My dear Tobin,

Fifth grade has begun, and you’re doing just as well as I knew you would. We had a back to school night last week, and it was great to talk to your teacher about how it’s all going. She’s a newer teacher to your school, one I didn’t know at all before you were assigned to her classroom. You seem to like her a lot, and she seems to like you a lot too. What she told me about your work and behavior in her class didn’t surprise me: you’re smart, confident, quick to volunteer to answer a question or do work on the board. She also mentioned that you can be chatty, which also wasn’t surprising. The family joke is that you started talking at age one and haven’t stopped since. Although your best friend is in the other class, you still have plenty of good friends with you, and you are never low on conversation topics.

One thing she mentioned really impressed me: after you and your friends got a bit of a scolding for being overly talkative, you approached her, apologized, and said you would work on doing better. She also said that after that you really did cut back on the talking. That’s exactly the kind of person I want you to be. No one’s behavior is perfect, but the ability to acknowledge mistakes and work to improve is the mark of someone who will succeed.

You celebrated your eleventh birthday with friends a little late, since your best friend had COVID around the time of your originally-scheduled party. We were keeping the group small, so we pushed it to the next weekend in order to make sure it was a safe situation for everyone. You jumped at the trampoline park, kindly including Callum in the mayhem, and then gathered in our backyard for pizza and cupcakes.

You’ve chosen St. Louis as the destination for your Eleven Trip. It’s not quite as glamorous as Universal Orlando, which was Artemis’s special trip, but we’re also able to stay a bit longer. You have a mini fall break from school next week, so after your Saturday morning soccer game, we’ll head southward on the Avenue of the Saints. St. Louis is a reasonable road trip from our home, and it’s full of fun stuff to do. We’re planning to hit the City Museum again, this time getting rooftop passes. We’ve been there a couple of times but never sprung for the rooftop before, and now seemed like the perfect time to do it. It will make it a little bit more eleventh-birthay special, plus the more we can do it open air the better. We’re also planning to visit the zoo and spend time in Lafayette Square park, one of our favorite places in the city. It also happens to be near Clementine’s Naughty and Nice ice cream, which is another destination high on our list.

As a kid who loves ritual and tradition, you’ve been very interested in sorting out the details for the trip. You like to look at vacation rentals with me, both the one we’ve actually reserved and other ones for vacations that are still in the fantasy stage. We’ve been talking about trips to Spain and Italy for years. We haven’t yet put any of those plans into action, but I really hope we can one day. You’d be a good European travel partner, I know, because you’d be good at walking around a lot, and you get really interested and excited about topics. There’s plenty we could research in advance of a big trip like that.

You’re also very invested in our smaller-scale rituals and traditions, like our annual apple-picking trip to Wilson’s Orchard. While Wilson’s has expanded their agricultural offers to include pick-your-own strawberries, sunflowers, and Christmas trees, I appreciate that it hasn’t turned into a theme park. It seems like a lot of orchards do that, and tons of people seem to enjoy them, but I really appreciate the experience of wandering among rows of apple trees and finding good specimens. We were a little late to Honeycrisp season this year, and we had to walk pretty far into the orchard to find trees that still had good fruit on them, but our perseverance paid off. We got several buckets of apples, and of course we didn’t skip the apple cider doughnuts and locally-produced cider. Apple-picking is probably your favorite of our reasons to go to Wilson’s, because the early fall weather is perfect for a leisurely stroll, and apple-picking doesn’t rely much on being able to see the color red. Strawberry picking is a little frustrating for a kid with red color blindness.

Soccer has been a new thing for you this fall, and you’ve really been loving it. You were assigned to a team with a few people you knew, and of course you’re becoming friends with the ones you didn’t yet know. We’re carpooling with another family, the mom of which is a friend of mine. You didn’t know her son before this soccer team assignment, but you two seem to have hit it off. It’s a decent drive out to the soccer fields, and you two have all kinds of interesting conversations about space, gravity, the multi-verse theory, and strategies on how to be really good at Simon Says.

You’ve been playing goalie a fair amount, and to my untrained eye, you’re doing a great job. At the last game, your team won 3-0, and not because the other team was never in a position to score. You didn’t let a ball get by you. I hope you get to try out other positions, too, because you seem to really be catching on. I was afraid you might need some time to figure out the rules, but it hasn’t been a problem. You jumped right in and are a valuable member of the team.

Photo by Gary Clarke

Your current favorites: soccer, playing with your friends both online and in person, reading (especially books by Stuart Gibbs), helping make stir-fry, singing “fry, fry, fry, fry, stirrin’ the fry, stirrin’ the fry” to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive” while you make stir-fry, alternating between your two favorite grey t-shirts, and generally being a part of things. You told me recently that you don’t like non-team sports. I think that’s because you have the most fun when you’re surrounded by friends. That’s convenient, because you can hardly avoid making friends in any group you encounter.

