Dear Tobin,

As so often happens in April, we’ve seen weather extremes this month.  We got enough wet, heavy snow to throw snowballs and build a small snowman, and it’s also been warm enough to play outside in the evenings with no jacket.  We got out our bocce set and our badminton net and accessories, and we’ve had fun enjoying the wide-open spaces in our yard and the park.  You’ve also been getting into skateboarding again, and you sometimes hold Callum up and scoot him around on your skateboard very sweetly.  I make you stay on our front stoop, since you and your brothers do not always doing a good job of maintaining a six-foot distance from passersby, on the sidewalk, but you do a good job.

I can tell you miss interacting with kids who aren’t your brothers.  There’s a free lunch distribution program that we had never used before because I didn’t want to hog up meals from people who might be in tougher economic situations than we are, but then I learned that future funding is related to how many meals they distribute now.  A school board member was encouraging anyone who might like to go pick up lunch.  Because one of Miles’s friends was planning to go, we all headed over to the junior high and picked up lunches.  You and Callum saw friends, too.  Today you guys asked to go get lunch again, so we did.  More than anything, I think you guys are excited to go places other than the four-block radius around our house.  We didn’t see any friends today, but you really liked the frozen fruit cup and and cinnamon cookies.  I have to say I’m not super impressed with the nutritional profile of the lunches.  They seem to still be going by 1980s standards, according to which low fat content equals healthy, even if it’s packed full of sugar.  One of the components today was a package of cookies with things like “Spinach – Iron” imprinted on them.  There was no spinach in the ingredients list.  It was cookies with the word spinach on them.  It was very strange.  I’d be lying if I said they weren’t tasty, though.

** Note:  I have since learned that the funding situation is not quite so tenuous as I originally understood it to be, and the district is not anticipating any reduction in funding even if they don’t see an increase in pickup numbers.  We may not do the lunch pickup much anymore to make sure there are plenty left for those in greater need.  It’s still fun to do sometimes, though.

You’ve been doing Zoom sessions with your class and with your school librarian, doing online math and reading programs, cooking with me (today was freshly-squeezed lemonade, and you’re really excited to make homemade pizza with your dad this weekend), playing outside, and doing workout videos.  You’ve also done some online taekwondo classes.  It’s really important to keep you active, because almost every night after dinner, you get up from the table and start jumping and kicking and bounding around.  It doesn’t help that our dining room table is currently in the middle of what is usually recreational space.  Even when it was in its normal position, you were disinclined to sit still during dinner, but the current situation is even worse.  At the time of day when everyone else in the family is getting tired and ready to chill out, you’re ready for adventure.  If I didn’t clearly remember giving birth to you and also if you didn’t look just like me, I’d wonder if you were adopted.

Our home construction project, the reason our dining room table is displaced, is moving along.  We’ve had some delays for a variety of reasons, including reduced staffing from our contractor due to COVID-19 concerns.  Still, their current projection is that they’ll finish by the end of August.  That sounds like a long time from now, especially with all the togetherness we’ve been having, but I imagine we’ll persevere.  I know we’re going to love our enlarged and improved home when it’s done, and maybe it will even be safe to have a party to celebrate it with our friends.  No promises on that one, though.

You would love to have a birthday party, since you’re so social, but I have no idea whether we’ll be able to do that on any normal schedule.  Even though our governor does not seem too concerned about minimizing COVID-19 transmission, we’re practicing voluntary sheltering in place, as is pretty much anyone you’d want to invite anyway.

You were one of the stars of a video we made to share with our Family Folk Machine friends at our online open mic party.  It’s always fun to make videos with you, because you’re silly and expressive and smart enough to do a good job.  Another thing we’ve been enjoying lately is watching the show Eerie, Indiana together.  It’s a show I used to watch with my family when I was a kid, and I’ve really had a good time watching it with you.  Some of the references are a little dated, but overall it holds up pretty well.  It’s spooky without being too terrifying for a kid, though you do jump up and run away screaming now and then.  I think that’s more about your predilection for running around screaming than about being scared, though.

Your current favorites:  popsicles, the pizza and travel shows you watch with your dad on Netflix, the author Stuart Gibbs (you just started the Charlie Thorn series), running around like a maniac, salads, eating pizza, planning the pizza you’re going to make, Beyblades, playing Werewolf (both the in-person version and the online version), and your glorious curls.  You for one are not unhappy that hair salons are closed.  I don’t know if you’ll let me trim you up any time soon.  Things are getting pretty fluffy.

