Hey, there, kindergartner.

You are into it.  You love school (even though you hate waking up early).  You love seeing Miles in the lunch room.  You love math boxes and P.E. and buying milk in the cafeteria.  You chose to buy hot lunch today—I’m not exactly sure why, because you’re not a big cheeseburger eater typically.  I think it was because some of your friends do, and you consider it a part of fully integrating into the kindergarten lifestyle.  You groaned in disappointment when you realized it was Labor Day and you didn’t have school.  You tell me all about your school friends:  Kit and Kaden are your best friends, and there are a couple of troublemakers whom I won’t name.  You’ve earned some prizes for good behavior, and you were so excited when you got to be helper.

You remain a whirlwind of energy.  I enrolled you in a Ninja Zone class that starts in a couple of weeks.  From the video on the gym’s website, it looks like it will be a cross between gymnastics and martial arts.  You’re super-excited about it.  I suggested to your friend Chase’s mom that he sign up for the same class, and she said that was fine, but for some reason he doesn’t want to.  I was afraid that might dissuade you, but it hasn’t at all.  You’re so good at fitting into situations and making friends, you can’t wait to kick and tumble and jump whether Chase is there or not.

We’ve had an unusual September heat wave lately, and you’ve even had early release from school the last couple of days.  Your school is fully air conditioned now, so it doesn’t make much difference to you, but not everywhere in the district is.  They make a district-wide decision, so you get some extra break time.  You’d probably be just as happy staying at school, but I’m happy to have you home early.

The heat has cut into your outside play time, which may be why you’ve been running laps around the house like a maniac in the evening lately.  Last night your dad and I were sitting in the basement, and you guys were upstairs.  It sounded like a herd of bison was trotting around the floor above us.  I hope Ninja Zone plus your continuing swim lessons help you burn off some of that energy.

It seems like the whole world is experiencing a lot of natural disasters lately.  Our beloved Florida Keys have gotten pummeled, as did a lot of other areas in the Caribbean.  An earthquake in the Mexico City area caused a lot of destruction and death.  We’re lucky that, for the time being, all we’re suffering from is abnormally high temperatures.  We  may find our vacation plans require adjustment, but unlike a lot of people, our home is still intact and all our family members are safe.  It’s scary, and I truly hope your generation is more forward-thinking that those who came before you in terms of our impact on the Earth’s systems.

You’ve been a really good big brother to Callum lately.  He has gotten excited about taking showers with you, and you indulge him quite nicely.  It might even conserve some water, assuming I can drag him out in a reasonable time.   I’ve overheard you telling Callum about how when he’s in kindergarten, you’ll walk him to school.  He thinks you’re pretty great.  He’s been calling you Toby lately, which is my dream come true, because I always wanted to call you that, and it never caught on.  Tobes is a good nickname too, but I thought a cuddly little Toby would be fun to have around.  At least Callum agrees with me.

Despite the summery temperatures, we’ve started in on some of our fall traditions, like apple-picking and making pumpkin bars.  We’ve started work on Halloween costumes (you’ve chosen to be Bowser from the Super Mario Brothers universe), and I know you’re going to be super-psyched to be a part of your own class Halloween party.  In the past, I’ve brought you along to school when I volunteered with Miles’s class, but now I’m going to have to find ways to check in on both of your classrooms.  I’ll have a little Batman tagging along, and I bet you’re going to be proud to show him off to your friends.

Have a great month, my little force of nature.  You’re a marvel.

Love,

Mommy

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Dear Callum,

It came to me in a moment of panic last night that I hadn’t written your Callum Chronicle yet for this month.  It’s not the latest I’ve ever been, but it’s also not the timeliest.  With three kids to manage, the schedules of whom are getting more complicated all the time, I have to be pretty mentally organized to keep on top of things.  Sorry for letting this one slip.  I promise I haven’t forgotten you.  In fact, you’re on my mind almost all the time, since we’ve been spending our days together, just the two of us.

