Sachs Press

Dear Great-Grandma,

Today it snowed! When we woke up in the morning the snow had already been coming down for a while and the ground was white. And it kept on snowing all day long. In the evening it turned into ice instead of snow but it just kept coming. It was very exciting!

So Daddy went and found a sled, and we went sledding. I was pretty excited to go sledding. Mommy pulled me for a while on the sled. At first I sort of slipped backwards when we went up a hill, but then I figured out how to hold on better and I was okay after that. We got to the big hill and Daddy took me down just a little ways. I kept saying, uh-oh! uh-oh! I really wasn’t sure about it. I didn’t want to go again. Then we did go down again, all three of us, and I really didn’t want to sled any more. I didn’t like it. So we went home, except I didn’t want to ride on the sled and I kept tripping in the snow so Mommy had to hold me… I was really happy when we got home again. I like the snow but I especially like it when it is outside and I am inside watching it!!

But I don’t need to talk about that any more now. Instead I will tell you about last Thursday when I visited preschool. Mommy walked down there with me riding in the stroller all bundled up. When we got there we unbundled and went into the classroom. I washed my hands because that is what they like you to do when you get there. Then I looked at everything there was to see. There was a teacher there and some other adults helping and there were eight children. I could not count them because they kept moving around (I had other things to do anyway) but Mommy counted them for me.

In addition to all the people there were many things to play with. There were all kinds of toys. Some things were small versions of things Mommy and Daddy have, like mops and brooms and pans and things. There were also cars and blocks and puzzles–and books! But the very most exciting thing I got to do was paint. There was an easel and there was paper on it and I got to wear a smock and paint with a paintbrush. They had paint pots in a tray and I would pick out a paint pot and put it on my tray and then paint with it for a little while and then put that paint pot back and get a new one and paint some more. I painted for quite a while and then I got paint on my wrist, which I didn’t like, so I washed my hands and then I painted some more. After I was all done I washed my hands again and took off my smock.

Another fun thing they had there was a big wooden thing that was like a bridge if it was one way and like a boat that rocked if you turned it upside down. I liked it both ways–climbing on the bridge and rocking in the boat with the other children.

After a while it was time to clean up so I helped along with everyone else. I put toys back where they were supposed to be. Then we all sat in a circle and sang some songs with the teacher. Well, she sang and we did the motions. I did the motions too! Then the teacher told us a story and we helped her tell it. It was the story of the Little Red Hen grinding grain and baking bread. None of her friends wanted to help her with any of the work but they all wanted to help eat the bread! I didn’t know the story so I couldn’t help tell it but I enjoyed listening.

After the circle time we all read books by ourselves for a little while and then washed our hands and it was time for snack. Mommy and I decided it was time to go home then since they were having muffins and my muffins were at home. So we said goodbye and went home to eat muffins. But we got to take my painting! I really enjoyed my morning at the preschool and I think Mommy did too. She was there the whole time but I didn’t pay much attention to her. There were too many other things to do. The teacher was really nice, too.

So I might get to go there in the fall and that would be very nice. I think I would learn a lot and have fun playing with the toys and the other children and the teacher. I don’t think I would miss Mommy too much because I see plenty of her and I am never worried that she won’t come back. She always comes back.

I am starting to like to color so I will include a paper I was coloring on recently. It isn’t very fancy and I can’t say it means anything–it is just something that was fun to do with a crayon, but you may have it to look at if you’d like.

Also, I had a corn tortilla with beans, tomatoes, green peppers, onions, black olives, cheese, and yogurt for supper this evening. Actually, I had one and a half. Then I had some chips. And I drank my water out of a cup with no lid. Daddy says I am growing up too fast, but I think I am just right and I think Mommy agrees with me, but she might be just a little bit sad about it. I don’t know why. Do you know?

I hope you enjoyed watching the snow today. I know I did!

Love,

Isaac

Dear Great-Aunt Lucy,

Mommy says maybe I should just call you Aunt Lucy, but I am not sure why. I asked her if she didn’t think you were great and she said, no, she did think so, so I don’t know why she is concerned. I will leave it the way it is.

As you can tell I am writing you a birthday letter. I hope you are having a very happy and special birthday. Are you doing some fun things today? I had a birthday recently and I enjoyed it quite a lot. I had cake and candles and lots of presents and many people visiting me. It was really neat! Mommy says birthdays will get less special as I have more of them but in the meantime I should enjoy it. But I hope you are enjoying yours even if you have had more than me.

Well, guess what happened this morning! It snowed! I have seen it snowing before but this is the first time this winter that it has snowed enough for me to play in it a little. Already it is melting away but this morning Mommy and I went out and stomped around in it. I drove my car in it, too. We made lots of footprints, and then we made some snowballs, and I looked at the little bitty snowflakes, and we also built a tiny snowman. He is so tiny that he wears a leaf for a hat.

Last week I had my check-up at the doctor’s office. It was kind of fun. I was very cooperative and opened my mouth wide and let the doctor look in my mouth and ears and eyes. He listened to my heart and poked my belly too. He was nice and funny. Mommy asked him some questions and he said I am healthy. I am almost three feet tall. I didn’t have to get any shots this time. I am very glad because I don’t like shots at all. They hurt. Do you ever have to get shots, Great-Aunt Lucy? Do you cry?

