Dear Tobin,

You are so darn lively.  The other day you and your dad went out to the farm to visit Papa for Father’s Day, and the house was so quiet without you in it.  That is both good and bad.  Your inability to squelch a retort or back off from a situation causes many problems with your brothers—Callum especially has been having a hard time getting along with you lately.  It’s not always your fault.  He often overreacts and gets mad at you without an immediate reason.  However, you have established a pattern of provoking him and riling him up, so he seems primed to be mad at you at any moment.

That’s not to say you’re enemies.  Your adventurous nature has its good side as well, and the two of you have a lot of active fun together.  You’ve been playing a lot of hide-and-seek lately, and you’ve been having races, you on the pedal tractor and Callum on the wiggle-scooter.  Every very, very now and then you even let him win.

That’s notable, considering how important winning is to you.  When we first arrived at Mubby and Skitter’s house for our construction exile, you and Miles and Mubby and I were playing a lot of the game Catch Phrase.  It’s one of those guess-the-word type games, but a team wins not by getting the highest number of correct answers, but by not holding the game disc when the buzzer sounds.  It’s really much more random than skill-based, and you are a fierce and competent player.  We’ve had a lot of laugh-out-loud moments, but you get so upset when you lose that it kind of ruins the fun.

You also seem stressed out about things that really shouldn’t worry you.  Every night before bed, you insist on double-checking all the locks.  You do it here at Mubby and Skitter’s, and you did it back at our house too.  You also frequently ask me to promise never to leave you, as if I’d ever do such a thing.  I’m more worried about you leaving me, since you seem like the sort of person who will go off far away one day.  It’s kind of strange, since your general personality is so jolly.  I understand, though.  Sometimes at night I start worrying about the various problems in the world (currently in top rotation:  COVID-19, violence against Black Americans, gun violence in general), and it can be very upsetting.  I’ve found it useful to listen to an audiobook as I fall asleep, because it keeps my brain engaged on other topics as I drift off.  The key is to find one that’s interesting enough to be distracting but not so interesting that it keeps me awake.  Science and history nonfiction work for me.  I shared that idea with you, and you seem to be enjoying it.  We just downloaded a new audiobook for you, in this case one of the Gregor the Overlander series.  You’ve already read it, but you like to re-read, re-watch, and re-listen to things, so it seems like a good choice for you.

You’ve been doing plenty of screen time here, having discovered Uncle Tyler’s old Gameboy and logging lots of hours on the iPad.  You’ve found a special zone up on the balcony, and if I can’t find you, that’s best place to look.  But you’ve also been playing a lot of basketball, riding around on your skateboard and the pedal tractor, and a few days ago we went on a long mulberry-picking expedition.  We picked a lot of them, but your interest seems to have waned, so I’ve been the only one eating them.  They’re very high in antioxidants.  You’ve also been watching your favorite camper-van shows with your dad, though you don’t talk about those as much as you used to.  I’m glad you’re over that stage, because as cool as it would be to take a camper-van trip down to the Panama Canal, I don’t think I could handle referee-ing you and Callum on such a long drive.

You’re done with second grade now, and we don’t know yet what the new school year will bring.  There are several different possibilities being discussed, and it sounds like a hybrid model will probably be what happens.  That means, in order to allow for more space between students when at all possible, the school population will be split up, with some of the students attending in person and some doing distance-learning from home.  After some amount of time, they’ll switch.  It sounds like a logistical and pedagogical nightmare, but I appreciate the creative thinking that’s going into the decision-making process.  COVID-19 is a scary thing, and a lot of people are getting way too lax in their personal protection protocols.  We’re being very careful around here, minimizing our forays into public and wearing masks when we do.  Face shields seem like the best choice for a school environment, so I guess we’ll be getting some of those, too.  For the time being, we’re just hanging out together, enjoying the outdoors as much as we can, and appreciating all the advantages we have.

Your current favorites:  pizza; planning activities (tonight’s is Wii bowling, popcorn, and sodas); the show “Just Add Magic” on Netflix; begging for a Nintendo Switch, which are out of stock everywhere except for the price-gouging ones on Ebay; shooting hoops; helping Skitter with various projects around the house and yard; and making a lot of noise.

You’re a handful, an earful, and a heart-ful, my dear Tobin.  These extra months with you have been weird and tiring, but I’m glad we’ve been together.

