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