Right now you and your dad are working hard on pizza dough, and I love seeing you so excited and proud about a project.  Your enthusiasm and joy are constants in this house.  It can sometimes be exhausting to live with you, but it’s always an adventure.

I love you so much, you crazy little guy.

Love,

Mommy

We got our oven temporarily back.  It’s very exciting.  We’ll have to say goodbye to it again once interior work starts on our house, but for the time being, we’ve been baking and stove-ing like nobody’s business.

Sunday:  Takeout from Panda Express (Miles’s choice)

Monday:  I…don’t remember, but I’m sure we ate something.

Tuesday:  Chili and cornbread (baked in the oven, woo!)

Wednesday:  Flank steak with chimichurri, frozen french fries, some sort of fruit I can’t remember

Thursday:  Panini (turkey, bacon, cheese, barbecue sauce)

Friday: Take-and-bake pizza from Aldi

Saturday:  Linguine and meatballs with homemade tomato sauce (from the freezer)

Dear Callum,

I know I’m supposed to be moaning about this whole social distancing + shelter-in-place (in practice though not law in Iowa), but honestly, I’m having a pretty good time.  It seems like we’re always so busy—between school and all your brothers’ activities, we barely get any time to just hang out together.  In the last month, we’ve had a lot of that.  I do get a little overwhelmed by trying to meet all your and your brothers’ needs sometimes, since you’re at different academic levels and have different interests, but most of the time we do okay.  We’re probably not being as academically rigorous as we could be, but we do try to get some school-type tasks done every day.  Beyond that, we’ve been reading a lot of books, taking a lot of walks, and playing a lot of board games.  You’ve also played  fair amount of games on PBSkids.org, but we’re counting that as educational.

We’ve been playing Cards Against Humanity Family Edition, and you’re a pretty fun guy to have as a participant.  The premise of the game is that one person reads an incomplete statement and the other players choose from cards in their hands that make a funny or outlandish answer.  The first player selects his/her favorite answer.  You just pick randomly from the hand you’ve been dealt, and a reasonable percentage of the time, yours ends up being the funniest.  That means you can play without getting frustrated.  “I just pretend that I can read,” you explained to your dad.

Spring finally seems to be creeping in, although there are some chilly days with possible snow in the near forecast.  We’ve had some beautiful days and evenings, though, and surely there are more to come.  That’s so important during these days of staying home all the time.  You can’t play with your school friends or neighborhood friends, and you can’t go on the playground equipment, but at least you can run around the yard.  You and your brothers have been playing together a lot.  I love that you guys mostly get along.  I feel bad for kids who have no other kids to play with right now.  I also feel bad for their parents, who never get a break and are probably trying to work from home too.

Your spring allergies are starting to become an issue.  We haven’t gotten to the full-throttle eye swelling that usually comes around in May, but you’re already getting a runny nose and itchy eyes.  Every year I hope it’s not too bad for you, because you love playing outside, and I hate to limit your outdoor time.  We do our best with nightly baths, including full hair wash, and changing every stitch of clothing on you after you’ve been outside.  The good news is that it passes after a few rough weeks.

You had a great time on our Florida Keys trip.  Tobin taught you how to play shuffleboard, and you also got good at “noodling,” or floating around the pool on a pool noodle.  You’ve always been a bit nervous in the water, so it was fun to see you having a great time all over the place.  You also really enjoyed making sand castles and joining in on family dance parties.  You got pretty good at that side-shuffle Hammer dance when your dad played “Can’t Touch This.”  You do not own any Hammer pants (yet).  You’ve been very motivated to get dressed every morning.  While your brothers would be happy to lounge around in their pajamas for days on end, you insist on a full change of clothes every day, even if we haven’t been outside.  You’re still a little guy; the size 4T jeans I usually dress you in are still pretty droopy on your butt.  They’re definitely going to wear out in the knees before you’ve outgrown them.  Just like your brothers, your ankles always show out the bottom of your pants before the waist is too big, which can make dressing you difficult.  It’s a good thing shorts season is coming up.