I’m so glad you’re able to have a reasonably normal school year. Most people in your school don’t wear masks, but I still ask that you and your siblings do. I know it’s not your favorite thing to do, but you’re a good kid and you don’t complain about it. We’ve talked about how it’s foolish to live as if the pandemic is completely over, but with some compromises and strategies, we can still do a lot of really fun things.

Every day with you in it is fun, Tobin. Enjoy your Eleven Trip and all the great things that come with being a fifth-grade dynamo.

Love,

Mom

Dear Callum,

My goodness, you’re a second grader already. I am thrilled to share that in-person school has been going wonderfully. You have a teacher who is kind, experienced, and attuned to her students’ needs. You are getting along well with your classmates, especially your best friend Griffin. You walk to school with your dad and Tobin and walk home with me, cheerful the whole way. Last night, unprompted, you said, “In-person school is fun…but it’s really long.” It is a long school day for you; you were accustomed to finishing by about 1:30, so going until 3:00 is something new. Still, it’s not so bad, because our old rule was no recreational screen time until 3:00, the end of a traditional school day. Now you get to chill out with the iPad or the Switch as soon as you get home, so you feel pretty good about that.

Before the school year began, you got to do another big-kid thing: being part of a science experiment at the University. Both your big brothers had done the virtual reality road-crossing experiment, so when I saw a call out for test subjects of your age range, I asked if you wanted to do it. You accepted the challenge and had a good time. The test involves a simulated neighborhood street with cars that pass, and you have to decide whether or not you can cross safely. We did the set of road-crosses together, then I left the room and you did another set without me. I think the researchers are trying to determine how kids make choices with and without their parents. So far, you’ve never had to walk to or from school without a parent, but I trust that you are capable of doing it safely. While the cars in the experiment were digital and harmless, we’ve been taking a different route to and from school that doesn’t have much traffic.

You did a great job in the experiment, and more than anything, I was happy to see that it was no big deal for me to leave the room. We’ve been such a tight twosome for the last couple of years that I was curious as to whether you’d have separation anxiety. It was all totally fine, and when we were reunited at the end, you were excited and proud. Your favorite part was when the researcher let you get “hit” by a car at the end. You were quick to emphasize that she gave you permission to do it—you didn’t mess up in your assigned task. You also enjoyed the post-experiment frozen yogurt.

We got through almost two weeks of school before you got your first cold in a while. We were glad that testing confirmed it wasn’t COVID, but it’s run through all the kids in the family now and was kind of annoying. Your dad and I have managed to avoid it so far, probably due to the techniques we’ve learned during COVID times. I’ve been using a lot of disinfectant wipes on doorknobs, faucet handles, and light switches. While COVID isn’t so much surface-borne, we got well-versed in meticulously wiping things down before that fact was well-documented. Colds are definitely surface-borne, which is presumably how you got this one, since you wear a KF94 mask to school every day. We keep our homemade air purifier running most of the time, and I wore a mask when I snuggled with you at bedtime during the first week of your cold. It’s good practice for the day when one of us brings COVID home. Though we’re doing our best not to, it seems likely that it will happen eventually, and I want to have some good strategies in place to keep it from infecting the whole family.

Of course, vaccines are an important part of our defenses. You and Tobin got a first-generation booster a couple of weeks before school started, and the the older members of the family just got bivalent boosters. Once those are approved for your age group, you’ll be up. One positive to this pandemic is that shots have gotten pretty low-drama for you kids. It helps that the COVID vaccines are nearly painless, and you’re getting accustomed to them enough that it’s becoming a pretty small deal. And, like post-experiment frozen yogurt, post-vaccine ice cream is always a good motivator.

I’m so proud of the great attitude you’ve shown as you try new things this fall. School is going great, you’ve dived into Family Folk Machine, and you’re even getting braver about trying new foods. You weren’t quite as thrilled by the grape tomato as you were by the breaded chicken, but I’m glad you were willing to branch out. It’s so much fun watching you learn and grow. Even though I don’t get to see it happen on an hour-by-hour basis anymore, I still appreciate watching you face challenges and expand your experiences. You still seem like our baby, but you’re really developing a lot. Your vocabulary sometimes startles me, and I like watching you think through complicated problems. You’re a thinker for sure, and even though it’s sometimes hard for you to get a word in during dinner table conversations with your verbose siblings, your thoughts are usually interesting and well-considered.

Above: you had picked out a book for bedtime reading, and you claimed that I took so long finishing up my evening tasks that you fell asleep waiting for me.

Your current favorites: strawberry ice cream with chocolate syrup, chicken thighs, reading together at bedtime, telling me about the games and activities you do in school, attempting to recreate those activities at home, Kool-Aid, waffles, Word Girl, and generally being a sweetheart. I have a good anecdote about your kindness and consideration for others, but since it happened after your month birthday, I’ll save it for the next Callum Chronicle. For the time being, I’ll just say that you know how to get straight to my heart.

