Dear Tobin,

I looked at you yesterday, and I don’t know if it was your recent haircut or what you were wearing or your bone structure, but suddenly you didn’t look like a little kid to me anymore. You’ve seemed extra hungry lately, so I assumed a growth spurt was on its way, but I expected it to happen more gradually. You looked angular and mature, not the soft little pup I’m used to seeing.

It was inevitable, I suppose, but this year seems like it shouldn’t count. With our lives being trapped in amber, it doesn’t seem fair that your last little-boy year should slip away. We went on a walk last weekend and ended up at your school, where you took me on a tour of the grounds and waxed nostalgic (you used the word nostalgic about a hundred times) about different memories you have in different places. You really, really want to back to school, though you bemoaned that you would no longer have recess on the Little Kids’ playground. It was a place you made a lot of good friends. You let me push you on the swings, you showed Callum how to use wood chips as currency, and you peeked into your old classroom windows.

You’re really ready. I dearly hope our school district keeps its mask requirement. I’ve heard about other districts in the state possibly dropping theirs, and with more contagious variants taking hold, I don’t see how anyone can think that’s a good idea. I won’t sleep well until you’re fully-vaccinated. The latest estimates say it will be late 2021 before a vaccine is available to your and Callum’s age group, but you can bet I’ll be madly refreshing the appointment-finder websites to get you signed up as soon as the FDA approves it.

The warmer weather of spring has been good for everyone’s spirits. We’ve been able to spend more time outside, enjoying the park and our balcony. You have a small outdoor birthday party to attend tomorrow, and I know you’ll be so happy to spend time with a good friend. You’re pretty reliable about maintaining social distance, and you’ve agreed to wear a mask whenever you’re not eating. The friends’ parents are both vaccinated, and he and his sister also do online school. It still wasn’t a slam-dunk decision, but you really need friend time, and this seemed like a pretty low-risk way to give you a mental health boost.

You’ve stopped your taekwondo classes for the time being, because they’ve moved to in-person. They’re holding the classes outdoors and with limited enrollment, and while I was fretting about whether it would be okay to sign you up, enrollment filled and made the decision for me. I wasn’t too disappointed when I saw pictures from the first class. It was about forty degrees Fahrenheit, and the students were all bundled up. The warmth of spring that I mentioned above is not yet consistent, and it didn’t look very fun. We’ll keep an eye on things and see about possibly getting back to it in a future session. Again, a vaccine for you would open so many doors.

You’re energetic, remarkably cheerful even through all these challenges, full of laughter, and you still let me hug you. You thrive on activity and stimulation, which is why it’s great that you’re able to get outside and run laps around the park shelter while your dad or I times you. That’s better than running laps around the dinner table, which you would do if we didn’t keep reminding you to sit back down.

It will be interesting to see how you do once you get back to a traditional school setting. You’ve probably gotten used to the greater flexibility that this year has provided. That model has worked quite well for you. You’re the kid of mine who needs the least help managing school tasks. I don’t know if that’s because you’re in the sweet spot of not-too-challenging work mixed with a certain level of maturity, or if this learning model suits you. That’s just the academic side, though. Really, school has never been primarily about the learning for you. You’ve always been able to make a friend wherever you go, and missing that element has been hard on you. You’ve handled it well, mostly, but I know you won’t really thrive until you can get back to a social environment. As tempted as I am to keep you home with me forever, it’s probably not tenable. This is another reason I’m glad you still let me hug you.

Your current favorites: anime series (you prefer subtitles to dubbing), online gaming playdates with friends, Club crackers, glasses of milk, stir-fry, the dwindling supply of Easter treats, and Starbursts. You like sweets, but you’re also the kid in the family who would win the “most likely to eat a vegetable without being threatened” award.

I love you, even if you’re a big kid.

Love,

Mom

Dear Callum,

After lunch today, you went downstairs to play for a while before we started afternoon school work. A moment later, you dashed back up, a little distraught. You told us that you’d seen a spider. In an effort to keep tensions low, I mentioned that spiders are friends and eat a lot of bugs we don’t want to have in the house.

I should have known better.

