Dear Tobin,

The theme of this month has been basketball: playing it, watching it, talking about it, and quizzing family members about it. You and your dad have reinstated your tradition of getting Bruegger’s Bagels after your games. One of the locations in our area has an associated Jamba Juice, so if you go there, a Razzmatazz smoothie is part of the deal. If you go to the other location, you choose hot chocolate. Your dad has been assistant-coaching your team, and it’s a fun thing for you to do together. You’ve had some frustrations with basketball this year, particularly with teammates who don’t act exactly how you want them to, but your team is strong overall. It’s a good thing there’s no official score-keeping at this level, because I would have felt bad for the opposing team in your last game due to how hard you creamed them.

The biggest issue on my mind this month (besides war in Ukraine) is the probable end of the mask mandate at your school. We got through the omicron surge without infection thanks to good masking practices, but the CDC has updated its recommendations to now allow for unmasked indoor activities in low- and medium-risk areas. Our county is, by the CDC’s calculations, medium-risk. My major issue is with their calculus: it’s not based entirely on new cases, active cases, or test positivity, but rather a formula combining new cases with available hospital beds. It’s as if they’re giving up on the idea of keeping people from contracting Covid and just saying, “Well, if you do, you can probably get treated.” That’s an insult to the health care professionals who have been taxed to the limit during this most recent surge. Should we take availability of care for granted and assume that our health care systems can handle it? That seems like a dangerous and callous proposition to me.

In the selfish short-term, I am terrified of our spring break trip getting derailed. If you know me, you know how much vacations mean to me. I spend most days thinking about what and when my next trip will be, and we haven’t had a real one since 2020 (our long weekend in Illinois last summer was lovely, but it didn’t fully scratch the itch). If you or Artemis brings Covid home from school and we have to cancel, we will all be so disappointed. I have booked the dolphin encounter that we had originally planned to do two years ago, and you and I have been anticipating it so much. I also love taking morning walks on the beach, just the two of us. I truly hope our trip can happen over spring break as planned, but I did buy trip insurance that will allow us to reschedule if needed. It’s a lot more appealing to escape to the 78-degree weather there in March than to go from 85 degrees here to 90 degrees there, but if we have to go in the summer, we will. There is no getting between us and the beach.

I just picked you up from a friend’s birthday party at a packed bowling alley. A good 95% of the patrons were unmasked, but you had your KF94 on snugly. You even skipped birthday cake (though you got a to-go pack) at my request. I know this sucks, Tobin. I know it’s hard to be the kid who can’t have cake at a birthday party. It’s probably how kids with diabetes or food allergies feel all the time. In any case, I think you have the strength of character to keep masking, even when your friends and other people around you aren’t. You’ve always been a leader, and maybe you’ll influence some others toward safer behavior.

You’re a helper, too. You are always ready to pitch in when someone needs a hand, whether it’s making a bed, cooking stir-fry for dinner, or taking care of Callum. Callum was feeling a little off his game the other day with a bit of stomach distress, and you were so kind to him. You got him all cozy on the couch, tucked him in with blankets and stuffed animals, and read him a story. This was all without me asking you to help—you just saw a need and met it. I don’t know exactly how this trait will play out later in your life, but I could see you in a helping profession. You could also be an attorney with all the spirited debate that goes on at our dinner table. Ultimately, it’s your decision, and I know you’ll do well in whatever you choose. It’s probably frowned-upon for an attorney to burst into giggles after making a particularly salient point, so I suppose you’d need to work on that.

We got the written report from your teacher in anticipation of your upcoming parent-teacher conference, and we were happy to see that your first month back at school is going great. She didn’t indicate any areas of concern, and you’re excelling in many areas as well. I’m looking forward to talking to her and hearing her take on how your transition back is going. If your happiness is any indication, I expect to hear good things. You’ve really thrived being back in a community of your peers, and I’m so glad you’re able to do it. Just keep up the good mask use and we can all be happy.

Your dad and I have noticed you being rather moody lately, and it often seems to be related to whether you’ve eaten recently. You may be in a growth spurt, and it’s hard to get you to eat often enough to keep up with your body’s physical and emotional needs. You’ve gotten me well-trained, though: when you’re being mopey and crabby, putting a bowl of Cheerios in front of you almost always improves the situation. This is not to say your personality has fundamentally changed. You’re still a sunshiney guy, quick to laugh and slow to take umbrage. You make any room brighter just by entering it.

Your current favorites: pizza from the Wig & Pen; NBA basketball; rec league youth basketball; playing “Bouncy Bros,” which I think is some kind of wild game involving exercise balls, which I have not personally witnessed because I stay upstairs when it’s happening; being with your school friends; the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series and any book by Stuart Gibbs; listening to audiobooks; and playing online computer games with your friends.

Let’s keep up the great work, Tobin, and there will be a wonderful, sandy reward in our future. I can’t wait to wiggle my toes in the water next to you.

