Dear Tobin,

You woke up earlier than I did this morning.  As usual, the first thing I did after waking up was poke my head into the bunkbed room to make sure you and your brothers are doing okay, and your spot was empty.  My next check was in the big chair in Miles’s room, where you often use the iPad in the morning.  That was empty too.  I was heading toward my third destination (downstairs, in case you were hanging out with your dad) when I heard a voice say, “Hi, Mom,” from the couch.  You were cuddled up, reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

As I’ve noted in this space before, you’re a kid who gets obsessed.  Re-reading the Harry Potter series is on your current list of obsessions, along with pizza and camper vans.  I think the interest in camper vans came from a show you watch with your dad about people adventuring all over the world in them.  You’re particularly impressed by their ability to cook in their mini kitchens, which I guess might come in handy after we get back to life with no oven or stove.

We were able to temporarily regain access to our oven and stove while the construction crew was working on a phase of the project that was mostly outdoors, but they’re soon going to be heading back into the house.  Since it would be difficult, uncomfortable (we probably won’t want to run the air conditioning when the house has holes in it), and potentially unsafe to live and work here while that’s happening, we’re going to pack our bags and head to Ames.  We’ll continue to shelter in place there until it’s reasonable to come back to our house.  You kids are really excited about it, and I hope having some time with Mubby and Skitter is refreshing and fun. We won’t be able to do most of the usual things you enjoy doing in Ames—the arcade, the movie theater, ice skating—but at least it will be a change of scenery.  I’m sure you’ll have fun shooting hoops with Skitter and feeding his fish, and Mubby is always up for something exciting.

The end of this school year marks your transition from “little kid” to “big kid” at your school–you’ll use a different playground, you’ll be allowed to walk home alone, and you can ride your bike to school.  There’s a big hill between our house and the school, so we may have to do a couple of trial runs to make sure you can make it up and still be a reasonable student upon arrival.  That’s assuming school starts in August as scheduled.  I went ahead and ordered your school supplies, even though there are no refunds.  I figure the worst case scenario is that you can’t use them right away, and they’ll sit there and wait until school opens.  Our governor doesn’t seem to care much about reducing the number of coronavirus cases in Iowa—she allowed many businesses like gyms, salons, bars, and restaurants to reopen despite the fact that our new case rate and death rate continue to rise.  I dearly hope cases have fallen enough by August that I feel comfortable sending you to school, but what I think and what happens at the state government level might not align.  I don’t know that local school districts have much choice in the matter.  I trust our local elected officials a lot more than I trust the state government on those matters, but it may not be up to them.

You’re a smart kid, but you’re also just a kid, and I don’t know how much I can trust a whole bunch of kids to follow proper social distancing and mask-wearing protocols in school.  It’s all so scary, and the idea of true homeschooling is not unappealing.  I don’t know if I could convince Miles, and it might not be worth the social and developmental cost for him to miss starting junior high with his cohort.  It might work for you and Callum, though.  I’m just thinking as I type, here.  I hope it doesn’t come to that, because I really love being a part of the public school community, and I know the Lucas teachers do a great job.  I also don’t want them to risk their lives and the lives of their loved ones because they’re forced to work in an unsafe environment.  I know from the 12 years of near-constant colds we’ve had that kids are germy, germ-sharing little creatures.

But anyway, we’ve still had some fun this spring and will continue to have fun throughout the summer. You’ve been getting out on your skateboard a lot, we’ve been playing backyard badminton and bocce, and we took part in a cool photo recreation contest sponsored by a local independent theater.  You were supposed to go to animation camp there in June, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.  It’s too bad, because it’s Miles’s all-time favorite camp and you were really excited to be old enough to go.  Overall, you’ve been understanding about the restrictions and not too crabby about it.  We still have a lot of summer in front of us, though.

Your current favorites:  campers, watching videos about campers, designing your dream camper, Beyblades, roughhousing with Callum, Nutter Butters, dance parties, and pizza.  You and your dad have made homemade pizza twice together now, and you are so proud to be in charge.  You like to help him grill when he does that, and you had fun making animal bread with Callum and me.  It was originally supposed to be frog bread, but you made the last-minute decision to make yours crab bread.  Too bad nobody else in this house likes seafood, or it would have made a nice accompaniment to a dinner of crab legs.  You’ve recently expressed interest in trying sushi, so the next time I get that, maybe you’ll have some too.  I don’t know when that will be, since our dining-out options are limited these days, but I’m sure we can work something out.

