Tag: koala update
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Koala update: fourteen years
Someone told me the summer between ages 14 and 15 is the one where things really kick off for a teenage boy. I’ll let you know if it’s true, but here’s what I already know: Body image… is a thing. A big one. In boys. I should have known; I should have remembered (I have…
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To my bar mitzvah.
I’m in awe of Torah reading… getting up close to it… having a physical connection with the parchment… It’s not something I had access to from behind the kind of barrier they called a mechitza where I grew up. (I just realized this week I never even saw tefillin up close until now.) Watching you…
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Koala update: thirteen years
Onward teenager! It’s a bizarre time… Gone (temporarily, I promise) are the days of babbling and bright eyes and demanding of the world. In: hooded sweatshirts, always up. Sorting through developing dark humor. Navigating new friends at new school, which involves a fair share of fast food, Marvel movies and midweek sleepovers. It feels like…
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Koala update: twelve years
To the boy who is ~5 inches from towering over me, It’s getting real. Twelve years of you, of figuring all this out, it’s always been real, yes, but now it’s puberty real. It’s preteen real. It’s who is this giant boy in my house real. So we’re both navigating it. You have questions, and…
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Koala update: eleven years
Memes and friends and global outlooks warned me that as my son would get older, you’d become less affectionate or more wary of showing emotion. You wouldn’t know it by looking around our house…
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Koala update: Ten years
Ten things I love about you this year: 1. You read like I do. Viciously, hungrily. 2. While you’ve always had your own sense of style, it’s starting to become sharper. And you care. 3. The girls in your class respect you. Because you respect them. 4. You still find it hard to control your…
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The Harry Potter themed 9 3/4 birthday
I threw my son a Harry Potter themed birthday party for his 9 3/4 birthday. Yes, that’s actually 3 months before his real birthday. And I did it because I am a genius and have unlocked Parenting Level: 347, the one where you had all four of your kids in the same 4.5 week span…
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Koala update: Nine years
What a year, man. This time last year I was terrified to break your heart, making the decision to change schools. You are a deep thinker and a deeper feeler… but somehow your intense curiosity got the better of any fear… open minded to trying new things, when they feel right… and here we are.…
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Koala update: eight years
Recently we were laying in my bed, reading together. Well, you, the Jedi Academy books; me, A Man Called Ove. At some point I looked up from my pages and thought – huh. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. An eight-year-old boy who is journeying through his own diverse world as it comes……
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Koala update: seven and a half
Did you hear the one about the kid that wanted to know everything about everything? (Aside from Sid the Science Kid, which you’ve grown out of,) that’s… you. I can’t wait to show you Wikipedia… and to catch you at 11pm with a flashlight under your covers reading in a Wikipedia spiral… Huge milestone this…
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On hope, afterlife, dreaming.
A couple months ago Koala and I had a ‘yom kef’ together and visited the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, where a central feature is Ancient Egypt and of course, everyone’s favorite – the mummy. We read the signs. the child-friendly materials, we saw the coffin, we saw pictures. For a few weeks after that,…
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Koala update: seven years
Koala, This was a great year – I loved going through age six with you. The questions you ask. The interests you take on. The requests you make, constantly, for an ‘iPhone, iPad, or even a computer.’ Uh huh. Anyway, I can’t keep up with you. Here are (just) seven new things you learned to do…