Now, I’m not a particularly squeamish person. I don’t mind having a few spiders around. I even let a really leggy centipede live a while back because a little research told me it is much more predatory toward bugs than people, plus it was in the garage and not the sink. But the spider you found downstairs was a rather large one, black and sharp-looking. I never kill spiders on purpose, so I grabbed a cup and a piece of stiff paper in order to trap and release it outside. Of course, you made a rapid pivot. As soon as you got over being startled by it, you decided it was your new best friend, and it needed to live with us forever. I didn’t trap it in that moment, but I need to go get some laundry out of the dryer soon. If it’s still there, it’s getting evicted. I am never going to speak of it again and hope you don’t ask.

Your “save everything” nature has persisted in other areas, too. It’s a good thing digital artifacts are weightless, because you’ve asked me to take a picture of every slightly cute thing you see on your computer screen. You need to bookmark every video, save every picture you draw, and like every TikTok. You especially love a TikTok we’ve saved about a farm, particularly a Corgi named Boone. You even added a section to your goodnight ritual. Now, before we say, “It’s time to sleep, little deer, little deer. The very last kiss is almost here,” we say, “It’s time to sleep, little Boone, little Boone. The very last kiss is coming soon.” We have a lot of very-last kisses. Then, after all that, you ask for reassurance that it’s not the last kiss ever, just the last one of the day. Then you tell me it’s actually not, and you give me lots of kisses. Sometimes they’re on my cheek and sometimes they’re on my arm, depending on which skin treatments I’ve used. You do not like to get my hydrating squalane on your lips.

We’ve had some glorious spring days with lots of outdoor time, and along with that come your spring allergies. You haven’t woken up yet with the really pitiful swollen eyes that you get most often in late April and early May, but it’s probably coming. The good news is that, after much cajoling, you let me put allergy-relief eye drops near your eyes. It wasn’t a full-on application, but I convinced you to lie on your back and close your eyes, and I put a drop in the corner of each eye. Then I asked you to blink, and I think enough of the eye drops got into your eyes that you felt relief. You also agreed that it wasn’t a bad experience. That’s a lot further than we’ve gotten any other year, so I’m optimistic that we have a strategy for the upcoming weeks. Watch this space next month to see how that all turned out.

Another benefit of the warmer weather is more chances to see friends in the park. You were so excited to play with your friend Marian the other day. I’m glad about that, since you’ve been separated from your peers for so long now. Dealing with your brothers every day keeps you socialized to some extent, but it will still be a big transition when you move back to a classroom of your peers. At the park, you’re good about keeping a mask on, which makes me proud and hopeful that it will be reasonable to send you to school. I don’t know the exact timeline for pediatric vaccine, but it’s looking like the twelve-to-fifteen age bracket will be approved soon, and the five-to-eleven set should follow that. It’s unlikely that it will be before school starts, but we can hope. You’ve been feeling braver about participating in your online classes lately, and today you interrupted calendar time to show your teacher a reflection on the wall that looked like an infinity symbol. My first impulse was to tell you to not interrupt and to wait for a more appropriate time to share, but she was very gracious about it. I’m glad she sees that it’s a big deal that you want to participate. Of course, you asked me to take a picture of it.

You’re a good dancer, a sayer of funny things, a lover of interesting pajamas and soft pants, and a snuggler. You like waffles and Skitter Mix (a 2:1 blend of lemonade and orange juice), and every morning you tell me in exacting detail how you want your breakfast. Even if you’re half asleep and I ask you if you want your usual favorite, the answer is never just “yes.” The answer is “Waffles how I always like them, two, extra butter, extra syrup, cut up, and Skitter Mix, extra lemonade, extra orange juice, no ice.” The only slightly uncertain factor is the beverage, because sometimes you choose plain lemonade, but you go through the whole spiel every morning. Every morning, I wait for the last bit to get the one piece of information I actually need.

Ritual is clearly important to you, and even through this strange year, we’ve kept up with many of them and invented some new ones. I imagine some of them will stick and some of them will fade. We’ll watch and wait.