Love,

Mom

Dear Callum,

It’s summer break now!  You finished up your preschool year online, with lots of great Zoom sessions run by your teacher.  She did an excellent job planning fun, interactive, informative classes, and you had a good time checking in with your favorite teachers and friends.  I am disappointed that this year got cut short, because you had a really good preschool experience.  The good news is that your school is going to keep its preschool next year, so you’ll get to keep seeing your special teachers sometimes during your kindergarten year.  I’m sure you’ll be nervous to start kindergarten, especially after this extended break from school that we’ve had since March, but it will help that you’ll be going back to the same school with some familiar faces.

Miles will be off to junior high (assuming anyone goes back to school), but Tobin will still be at the same school as you.  He’ll be big enough that you two can walk home together, although I doubt that will happen very often.  It’s nice to know it’s a possibility in case I have a work assignment or something that prevents me from picking you up, though.

You and Tobin have been having a lot of fun together lately.  Sometimes you two get each other riled up—he brings out your active side, and sometimes that can lead to aggression.  Most of the time, though, you play well.  You get along nicely with Miles, too.  Most of your time with him involves sitting next to him in front of the Wii U or the computer and watching what he’s doing.  It’s nice how you have a calm side and an active side so you can fit into the rhythms of both of your brothers.

All the running around and playing in Mubby and Skitter’s cement driveway has led to some bumps and scrapes, and you are not one to suffer quietly.  You will howl like a banshee at the slightest injury, which is alarming to someone not used to you.  You scraped your knee the other night, and based on your response, Skitter was afraid you had done serious damage to your kneecap.  It was fine.  It barely even bled.  I know that skinned knees hurt, but you’re really going to have to get a grip one of these years.

Your vocabulary is growing all the time, and it’s funny to hear you try out new words, sometimes in not quite the right context.  You were complaining about some pain or another, and I asked you whether you’d gotten a bump.  You said, “It happened eventually.”  I (eventually) figured out that you meant it happened gradually, not acutely.  Our first night at Mubby and Skitter’s house, Mubby offered to help you get started on your bath, and you were seized by shyness and said you wanted me to do it.  As I was helping you, you matter-of-factly explained that “Mubby gets alarmed when she sees me nude.”  Mubby has seen plenty of child- and grandchild-based nudity in her day, and I’m pretty sure she’s not alarmed by it, but you were concerned for her emotional health.

You’re tender-hearted and concerned about the well-being of others.  We watched the movie The Sandlot a few days ago, and you were very worried about the dog when the big fence fell on him.  The dog ended up being fine, but later that night in the bathtub, you got a little tearful and said, “When the fence fell on the dog, it broke my heart.”

You don’t seem too upset that we’re away from home for a while.  Our home renovation project may be almost done the next time you go to our house, unless you join your dad on one of his occasional trips back home to check on things.  I hope the changes don’t freak you out too much.  You appreciate routine, but I also think you’ll appreciate the improvements.  We’d been living in a semi-gutted house for a while, and you didn’t like it too much.  You haven’t developed the close friendships that your brothers have, so you don’t miss the social scene as much as they do.  You seem happy hanging out here, getting more treats and screentime than usual, and helping Skitter feed the fish and catch raccoons.  You’ve caught two so far in the live trap.  The first took the bait of leftover marshmallows from a s’mores project.  Skitter named that one Sylvia.  The second fell for the old watermelon trap.  That one seemed more nervous than Sylvia, so you named it Scaredy.  You decided that Sylvia was Scaredy’s mom, so you were happy to take Scaredy to the same remote location where we took Sylvia and let it go there.  You were sure they’d find each other and have a vegetation-eating party.

Your current favorites:  meat (you ate five helpings of grilled flank steak the other night and a whole bunch of chicken stir-fry tonight), watching other people play video games on YouTube, Mubby Ice on the patio, helping Skitter rid the neighborhood of raccoons, Wild Kratts videos, reading stories with your cousins for Skype storytime, and roasting marshmallows in Skitter’s firepit.

Even though it’s an unusual summer, we’re having a lot of fun together.  Your tender body and tender heart are hanging in there.  As we’ve been saying from the beginning, we don’t always know what’s going to happen, but we know we’ll stick together.