You do miss your brothers now that they’re back in school, but you get excited for Mommy/Callum time too.  We’ve been doing some fun stuff together, and we’ve got a pretty good routine worked out.  You often like to sleep in, which sometimes I let you do and other times I don’t, depending on how busy the evening is going to be.  You’ve gotten to the point of not taking a nap every day, but you are pretty crabby come six p.m. if you decline to nap.  Therefore, if I know we have activities at night, I try to wake you up early to increase the odds of you napping and improving your evening personality.  The worst case scenario is that I wake you up early, drive around for an hour trying to get you to sleep at naptime (that’s the most reliable way to get you down these days), you still don’t fall asleep, and them we’re both crabby.  I did choose to wake you up early today, because your dad has a meeting and the big boys have swimming lessons tonight.  We’ll see how it goes.

I took you with me to vote yesterday in the school board election.  There was another important issue on the ballot, a bond proposal that will fund improvements on all our local schools.  There was a vocal opposition to the bond, but it had a lot of support, too.  I’m happy to report that the bond passed with a supermajority.  I’m really proud to live in a community that is willing to pay extra to support our teachers and students.  We’re also really happy that our neighbor Ruthina Malone, a former Lucas parent and all-around stellar person, won a spot on the school board.  You went with your dad to “help” him vote last night too, and I hope your earliest memories of your childhood are of voting, just like mine are.  It didn’t hurt that you got to play on the best playground in the area afterward both times.

You are getting more articulate and hilarious every day.  You are learning to explain yourself well in complex and interesting ways.  You are also getting very opinionated about how things ought to be, what belongs to whom, and the ways things can be categorized.  You can be very particular about having your “crapple” (cranapple) juice in your purple cup, but you also get a subversive thrill out of drinking the dregs Miles leaves out in his own cups.

We’ve had a warm and mild fall so far, unlike the weather-related problems that are causing great suffering elsewhere in the country and the world.  I’m so worried about the people who live full-time in the Florida Keys.  It’s our favorite family vacation spot, but many people who own businesses and homes there are having a terrible time.  Hurricane Irma just passed through, and I’m nervous to even look at pictures.  Apparently our usual destination, Marathon Key, was one of the hardest hit.  We’ve already paid for our condo rental for spring break; I have no idea whether we’ll be able to go or not.  I’m giving the owner some time to figure out the level of destruction.  I’d love to go back and support the rebuilding of their local economy, but I also know six months might not be long enough to let the locals get back into shape.  This is coming right on the heels of Hurricane Harvey, which triggered massive rainfall that has caused a lot of trouble in Houston, as well as wildfires in the west.  It’s a scary world, and I hope it’s not too late to make changes that will help regulate these climate-related disasters.

I may have to visit your children in their condo on Mars.  Start saving now!

Your current favorites:  Mercer Mayer’s Little Critter books, climbing outrageously high on playground structures intended for bigger kids, grapes, waffles, inserting yourself into whatever your brothers are doing, and avoiding bedtime by prolonging the goodnight snuggles you give your dad.  “We’re so cozy!” you say, as you interrupt the book he was reading to Tobin and get under the covers with them.

We’ve started to introduce the potty idea a little more aggressively.  Every night before your bath, you do a great job sitting on it, but you haven’t fill it except for the isolated incident a month or two ago.  You act like you’re trying to pee, but then you give up and head to the tub, where you pee into the water about 75% of time.  We’re working on it.  Maybe it’s time to get out some bribes.  On the other hand, you’re younger than either of your brothers when they potty trained, so maybe we should just celebrate the small successes for the time being.

I love you, my sweet Callum.  Your smile is so heart-warming, even when it’s accompanied by a naughty side-eye.  I love the way your chubby little cheeks jiggle as you run.  I love your tender arms when they wrap around me, and I love that you still believe my kisses heal all your wounds.  Sometimes you want me to kiss your eyeballs on particularly itchy allergy nights.  That never works, but I always try.

A lot of what we do only sometimes works, but we always try.