Love,

Mommy

Dear Artemis,

As I look through the pictures from this month, it’s hard to believe that your first day of high school was just a few weeks ago. Maybe it’s because marching band has given you early access to the space, but it seems like you’re well- and fully-integrated into City High. I attended your Back to School night last week, which involved going through your entire schedule and meeting each of your teachers. My largest impression was that the school is huge and crowded. I could barely bust through the congestion in the halls to get to the next classroom on time. I don’t think there were as many parents in attendance as their are kids present on a typical day, because none of your classrooms was full. Maybe the parents were not moving with purpose (this is a phrase your dad often uses to try to get you and your brothers to not dink around and get to where you need to be efficiently). It’s also quite a haul to get from your video production class, down in the dank bowels of the building where the arts wing is, all the way up to French class on the third floor. I need to start packing you bigger lunches to fuel all your intra-school energy expenditure.

As far as I can tell, you’re enjoying being a high schooler. You seem to really like a lot of your teachers. I was impressed by them as well—they seem to really care about their students and are invested in your success. You’ve also jumped into band life, not only by being part of marching band, but by joining jazz band as well. Previously you said you didn’t want to do it because it required getting up early, but once two of your good friends decided to join, you changed your literal and metaphorical tunes. I’m happy you made that choice. The City High music program is excellent, and I had so much fun going to the jazz band showcase with you last spring. It’s going to be even more fun when I see you there jazzing away on your trombone. The music program offers a variety of performances and trips, including a UK trip you could go on when you’re a little older. It’s funny to think that you might have an international trip over spring break, since I’m so used to planning our family’s vacations around our every-other-year trips to the Keys. I guess we’ll have to find a way to work them both into our lives.

Another requirement of marching band is participating in the clean-up efforts after a Hawkeye football game. You have to walk through an assigned section of a parking lot near the stadium and pick up game attendees’ garbage. The upside is that if you find anything good, you get to keep it. It’s not an easy job, and it requires getting up even earlier than you’ll have to for jazz band, but it’s a major fundraiser for the band program. I guess those fluffy feathers on your marching band hat don’t come cheap.

While COVID is by no means over, we seem to have transitioned back into a more-or-less normal way of life. All the kids are in school in-person now. You do wear a mask at school, which puts you in the minority, but I appreciate it. I don’t really understand why so many people are in such a hurry to toss masks aside. I get that they’re somewhat annoying to wear, but with high-quality masks, they offer a good amount of protection for a relatively small inconvenience. I really appreciate that you continue to do your best to protect our family. There are a whole lot of things in this world I can’t control at all, like the nuclear power plant in Ukraine that is in danger of getting blown apart. Every time I turn on NPR, they’re talking about that. Sometimes I have to switch to the classic rock station for a little mental health break.

You and your dad and I all got updated boosters recently, so that will give us some peace of mind as we move through the next months. It’s hard to know what the future will bring. Will the next variant cause relatively mild illness like the omicron variants? Will it be something more dangerous? Will vaccine technology move at a quick enough pace to continue to protect us? It’s hard to imagine that this huge part of our lives wasn’t even on our radar a few years ago, but we’re learning and adapting. We are back to most of our regular activities, often with some adjustments. Overall I’d say our gang is doing pretty well.

You’re a dedicated big sibling. You attended events for Tobin and Callum last weekend that I’m sure you would have preferred to skip, but you were kind and supportive. Callum completely idolizes you. You’re the first person he wants to impress at any opportunity. Just tonight at dinner, he was very proud that he ate a tomato, and he was hoping you saw him do it. You did not; it’s hard to get you to stick around the dinner table any longer than your food remains on your plate. Sometimes you flee so quickly I hardly notice you’re doing it until I hear a “Thanks for dinner, Mom” as you duck into the hallway. It’s nice that you thank me anyway. I like it when you linger, though. Tonight you told me some unusual things you learned in French class about how the numerical system works, and it was interesting to compare and contrast with Spanish and English. You’re always welcome to hang out after dinner and teach me things.

Your current favorites: Cheerios, root beer, pasta, Minecraft, holing up in your room, watching some Lord of the Rings-adjacent show with your dad, trading pop culture references with your American Studies teacher (she is also a fan of Psych and The Simpsons), and being the final word on the seasoning levels of my homemade tomato sauce. Tomato season is wrapping up around here, but I’ve got plenty of sauce in the freezer to keep your lycopene levels up for the rest of the year.

I’m so proud of you and glad that you’re finding your way in the high school scene. I know you face challenges, though you mostly decline to share them with me. I remind you frequently that I love you and that you’re important to me, so at least you have that behind you when things get difficult. When life’s hallways get crowded and no one seems to be moving with purpose, know that I’ll always elbow my way to you.

Love,

Mom