! I am really enjoying this.

I am sending you a picture that Daddy took of me today. It shows how I am learning to help out around the house. So in the picture I am going to try and load the dishwasher for Mommy. She didn’t actually let me that time, but maybe soon she will.

I love you, Great-Grandma! Is it getting cooler there yet? Here it is still hot. Mommy says October should be a cooler month, but I am still wearing onsies, not my warm fuzzy outfits, because it is just too warm for them. Anyway, I hope you are keeping cool and enjoying seeing the trees turn colors. They are starting to do that around here and it’s very pretty. I wonder why they do that.

Hugs and kisses, and lots of love,

Isaac