You’re in a really fun stage right now, always saying and doing funny things.  Last night, when I thought you were just about asleep, you popped up and said, “How does the Easter Bunny get in if he doesn’t have any hands?” Other times you surprise me with your vocabulary.  You asked for “another portion” of snack the other night, and when you recently saw me accomplish some task, you said, “That’s a good technique.”  You enjoy looking at the letters in words when we read stories, and you’re getting the hang of sounding out words.  You also seem to know a lot of math, too.  You can usually do simple math problems in your head.  I don’t know if your dad worked on that with you, or if your brothers did, or if you did it in school, but I’m impressed.  We’ll try to keep your brain active during this time so you’re on track for kindergarten in the fall.

Your current favorites:  Mario Maker on the Wii U, the “What Should Marcus Do?” stories Miles has written for you, playing Beyblades with Tobin, cuddling with me, eating treats, sleeping in, and generally being sweet.  Every day I feel grateful that I have you, because your hugs and funny observations and excitement about life make me so happy.  Your whole body wiggles with joy, and that makes my whole heart wiggle with joy, and also sometimes my body.  I mean, nobody can resist the Hammer dance.

I certainly can’t resist you.

Love,

Mommy

Dear Miles,

It’s been close to a month now that you’ve been out of school.  Right before spring break, you had your school science fair, which may have been the last normal activity anybody in your school community did this season.  You worked hard on your project, which was learning and displaying information about the physics of flight.  You (with some help from me) made five different designs of paper airplanes, which you flew and then measured their flight distance.  The whole school came to the science fair—things weren’t quite as grim then regarding COVID-19—and you were proud to show off your project.  Callum especially thought it was cool to visit your booth with his preschool classmates.

Shortly after that event, we went to the Florida Keys.  We hemmed and hawed about that decision a lot.  In the end (and I reiterate, the situation was not as dire then as it is now), we decided to arm ourselves with cleaning products, strict instructions to touch nothing and keep distance from non-housemates, and fly down.  Once we were there, we barely left the condo.  I know Tobin was pretty disappointed that we had to skip all our planned activities, like the dolphin swim he had been so excited to do.  We didn’t go to the aquarium, to our favorite restaurants (though we did get take-out a couple of times from Sparky’s), on any day trips, or to any state parks.  We stuck to the condo, and I am definitely glad that we sprang for the more expensive location that’s right on the beach with a beautiful pool.  We were able to entertain ourselves for a week just going back and forth between the pool, the beach, and the condo.

You were perfectly happy with that plan, since we always have to drag you away from the pool to do anything cultural anyway.  We played a lot of Scrabble and took turns choosing which music videos to watch.  I chose Queen/David Bowie’s “Under Pressure,” your dad chose M.C. Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This,” and you chose some YouTube thing I can neither understand nor remember—Hermit Gang or something. We had many cocktail hours, never put on dressy clothes, and generally had a relaxing time.

The trip home was intense.  During the week we were in the Keys, the coronavirus situation got worse, and it seemed like a bad idea to share airport and plane space with a bunch of people who had spent their time in Florida not very conscientiously.  Our rental car company graciously waived fees for returning the car at a different location, so we packed up the Nissan Altima with drinks, food, audiobooks, and concentrated bleach and hit the road for the 22-hour drive to Chicago.  We did it in two days, with some stretch breaks and a night in a hotel near Atlanta.  Let me tell you, it will be nice not to have to wipe down every surface with bleach solution the next time we go to a hotel, but we’re all still healthy, so I guess it was a smart choice.  It wasn’t easy, but you kids did a great job.  After spending the night in Chicago (and another massive surface wipe-down, of course), we loaded up our Subaru, returned the rental car, and drove home to our friends’ house.

Another weird kink in our lives right now is the fact that our house is under construction.  We were supposed to be house-sitting for friends who were out of the country on a research sabbatical, but unfortunately, they were required to return home.  A week after we got back from the Keys, we packed everything up from their house and went back Homer (our code name for our regular house).

Things here are slightly weird, since we don’t have a kitchen and we have a massive hole in the back yard, but we’re doing okay.  We have a makeshift kitchen in the basement, and I’ve learned to make your favorite pasta in the new Instant Pot.  It’s also very weird not to see the playground buzzing with activity on some of the beautiful days we’ve had lately.  Your dad has been doing a good job of getting you kids out in the back yard (the parts that are still intact) and into the open areas of the park to play Beamo, tag, and other running-around games.  We’ve been taking walks, attempting some home-school learning, and mostly doing fine.  You’re a homebody anyway, so it doesn’t seem to be too hard on you to stick around.