I love you, my adventure boy, my nearly-third-grader.  You keep life zesty, and social distance life would be a lot more boring without you.

Love,

Mom

Dear Callum,

One of my favorite moments of every day is when you burst into the room (whether from getting up in the morning or coming in from playing outside) and shout, “It’s your little cutie!”  How could a person possibly resist scooping you up into a big hug after an entrance like that?  Miles barely lets me get near him anymore, so I know my cuddling days are numbered.  That’s the best part of being home together all the time:  in a way, I cheated the universe out of an extra few months with you.  I know you miss your friends and teachers, and having Zoom sessions with him helps fill that void, but I also like that you flop down onto my lap and do the meeting from there.

A couple of nights ago, I was giving you a post-bath hug, and I said, “I’m so glad you’re my baby boy.”  Nevermind the fact that a five-year-old is not a baby by most definitions; as the occupier of the littlest guy in the family position, you’re doomed to always be my baby to some extent.  You hugged me back and said, “I’m so glad you’re my baby boy.”  I laughed and said, “I’m your baby boy?”  You clarified:  “I mean baby like sweetheart.”  That’s good enough for me.

You have such a good balance of sociability and contentment being on your own.  You play well with both your brothers in very different ways.  You often play Beyblades with Tobin, a game that’s not violent exactly but does involve launching metal and plastic spinning tops at each other with the goal of making your opponent’s top explode.  It seems like when you two play together, someone ends up crying.  When I suggest that perhaps you should take a break, you both insist through your tears that you’re having lots of fun.  With Miles, you’re more likely to end up reading a book or playing a game he designed.  He makes treasure hunts for you, and just today he designed a game of Clue with the theme of the Berenstain Bears books.  I had a work-related Zoom this afternoon, so you guys were under orders not to bother me.  After it was done, I checked on you, and you were excited to tell me about playing Miles’s special Clue game.  I’m so glad you guys have each other.

Sometime, though, your brothers want to do things on their own.  When it’s been suspiciously quiet for too long, I go and check on you, and 90% of the time you’re just sitting on the floor, playing with your toys.  I remember when you were just a baby, we went to visit Mubby and Skitter, and Mubby was still at work when we arrived.  She had thoughtfully set out a basket of baby toys in the Great Room, so I got some out for you and put you on the floor.  You couldn’t crawl yet, so you must have been pretty young.  Your brothers ran off to play somewhere else, and Skitter and your dad and I sat around the table in the Great Room.  Skitter marveled at how well you entertained yourself, just examining and playing with the toys without needing anyone’s attention.  I don’t know if that’s a basic part of your personality or if it comes from being a third-born child—maybe you learned early to cherish any alone time you could get.

This time of year is a double-edged sword for you.  The weather is finally getting nice enough that you can play outside, and you love helping me garden, running around the park, and riding your bike on the path.  Tobin has been especially nice about taking you out to ride.  The two of you race down the path, Tobin on his skateboard and you on your Strider bike.  You’ve gotten great at riding.  You’re getting better at coasting with your feet up and handling the steering.  Our path gets pretty busy on evenings and weekends, but the middle of the day isn’t too bad.  Both of you  do a good job about vacating the path and pulling over onto the sidewalk when a person passes.  The bad news is that whatever blooms in May wreaks havoc on your eyes.  If we’re strict with the medicine and hygiene regimen, it’s fairly manageable, but some days you’re a miserable, puffy-eyed little pup.  I did manage to get your prescription eyedrops into your eyes on one particularly bad night, but we save that battle for truly dire emergencies.

One fun thing we did recently was recreate a treat we saw one of our favorite YouTubers make:  kohakutou, or Japanese-inspired edible crystals.  It was fun to make them together, and it was even more fun to see how excited you were to check them every day.  They required several days to develop a crispy crust, and you took such joy in monitoring them as they developed.  There was a lot of taste-testing involved.  I posted about our project in Facebook, and a couple of our friends tried it too.  I guess you started a trend.

It’s really great having the extra time to do things like that with you.  It’s the sort of thing that normally would have ended up on our summer activity list, but we got a jump start on it this year.  We’ll have to find even more things like that to do as the summer progresses, because we probably won’t be doing much our usual adventures, like going to the library, the trampoline park, the frozen yogurt place, or the splash pad.  I anticipate a lot of time running through the sprinkler (though we have a lot less backyard than usual), sidewalk chalk drawing, and squeezing of lemons for homemade lemonade.