Love,

Mommy

Dear Miles,

The strangest summer yet has begun.  You finished your sixth-grade year and elementary school career with a Zoom-based celebration, which was perhaps a bit less exciting than an in-person event.  The good news was that Mubby and Skitter got to watch you give your speech.  You were one of several kids chosen to give a speech, and we were all so proud of you.  It’s a real shame that this year got cut short, because you had a really great sixth-grade experience.  You’ve gotten closer to some friends—in fact, two of your good friends were also graduation speakers.  You seem more happy and confident than in your younger years.  You seem excited to move on to junior high.

I asked you today, with the caveat that we probably won’t have a lot of choice in the matter, whether you’d rather do distance learning or go to physical school with a full mask and face shield.  You immediately said you’d take the mask and face shield and go to school for real.  I was surprised that you barely had to think about it, since you seemed pretty content over the last few months to be at home.  I can’t say for sure what will happen in the fall, but I’m glad you’re enthused about the idea of going to school, even if it means personal protective equipment and maybe some other safety-related changes.

You’ve certainly grown a lot since your first day of kindergarten.  You were shy and nervous back then, and while you are still a little stressed out by new situations, I trust that you can handle it.  You’ve had some very kind, loving, and patient teachers throughout your elementary school years, and I’m so glad it was a good experience for you.

Looking at your first and last day pictures, it’s interesting to note that you were wearing shirts for musical groups in both.  That’s something that has remained important to you.  It’s a little harder to get you motivated to participate in the Family Folk Machine online activities, since the social element of it was a big draw for you (though that’s less the case than for Tobin, who barely cares about music at all and only shows up because he wants to play with his friends).  We’re working on a video project for fall, and I’m trying to get you involved.  You’re disinclined to do anything that requires stepping away from a computer, but given your love of video-making, I hope I can find a way to draw you in.

Our house is in the most de-constructed portion of its construction, so for the time being, we’re hanging out at Mubby and Skitter’s house to give the crew space to work.  We’ve been keeping busy with playing outside with water squirters, going to nearby parks, and having a lot of movie nights.  You’ve been looking forward to the Artemis Fowl movie for months, and in fact we subscribed to Disney+ largely so you could watch it.  Then you and Tobin discovered that the entire Simpsons catalog is available there, and there’s an upcoming Hamilton capturing of the original Broadway cast…so it looks like we have yet another streaming service.  Since you probably won’t be doing any of the summer camps we had budgeted for, I’m considering it part of the “keeping the children busy” investment.  We’ll try to do a few educational things along the way, too.

Oooh, I just remembered that I always wanted you to make a diorama.  I just ordered a new pair of running shoes, and that means a shoebox is heading our way.  Probably nobody else in the family has as much of an unironic love for dioramas as I do, but having a shoebox around is a good start.

In an effort to add an element of specialness and ceremony to the end of your elementary school days, I took some “senior in elementary school” portraits of you.  The two photos below are examples.  It’s hard to get a natural smile out of you.  When I ask you to smile for a picture, you give this weird closed-mouth grimace.  I decided to just get you talking about your favorite topics—I believe I asked you about your favorite YouTubers—and tried to catch you at a moment of genuine mirth.  It took a while, but your real smile came out enough times that I got some nice ones.  I’m hoping to get a few prints made.  We’ll have to see how our home addition space turns out, because we might need some Miles to fill the walls.

It’s impossible to avoid the news these days, as protests related to unjust treatment of Black people have filled our world.  We haven’t seen too much here, though at home in Iowa City, there have been many protests, as well as some vandalism and use of tear gas on protestors.  We’ve talked about the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and about how this has been brewing for a long, long time.  You seem engaged and interested, and I hope we can continue to have productive conversations about it.  I want you to be an anti-racist person, and that doesn’t happen in just one summer.  We need to keep justice in the forefront of our thoughts and family discussions in the long-term.

Your current favorites:  pasta, chatting online with your friends, YouTube channels discussing topics I don’t understand (I think it’s Minecraft-related but I’m really not sure), Mario Maker on the WiiU, hanging out with Callum and me during bedtime stories (your favorite is The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food), staying indoors, and pun-based jokes.  Mubby recounted one you told her recently:  “Did you know that the first French fries weren’t fried in France?  They were fried in grease (Greece).”

You’re smart, witty, and you’re even starting to bounce back better when you and Tobin banter.  I usually feel quick to jump in and try to defuse the situation, but you two are doing pretty well at accepting each other’s zingers with grace (or at least laughter).  I’m so proud of all you’ve accomplished as an elementary schooler, and I’m so excited to watch as you move on to greater adventures.  I love you, my sweet Miles.

Love,

Mom