I do worry about your friendships suffering, though.  Things had been going so well for you socially this year—you’ve expanded your friend group and gotten some really good connections that I was excited for you to have going into junior high next year.  You’ve been doing some video chat and other online interactions with friends, and one even wrote you a letter.  It was a homeschool assignment, but still, it’s nice that he chose you to receive it.  Plus it gave me a good idea to assign you to write one back to him.

This was not how we were expecting you’d wrap up your elementary school experience, and I guess there’s still hope that you might have at least a little school in May or June.  Everything’s undecided for now, including your summer camps, so I guess all we can do is keep washing our hands and social distancing. I’m glad you got to spend time in the pool, though.  It was a mostly-bright week during a mostly-bleak time, and your vacation hair makes me smile.

Your current favorites:  The Simpsons, both the show and the comic collections; other comic collections, such as the Far Side and Dilbert; pasta; waffles; online chess; not brushing your hair; doing card and other magic tricks; and treading that line between sweet boy and surly teen.

We’re all on that line these days, regardless of age, so thank you for your help in getting through it.

Love,

Mom

Another week, another set of bellies to fill (same bellies, actually).

Sunday:  We ordered pizza from the Wig & Pen East

Monday:  Leftovers

Tuesday:  Crock-pot carnitas with tortillas, rice, assorted toppings, chips & salsa

Wednesday:  Mini-quiches from the Aldi freezer case, salad

Thursday: Grilled cheese & tomato soup

Friday: Pancakes & bacon, some sort of fruit

Saturday: Burgers on the grill, potato salad, carrots

Hey, posterity.  We’re in the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, and we are currently under house arrest shelter-in-place (I’m just being glib; sheltering in place is the smart thing to do right now, and we’re glad to do it to help our whole community/nation/world).

That means minimizing trips to the grocery store, which is tough for me, as I’m used to being able to dash out multiple times a week for ingredients if I get inspired to cook something for which I didn’t plan during my last big grocery run.  Even weirder, we don’t have a kitchen, because we’re in the middle of a home renovation project.  We probably won’t have a kitchen for months.  Here’s what we do have:

• Microwave
• Electric griddle
• Toaster
• Coffee maker
• Instant Pot
• Crock Pot
• Bar sink (no washing dishes in the bathtub, thank goodness)
• Grill (currently not hooked up, because we need a natural gas to propane conversion kit)
• Panini maker

Here’s what we’ve eaten so far and what I have planned for the rest of the week.

First night home (Sunday):  Take-out Mexican

Monday: Chicken Caesar salads (chicken cooked in Instant Pot using Sauté setting); Instant Pot pasta (came out too starchy; will rinse in the future); apple slices

Tuesday:  Brats and hot dogs (brats steamed in the Instant Pot, then browned along with the dogs on the griddle) with side salad and chips

Wednesday:  Chicken thighs (bone in, skinless) with spice rub in Instant Pot; sweet potatoes in the Instant Pot; leftover pasta; apple slices.

Thursday:  Grocery pick-up day!  Thai-style pork & noodles.  This is going to be interesting because the noodles cook really fast.  I think I will pre-cook the noodles in the Instant Pot, although I will investigate as to whether there’s a soak method that could let me skip cooking them in boiling water altogether.  I plan to use the electric griddle as a makeshift wok.  It has high sides so I don’t think anything will splash out.

Update:  it was gross.  There’s no way to do this without boiling the noodles.

Friday:  Grilled cheese (griddle) and canned tomato soup (microwave).  I plan to still be tired after Thursday night’s dinner.  Some sort of fruit, depending on how complete our grocery order is Switched to vegetable beef soup (Instant Pot) with grapes and cornbread from the HyVee bakery (which tasted like birthday cake).

Saturday: Pork tenderloin (Denny got the grill set up, so we grilled it, plus grilled hotdogs for the kids), cabbage salad.  OR Instant Pot chili if I need something lower-maintenance.

Sunday:  Order pizza.

If I have the energy and remember to do it, I’ll post more menus so I can inspire myself.