The day after my doctor’s appointment some people came over for supper. It was my friend Joseph, the boy Mommy used to babysit. It was fun to see him! I didn’t really remember him, but we had a great time playing together. His big sister was there too. She is either seven or eight years old, I am not quite sure exactly. We ran around and around and played with toys and listened to music and read books while all the big people sat and talked. I think we had more fun than they did but Mommy says she enjoyed it. I guess as long as we all had fun it’s okay, huh?

Speaking of having fun, Mommy is thinking about putting me in preschool in the fall. She and Daddy have to talk about it some more but she thinks it would be fun for me and also a good experience. She says I need to interact with other kids and have some new experiences that I don’t have at home. I don’t know what “interact” and “experience” mean but they sound like they might be okay. I would like to play with all the toys there. We are going to visit on Thursday and meet the teachers and see what it is like. I really like playing in the nursery at church so I’m excited about it.

Has it been very cold where you live? It was very, very cold here. One day Mommy said we shouldn’t go outside at all because it was too cold. Another day we did take a walk but Mommy bundled me up very warm and then put a blanket all over me so I couldn’t even see. I didn’t mind because it kept me nice and warm! We didn’t stay outside very long. Daddy also made a heater for the chickens. He put a lightbulb inside a flowerpot and put it in their coop. He says it helped but I am sure they were still cold out there. But they are okay and it is warmer now, so that is good.

Well, I wish you a happy birthday, and so does Mommy! I wish I could bake you a cake but Mommy doesn’t let me use the oven yet. So you will have to pretend that you have a cake from me with candles that you can blow out. I think that is the best part of a birthday. Every time I see a picture of candles I try to blow them out.

Love,

Isaac

P.S. This is your birthday letter but you can read it to Great-Grandma if you want to. I will probably wait until next week to write again so I have some new stories to tell. I will tell about going to visit the preschool.

Dear Great-Grandma,

I hope you are having a good day today. I am not doing quite as well as usual. My mouth really hurts because I am getting some new molars, and it is making me very cranky. I don’t like to take my medicine. I’d rather play with it but Mommy won’t let me. So I am not very happy today. However, I am writing to you in the hopes that it will cheer me up to tell you about some things that have been happening.

Well, not a lot of exciting stuff has been going on, but Oma and Opa did come to visit me on Sunday. That was nice. Opa sang lots of songs to me and so did Oma. And they both read books to me. It was good to see them. I showed off my counting skills while they were here. I counted to thirteen and then I skipped around a little and then started in at twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three… I think I could have kept going but everybody was laughing so I stopped and laughed too.

I also played the bugle for them. Did I tell you I can play the bugle? Well, I can, all by myself. I put it up to my lips and buzz them and a bugle sound comes out! It is not the prettiest bugle sound ever, but that doesn’t matter. So I practiced bugle for them. Mommy set up a music stand for me and put a practice book on it and I turned pages and played the bugle in between. I can’t read the pages but that doesn’t matter. I really enjoyed practicing! I also played the recorder a little bit but I started to chew on it so Mommy took it away.

I have been reading and reading and reading some more, and then I have Mommy or Daddy or anybody else who is available read to me for a long time after that. I don’t think I have any favorite books right now. I just like them all. Well, maybe I like the song books best. I really, really like to listen to Mommy and Daddy sing.

I also am into building towers right now. I can build a pretty tall one. Then it either falls over or I knock it down. And then I do it again! That keeps me busy for a while. After I get tired of that I can put my long, long train together and run it around and around the track. It usually gets stuck somewhere and I have to help it out but I don’t mind doing that. I am a good train engineer.

I am thinking about learning to use a potty. There are a few things I have to figure out first, but I am working on them. It’s hard to put pants on. There are too many places to put your legs. I usually get both legs in one hole and then it is pretty impossible to walk. I also need to learn to pay attention to when I need to go. I am not very good at that yet. And sometimes even when I do know, I don’t want to stop what I am doing to go. It helps when somebody reads me a book. I am almost always up for reading a book.

Hmm, I don’t have a lot to say this week. I can tell you about a few of the foods I like to eat, I guess. Bananas are pretty high on the list of favorite foods. All fruits are good. I also really like bread and muffins. Mommy makes special bread and muffins that I can eat since the real kinds make my tummy hurt. This week, she made me ginger snap muffins! They are really yummy and she says they don’t taste weird at all, even though they are made without any wheat flour. Maybe you can ask her about it.

But I will eat most anything. Tonight Mommy made chicken in curry-coconut sauce over rice noodles, with green onions. I like to eat the onions plain. We also had clam chowder for lunch and I ate that all up pretty quickly. I love hamburger, and olives are very good, and so are most beans. Corn is good, especially the corn Mommy froze herself. Rice is always nice. Grape jam is very good. I eat it on rice cakes or crackers. I really like chips and cookies but I can’t always have them. Cake and chocolate and ice cream are REALLY good but I almost never get them. Lately I have been eating dates, since my Aunt Sarah left them at my house. And eggs! I will always eat an egg. Elise keeps on laying one egg a day, and the other two chickens just sit around and eat food. Oh, well. We would like more eggs but you can’t make a chicken lay an egg, says Mommy.