Love,

Mom

Dear Callum,

You are such a lovable, sweet little boy. You’re cuddly, tender, and caring. Sometimes your tenderness can be overwhelming, and you often get teary about things I didn’t realize would upset you. We’ve started reading The Tale of Despereaux at bedtime, which I thought you would like, because you’re a big fan of Kate DiCamillo’s other books. Despereaux is bleaker, though, with a lot of death and mistreatment of people and rodents. We’ve had some emotional bedtimes. You were a bit distraught last night when a child was freed from slavery because you were worried about the sheep she had previously been tasked with tending. Fortunately, you’re beginning to gain some perspective; you no longer beg me to take a picture whenever there’s a cute illustration of a duck or a turtle in your math book.

School is continuing to go great for you. You participate with vigor and you’re becoming more independent in your learning. This is nice for me. Last year I needed to sit with you for pretty much the entire school day, but now you’re able to learn and participate with your teacher and classmates mostly on your own. I join you for independent work time to make sure you’re getting your assignments done, but your teacher has organized the day so those periods are minimal. I do look forward to you joining in-person classmates eventually, but I couldn’t have asked for a better online first grade experience. Your reading skills are taking off at an amazing rate, and you are doing well in math and the other subjects too. You’ve been doing math ELP and holding your own just fine.

Your biggest challenges involve staying focused and time management. Sometimes you get so invested in a tiny detail of one of your assignments that you run out of time to get all the work done. It will be interesting to see if that issue persists once you’re back in-person. I suspect online school requires more time management than a typical classroom, so maybe you’ll be ahead of the game with the skills you’ve developed at home.

I’m hoping you’ll be able to join in at Family Folk Machine soon. We’re hoping to start in-person rehearsals next month, assuming the Covid cases continue to drop and reach a reasonable level. We have a lot of safety protocols in place, including a vaccine requirement for all members, including kids, and the requirement that participants wear high-quality masks. I’m still being extra vigilant and strict about mask-wearing and risk avoidance within our family. Partly, that’s just my nature. I’ve also set a mental goal of our spring break trip. I would hate for us to have to reschedule it (though I did buy travel insurance for just that reason, because I always feel better with a backup plan). I’ve told myself we can relax within reason once we’ve successfully completed that journey.

Warmer weather will bring more opportunities for outdoor fun, too, which will be a refreshing change. You had such a great time at our neighborhood park summer program last year. I really hope they do it again this summer, though I’m not sure they will because our park is scheduled for a remodel. In any case, we’ll have to get you into some more activities. You have your older siblings as socialization points, but hanging out more with kids your age would be a good idea before school starts in the fall. You haven’t done nearly as many lessons and sports and activities as your siblings were doing at your age, because the pandemic derailed a lot of our plans. It would be good to get you into piano lessons, swimming lessons, maybe a soccer team or Taekwondo. Here’s to hoping the pandemic is petering out, or maybe improved vaccine boosters will come along that will be more effective against future variants. I barely remember what “normal” is, but I hope we can find a reasonably safe way to get back to something resembling it.

Still, I will never regret the extra time I’ve gotten with you. You say and do funny things almost every day, and I love being there to enjoy them. I love that you’re still little enough to be sweet and sincere. I haven’t written about the Valentine’s Day card you made me, because I’m getting to this Callum Chronicle late and technically it belongs in next month’s letter, but I warn any future readers: it’s a heart-melter. I love how you enjoy participating in family traditions and routines, and I really can’t wait to engage in the beach-pool rotation with you. That’s one of my favorite routines, and enjoying it with you and your dad and siblings makes it all the more excellent. I’ve really missed traveling in the last couple of years. We’ve managed some smaller trips, but family vacations are one of my favorite things in the whole world. You can even open cans, now, so vacation cocktail hour has all kinds of possibilities.

Your current favorites: steak and Manchego cheese with plenty of pepper, pizza, class hangout with your online classmates on Friday afternoons, cuddling at bedtime, Wild Kratts, spelling out words instead of just saying them, doing home workouts, and watching Psych with your dad and siblings. You also love Minecraft time with Artemis and wrestling in the basement with Tobin. We put a futon mattress down there a few months ago during a time of stormy weather, and you haven’t let us move it. It has become a wrestling zone, a relaxation zone, and TV-watching zone. One of these days we’ll get a new basement couch and your dad can get his napping futon back in his office.

You are so much fun, Callum. I love your joy and enthusiasm and tenderness. I will miss spending every day with you and watching you learn and grow, so let’s enjoy the time we have left.

Love,

Mommy

Dear Artemis,

Your fourteenth year seems to be going pretty well so far. You’re wrapping up your second trimester at school, getting new grades, and thinking about what you’ll take next fall in high school. High school, my goodness. In yet another move toward independence, you’ve chosen French over Spanish for your foreign language. While I think any foreign language learning is good, it seems silly to not learn the overwhelming second language of our country. Plus I was sort of hoping to be a chaperone on a Spain trip down the road. But…your friends are taking French, so you’re taking French. Mon dieu.

I was afraid I was going to have to twist your arm to get you to stay in band, since you don’t seem very enthusiastic about it, but you added it to your schedule with no prodding. We attended a webinar the other night about the band program, and the director seems very enthusiastic and welcoming. Band takes some cool trips, too, including an international one every three years. There are a ton of other electives offered, including some really interesting-sounding ones, and I hope you get to try some of those out down the road.