Love,

Mommy

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Dear Miles,

Fourth grade is underway, and you’re doing well.  You still miss your third grade teacher, Miss Lampe—we were at your school open house last night, and when you saw her in the hallway, you absolutely lit up.  She’ll be one of those whom you remember fondly your whole life.  I think your teacher this year is good too, though.  So far you have no complaints, except for the “not Miss Lampe” factor that would apply to any teacher in the school minus one.  To congratulate your class on good behavior thus far, your teacher is hosting a taco salad bar event at lunch on Monday.  I don’t think you’ve ever eaten a taco salad in your life.  Maybe a little peer pressure will get you to try something.  I volunteered to bring tortilla chips, so at least you’ll get some calories even if you won’t eat anything else.

We rounded out the summer with some good Labor Day weekend activities.  We started with a Friday night trip to a Cedar Rapids Kernels baseball game.  Callum had a hard time sitting still, so I spent most of the game wandering around the stadium and grounds with him, but you enjoyed the whole thing.  You even got a game ball, which two players autographed for you.  Their handwriting was too messy for us to discern their names, but you found the whole experience pretty thrilling anyway.  Even more special was the fact that the whole trip was due to your raffle win of Kernels ticket’s at last spring’s school carnival.  The stadium is small enough that even the cheap seats were good seats, and the fireworks afterward really capped things off.

We also did our family’s annual trip to the apple orchard.  Some apple orchards really try to make it a theme park, with tons of kids activities and plenty of opportunities to spend money.  Wilson’s is much more about the apples, which is fine with me, since I love produce but hate crowds.  We went on Honeycrisp Weekend, which is the most crowded time of all to go, but we arrived right at opening time, and it wasn’t too bad.  I would generally prefer to go on an uncrowded weeknight, but when we did that last year, they weren’t serving the fresh, hot apple cider doughnuts.  That was pretty disappointing, so this year we braved the crowds.  We got through the doughnuts pretty swiftly and did some good apple-picking.  You and Tobin scrambled around the trees and did a fairly good job discerning which apples were good choices.  I’ve only found one worm so far (better than half a worm, of course).

We had our not-exactly-annual backyard a few weeks ago, before school started.  It was a glorious night, weather-wise, and I think you had fun.  It’s our answer to the problem of having two kids with January birthdays, which is about the worst time in the world for a party.  We just have one big one in the summer and call it good.  It was nice to see that you’re not the only kid around your age with unkempt hair.  I gave you your own hairbrush as an unbirthday present, with the caveat that if you don’t want to get a haircut, you need to brush your hair every day.  So far you’ve been doing pretty well.  We haven’t gotten school pictures back yet, though.

Your mental state, overall, seems mostly good these days.  We’ve had a few incidents lately where you go directly to screaming at Tobin rather than giving him any calm indication that you don’t like what he’s doing.  We’re working on ways to help you learn to manage your emotions.  Part of the problem is that you really don’t have much privacy.  We’re planning to convert the baby room into your room soon.  I asked you if you’d rather have it now, before Callum’s potty-trained, and still have me go in there to change his diapers, or whether you’d rather wait until it can be 100% yours.  You said you’d rather wait.  I don’t know if you’ll stick to that position.

[Redacted:  a whole paragraph about DACA and privilege and how stress about getting your own room is a lot harder to sympathize with than stress about whether you’ll be deported.  Your problems are your problems, and I shouldn’t minimize them.  But still, be kind to your classmates who are living in very real fear right now.]

I know you’ll be kind.  Tobin’s personal mission is to annoy you, and you only blow up at him now and then.  A teacher in one of your summer classes told me that you’re always nice to everyone, and that made me feel prouder than anything else you might have learned.  You still have some growing to do, but so do we all.  You’ve only lost your lunch bag twice so far, so that’s progress.

Have a good month, my fluffy-haired boy.  I’m doing my best to only cuddle you in the house so your friends don’t find out your mom loves you.

I do, though.

Love,

Mom

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