Dear Sylvan,
“Aunt Jenny has a shoe on her head,” you told me when you woke up. After her four-day visit, Aunt Jenny had already flown away on the plane, but your dreams kept her right here, hatted with a Croc or a Spiderman sneaker. You took quickly to your auntie, even though you hadn’t seen her since March, pushing me away as you asked for Aunt Jenny to take you upstairs for bedtime stories. The night before she left, we took Aunt Jenny out for a Eugene night on the town, to a benefit concert, an evening of music performed by students from the music school the concert supported. You were a fantastic audience member, setting up a baseball game between some knights from a chess set during the piano and flute pieces, then sitting, absolutely rapt, during the west African drumming and dancing.
You have started to tell rather outrageous stories, a chip right off the old Jones block. “What does the mixer truck do, Sylvan?” “It sprays mud in the air, Mom.” And your ridiculous response sets off your giggles; it’s good to appreciate your own stories, because you can never be assured of an amused audience.
A few weeks ago, you told me that the parentheses on my keyboard were “happy birthday moons.” In the language department, you’re very excited about rhymes these days: “Daddy-waddy,” substituting “Daisy” for “Maisy,” exchanging the words of songs for all sorts of nonsense words.
I figured out your chain of thought regarding woolly mammoths, by the way. When I point out sheep, you tell me that sheep are sheep, but little sheep, or lambs, are woolly “lamb-eths.” Given that sheep and lambs do have wool, I see how you’d connect woolly mammoths and lambs. Clever.
In a fantastic feat of deduction, you told us that fire trucks go and get the fire, put it in the truck, and take it back to the station. So that‘s how they put out the flames.
Although we had a cute, plush hand-me-down frog costume waiting in the wings, you kept asking to be either a butterfly or a dragon for Halloween. Craigslist 
came to the rescue again, offering a used dragon costume for $10. Without telling you, I picked it up before your school’s harvest party, and, when you awoke, grumpily, from your nap that day, I asked if you wanted to put on a dragon costume. Ah, as the grump turns. Daddy dressed you in the dragon costume, and you responded, “I’m a soft dragon.” You also picked a name: Smoky, or “Moky.” Appropriate, since not only are dragons sometimes smokin’, but your great-grandfather Julius’s nickname was Smoky.
I’m grateful that we made you a CD for your birthday — a CD packed with songs 
that we like by Bruce Springsteen, Bill Staines, and John Denver, and not the toddler wrangler Raffi — because you have entered the slightly obsessive-compulsive stage of music listening: “Kitters pace in wire (All God’s critters got a place in the choir) again!” Really? For the thirteenth time? Confession: I must have listened to my Born Free record non-stop for three or four weeks when I was a tot.
We sent you to school this morning in big boy underwear decorated with boats and planes and cars. Super-exciting! When you’re at home and naked — and, let’s be honest, your bare butt is quite a common sight around here — you regularly use the potty. Your teacher suggested that you might do well in underwear at school. I brought you home from school today with three wet pairs of big boy undies and a wet sock. You wouldn’t sit on the potty until I got there. When I asked if you’d like to sit, you said, “Yeah!” We sat for twenty minutes, you getting used to the little potty — and dipping your foot in the bowl. Voila, wet sock! Your Dad, who was made to be a parent, made up a very silly, very effective “peed in the potty” dance. I promised him I wouldn’t post a video on youtube.
Love,
Mom