Your current favorites:  buttered toast, oranges, grapes, “wavily” potato chips, Wild Kratts, playing Beyblades, watering the garden, looking at your puppy calendar, sleeping in your Nemo sleep sack, and taking baths (which is fortunate, considering how important they are for allergen management).  Your hair is starting to get a little wild, but you have joined in on the family trend of resisting haircuts, and I don’t even have a balloon to use as a bribe like the haircut place does.

Thank you for being such a loving, sweet little guy.  I’ll be your baby boy as long as you’ll let me, and being with you is the best part of this whole crazy time.  I love you so much.

Love,

Mommy

Dear Miles,

I’ve lost track of how many weeks we are into social distancing, but it certainly seems like years.  We bent the rules a little bit a couple of weeks ago and met Mubby and Skitter at a nature preserve near Grinnell for a picnic, a hike, and an exchange of items.  Skitter had garden plants for me, Mubby had some of my old books for you, and we had some of your books for Mubby to read to Aleks and Vera.  She spends an hour reading to them online every night, so naturally she burned through her personal kids’ books collection pretty quickly.  We lent her a big stack of ours, and she said Aleks and Vera have really been enjoying them.

Overall, you seem to be handling the isolation pretty well.  You have class Zoom sessions multiple times a week, not only for your homeroom, but also for band and ELP.  You Facetime and do Google Hangouts with friends, and of course you have your brothers.  That is both a good thing and a bad thing.  Sometimes you’re so creative and fun, designing treasure hunts and mysteries for them to solve, and other times you lose your patience quickly.  Still, it makes me smile that you choose to come into the bunkbed room in the evening when I read to Callum.  It’s interesting to hear your perspective on his bedtime stories.  You’re very attuned to the dated quality of some of the books from my childhood, including a particularly egregious Raggedy Ann and Andy book that portrays Ann as a timid wimp and Andy as a rambunctious mess-maker.  “It’s stereotypical, borderline sexist, and has no story,” you said.  “It’s LOVELY,” said Callum.  I can see both sides.  The overarching lesson of the book is about good manners, which are valuable to learn, but I agree with you that the author could have provided more nuanced examples.

You’re very involved in Callum’s life, and I enjoy watching you care for him.  You like to sit in on his Zoom sessions to make sure he’s participating and listening.  If all the preschoolers had such a dedicated older brother, maybe the teacher wouldn’t have to use the Mute All feature so much.  Honestly, I really admire the hard work your teachers are doing to keep involved in your education without face-to-face interactions.  It’s not easy, but maybe it’s good for them to be in their students’ position of having to be learning all the time.

I have to say that you seem pretty satisfied.  You’re disappointed that your camps (College for Kids and FilmScene) will probably not happen, but generally speaking, you’re handling it well.

Speaking of FilmScene, they sponsored a contest recently in which they challenged people to recreate movie scenes.  You and your brothers and I had a blast doing it, and one of our entries got second place.  You didn’t happen to be in that one, but the whole project was a group effort.  You helped art direct it, and you snapped the photo.  The top three all won enormous bags of popcorn, sodas, and candy, which was plenty for our whole gang to share.  I love doing projects like that with you, and this canned life has provided some good opportunities.

The weather has been very up-and-down this month, including a storm that brought enough snow for your brothers to build a snowman and throw snowballs (you declined to go outside).  We’ve had some rain and chilly days, but we’ve also had some really beautiful ones.  Just about the only sport you have any interest in playing is badminton, and we’ve had some great badminton nights in the backyard.  We’re not fantastic players, but I think we’re getting better, and you mostly keep a good attitude along the way.

In fact, I have to say that you’ve been pretty pleasant lately.  Maybe all this time to yourself just suits you, and it’s the outside world that stresses you out.  I hope you can find a life balance over the years that will keep you mostly happy while also allowing some interaction with the rest of the world.

Your current favorites:  Dungeons and Dragons (more watching YouTube videos about it than actually playing it), The Simpsons, pasta, Honey Nut Cheerios, mocking the poor bedside manner of Dr. Grizzly in The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food, Code.org, and cookies.

It may be too much to ask for your geniality to last for the rest of the summer (or however long we need to be cloistered for safety), but in the meantime, I’ll just enjoy it.  I’ll know you’ll be glad when we get a working dishwasher again, because you do not enjoy being the working dishwasher.  Unlike Tobin, who is always scheming up ways to earn money to finance whatever his obsession of the moment might be, you seem content to coast along.  I guess you trust that your dad and I will meet all your needs, which is fair.  I know I won’t have you for very many more years, so I’m secretly not too disappointed that we’re stuck together.

Love,

Mom