You’ve been mostly pretty pleasant lately, including keeping a good attitude about the annoying requirements in your life. You haven’t had the opportunity to do a lot of in-person socializing with your friends, but you did hang out with friends last week, and you told me you wore your mask the whole time. Fortunately, Covid numbers are going down. Of the many people I know who’ve gotten the omicron variant, none has had a serious case in the medical sense. A lot of the adults have felt pretty awful, but it sounds like it wasn’t too hard on any of the kids. Obviously, I still want to avoid us getting it as much as possible. I won’t truly breathe a sigh of relief until we’ve all gotten negative tests before going on our spring break trip. We haven’t been on a plane since the very, very early days of Covid. In fact, we nearly canceled our every-other-year Florida Keys trip in March 2020 due to the impending doom. We did cancel our flight back and made the long, long drive. I certainly don’t want to do that again. This trip will, I hope, be a bit of a mental bookend for our Covid experience. I know there will be more variants, more vaccine boosters, and more surges in the future, but I hope we have enough good health and safety strategies now that we can find a balance between fun and caution.

I’m keeping our precautions tight for now, because I really don’t want to have to reschedule that trip. We’ve all been looking forward to it so much, and while it would be fun any time of year, escaping Iowa in March is extremely appealing. Two years ago, we did basically nothing outside our rental condo. We swam in the pool and the ocean, played Scrabble on the balcony, and occasionally got takeout from our favorite restaurants. This time I’m hoping we can visit some attractions. We’re all fully vaccinated and we have good-quality masks, and tons of restaurants and activities are outdoor-based. It’s time to start having some fun.

It will be interesting to see how it goes flying with your scoliosis brace. We’ve never done that before, but apparently it counts as a medical device, and you can carry it on the plane without an additional fee. We’ve done that before with a car booster seat, so I guess it’s a similar situation. I would feel bad making you wear it the whole flight, since I don’t think it’s very comfortable to wear in a sitting position. It’s going to be challenging enough to make it through the flight without snacks, since I don’t want us to take off our masks on the plane. It’s a good thing you all have electronic entertainment devices.

Much like the mask thing, I’ve been really impressed with how well you’ve dealt with bracing and physical therapy. They’re not your favorite things, but you don’t rage or cry or refuse to wear your brace or do your exercises. Teenagers aren’t known for their long-term thinking skills, but I hope that this is a sign that you see the benefit of incremental work now to avoid a big surgery down the road.

You and your brothers had been campaigning to buy a virtual reality headset, though I haven’t heard you talk about it much lately. Maybe that stage has passed. Either way, while you were in the thick of it, you and Callum made your own VR headset with an old Goldfish box, a baseball cap, and your phone mounted inside it somehow. You call it the Artculus Goldfish. I don’t know if the user could see or experience much, but it smelled good. I was sort of hoping you’d get a real one because I wanted to do the underwater experiences. I think the Smithsonian Museums also have games (I’m not sure if that’s actually what you call them) where you can experience the museums virtually. My ideal vacation would involve going to a different museum every day, but most of my family disagrees with that. It seems like a good way for me to get some art, science, and history experiences without having to hear any whining. Better yet, it might get you excited about visiting some of those places in person. Maybe I’ll have to plant some seeds in your heads to get you back on the VR-purchase track.

Your current favorites: watching Psych with your dad and brothers, pasta with tomato sauce, pasta without tomato sauce, Doritos, Mario Maker, chatting online with your friends, speed-running King’s Quest IV (that is, trying to beat the game in the fastest possible time), hanging around in your Comfy blanket/sweatshirt thing, and playing with Callum.

Next month at this time, we’ll be packing and organizing and getting ready to hit to road, negative-tests willing. I’m excited to get back to some of our favorite haunts and check out some new places as well. I hope you’ll make time for a few games of vacation-rules Scrabble with me on the balcony, too.

Love,

Mom

This was a big hit at dessert tonight. Lightly adapted from the New York Times recipe.

•  2 cups heavy cream
• 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and seeds scraped out
• 1 pinch salt
• 3 egg yolks
• 1/2 cup sugar (generous), plus more for topping

Preheat oven to 325 F. In a saucepan, combine cream, vanilla bean (including caviar), and salt, and heat until just hot. Cover off the heat and let sit for a few minutes.

Beat yolks and sugar together until light (don’t overdo it–not too foamy). Stir about a quarter of the hot cream into the mixture, then add the warmed egg mixture into the rest of the cream. Strain to remove vanilla bean pod and any solid bits.

Divide among small ramekins (it perfectly fits 5 of our smallest ones). Bake in a bain marie (use boiling water to about halfway up the ramekins) for 40-ish minutes. The centers will be very jiggly. Chill thoroughly. Sprinkle about 1 tsp of sugar on top of each and torch or broil to melt and brown the sugar. If using the broiler, return to the refrigerator for a couple of hours to re-chill before serving (no more than 2 hours).