Your current favorites: hats, stuffed animals, Pop Tarts, barbecued pork, PBS Kids games on the iPad, protecting every living creature, and doing projects. We had fun planting lettuce seeds over the weekend, and I’m hoping you’ll expand your palate to include some nice salads. Maybe it will work if I ask you to imitate the lettuce-loving tortoises from a TikTok you asked me to save.

Love,

Mommy

Dear Miles,

You are simultaneously the most social and most isolated you’ve ever been. You never leave the house, except occasional trips to the balcony and the backyard when family membership requires it. I don’t remember the last time you saw any of your friends in person. And yet, you have developed a robust online social life with school friends, some of whom you knew before this wild year and some of whom are new friends. You’ve gotten involved with Geek Club, which is mostly the same kind of online gaming you do on all the afternoons when Geek Club doesn’t meet, except with a faculty sponsor involved. I hear your laughter leaking out from under your closed bedroom door often.

You are currently the kid in our family who is most likely to go back to school in person in the fall, and I really hope it’s a good experience for you. As of the writing of this post, Pfizer has requested that the FDA approve their COVID vaccine for twelve-to-fifteen-year-olds, because their testing has proven it safe and effective. I showed you the article describing that situation because I knew you’d be excited to hear it. You were, and you were also surprised to find out how Pfizer is spelled. I guess you don’t read the news obsessively on that topic the way I do.

Your dad has had both his shots now, and I’ve had one, and your all your grandparents are now fully immunized. While I am not crazy about the idea of sending unvaccinated kids to school, it’s a relief to know that you will probably not be among them. Now let’s hope that the vaccine is approved for younger kids as well. Honestly, your brothers have surprised me with their ability to keep masks on when we’re out and about, but an entire school day would be a big challenge. Infection rates are rising here and elsewhere, and a doctor friend told me she thinks it’s being driven by younger people, including kids in school. It’s a constant source of stress for all of us, and you definitely feel it. I will be refreshing the vaccine appointment finder websites frantically as soon as we get the green light for your age group.

Last night we had a “scrounge night” dinner, and Callum requested popcorn, so I made a big batch. We were all snacking on it, along with some cheese slices and grapes and carrots. You asked if you could take a bowl to your room, and I said no, because your track record with dirty socks does not give me confidence in your ability to keep the popcorn in the bowl. You ate one bowl really fast while standing in the kitchen, then disappeared back to your room. I think that’s the only dinner you ate. I swear I make a variety of foods available to you, and I usually enforce that you eat at least one plant at dinner. But last night, it all happened so fast, I couldn’t squeeze any carrots into your face.

You still show up for family cocktail hour, which is often the time I hear most about your thoughts and interests. The other time is when I can hear your end of conversations with your friends. I just overheard you say, “It’s not a cult, it’s just a dedicated group. Very dedicated.” And a moment later, “Yeah, well, technically, bananas are berries, but does anyone consider them berries? You’re in the banana-berry cult.” I guess that’s demonstrating some critical thinking skills, which are important in cult avoidance.

Even though you spend most of your free time (virtually) with your friends, Callum can still count on you to have fun playing with him. The best part of having a little brother is that you have an excuse to indulge your kid side. The early teen years are such at time of change and identity-seeking, it’s nice that you still consider playing with Cal to be an okay thing to do. As you get older, you’ll get busier, and I truly hope you can be involved with extracurricular activities that require leaving the house. In the meantime, though, it’s nice that you get opportunities to see the little guy and be a pretend knight with him. Swords and guns are not something I prefer to purchase for you kids, but Callum is a crafting nut, and we have ended up with a lot of cardboard weaponry around the house. Thanks for using it with him, because I’m certainly not going to.

Your current favorites: the eternal pasta with tomato sauce, waffles, The Simpsons, Minecraft, chatting with your friends, and barely leaving your room. I’m glad you like the Pixar gummy vitamins I got, because you might get deficient in vitamin D if you didn’t take supplements. Now that nicer weather is showing up more often, maybe I can drag you out to have lunch on the balcony now and then. It’s my favorite part of our home renovation, and I look forward to many good memories with my family there.

You are invited. You are always invited, even if you decline nine times out ten. There will always be a stool for you at the backyard bar.

Love,

Mom