Well, I am going to go build a train track now. I think I am a little cheerfuller now that I have written to you. Mommy says cheerfuller is not a word but why would I care about that? If you know what I mean, why wouldn’t it be a real word?

Anyway, time for me to go be an engineer. Here is a big kiss for you!

Love,

Isaac

Dear Great-Grandma,

Happy new year! This is the third year I have been alive in. It doesn’t seem very different from the last year so far, and I don’t remember the year before that. But a lot of very exciting things have happened over the past few weeks.

First, I got to come see you. Do you remember? I gave you some kisses. I was kind of scared of your oxygen tubes but after Aunt Lucy took them off then I realized that it was okay so I gave you a kiss. And we sang lots of songs to you. Well, I didn’t, but I listened to the songs. I really enjoyed that.

Also, I got to spend time with Oma and Opa and Uncle Darren, and with lots of other people I don’t get to see very often. Aunt Joyce and Uncle Chris and Aunt Lucy and Uncle Harold and Great-Grandpa Al and Uncle Don and cousins Kyle and Derek. We had supper at Aunt Lucy and Uncle Harold’s house. It was very nice, although I was kind of tired and grumpy.

I got to visit Daddy’s grandma in Chambersburg and his cousin and aunt. I also spent the night at Daddy’s other grandma and grandpa’s house in Maryland. And then, after all of that, Daddy’s mommy and daddy and sisters all came to visit us at our house! There were six extra people in our house. It was a lot of fun because they all played with me and read books to me and laughed at all my jokes. When you ask me how old I am, I say, “I’m NO!” I know the answer is supposed to be “I’m two” but the other way is much funnier. So that’s what I say.

I also got to open a lot of presents. They were for Christmas and my birthday. I learned about the baby Jesus and the angels and the shepherds, and I got to open Christmas presents. I got some books and some music and some trains and a doll and two teddy bears and my goodness I don’t even remember all of it. But it sure was fun to keep opening presents. I even opened some other people’s presents. I am kind of sad that now there are no more presents to open.

Also, I am two years old now! I had a birthday and people sang “Happy Birthday” to me and I had a cake with two candles and I blew them out. It was a chocolate cake and actually there is still some left. It is very good. My aunt Sarah made it without any wheat because wheat makes my tummy hurt. So instead of wheat it is made with rice and tapioca some other things. What do you think of that?

Well, so those are some of the exciting things that have happened recently. I think my favorite toy from Christmas is my train set. It is wooden. There are lots of train tracks that fit together in different ways. I put them together on the floor so they make a track. Then I carefully put the train on the tracks. There is an engine and a lot of cars. Actually there are a couple of engines but usually I just put everything together in one big train. Then I start the engine. It has a battery that makes the wheels turn, and I press a red button that makes it turn on and it pulls all of those cars around the track. I love to watch it go around! Sometimes I stand and spin around while the train drives around the track, and sometimes I set up the wooden trees that came with the track, and sometimes I just watch, and sometimes I go to another room and just listen to the train go. If Mommy goes and turns it off I run and turn it back on. The train has to keep running!

I should also tell you some of the things I am working on learning. My talking is getting better and better. Today I was spinning around and making my pants fly like a flag (I was not wearing them) and I said, “Pants are flying!” I also was pointing out the things that were driving on the road when Mommy and I went to the store together. “There’s some bus! There’s some car!” Mommy says I am confused about “count nouns” and “mass nouns.” I have no idea what she means by that.

Also, I can count to twelve, and sometimes even higher, without skipping any numbers. I used to skip “five” a lot but now I don’t anymore. I think I can get to “fifteen” without any help sometimes. And I know pretty much the whole alphabet now. I get mixed up about some of the letters, especially “K” and “X” and “Y”. They all look alike to me. But I more or less know all of the letters.

Let me see, what else can I tell you about? Oh, we have a Christmas tree. We went and cut it down together and then we brought it home and put it in our living room. It drinks water and we put lights and decorations on it and it is very pretty. I helped to decorate it. In fact I am still helping to decorate it. I take the decorations off and then put them back on. I put lots of red Christmas balls together in one section. I think it looks very nice. I am proud of helping.

Actually, I really like to help with lots of things, at least some of the time. For instance, I help Mommy with the laundry. She brings the laundry basket to the top of the stairs and then I throw the clothes downstairs, one at a time. I also like to help open and close doors and drawers for people. I will always gladly carry a bag for you if it is not too heavy for me. It is good to help because it makes people happy. I have noticed that. And I always politely say, “Thank you Isaac!” whenever I help someone, because that is what they say to me so I think it must be the right thing to say. Isn’t that polite of me?

I hope that this letter helps you to be happy. I like to help people be happy and laugh, so here is a tickle from me to help you laugh. Tickle tickle! Just pretend I am tickling you with my fingers. I love you!

Your great-grandson,

Isaac