Dear Tobin,

Once again, you have filled the month with enthusiasm and brightness. I can always count on you to have a project, an idea, some new hobby or interest. Sometimes your passions align with holidays, which is handy for gift-giving, but other times they fade before whatever related item I chose has shipped. For that reason, the Jurassic Park t-shirt I ordered for you is going straight into your dresser as soon as it arrives, rather than waiting for Christmas.

We watched the original Jurassic Park movie for a family movie night a couple of weeks ago, and you really got excited about the idea. You love family movie nights in general, especially because you get to spread out a blanket and have popcorn downstairs, which is typically not allowed in an effort to preserve the new carpet. This time, the movie was a particularly big hit with you. You’ve watched two of the sequels already and started reading the book on your Kindle. I read that book when I was in high school, so I wondered if it would be too challenging for you, but you seem to really be enjoying it. It might help that you’ve seen the movie first, so you have a general familiarity with the concepts. I don’t think it’s a great work of science or literature, but maybe it will push you into an area of further exploration. None of you kids ever got as excited about dinosaurs as I was when I was young, so perhaps now is the moment that we can ooh and aah at dinosaur skeletons in a museum together.

Halloween was good fun as usual. I’m glad you’re still enthusiastic about Halloween events and like homemade costumes. This year you chose to be a Tusken Raider, which I learned is a Star Wars character and totally unrelated to the north of Italy. I spent a lot of time and hot glue making you a costume, and I think it turned out pretty darn well. You were very excited about it and appreciative. It was very fun to collaborate with you on that project, comparing different inspiration photos and assessing materials and strategies. Our kitchen island was covered in scraps of fabric, craft foam, toilet paper rolls, and dabs of paint for several weeks.

Your school doesn’t do Halloween parties anymore, which is a bummer, but you still got to trick or treat in the neighborhood and go to a trunk-or-treat event sponsored by your dad’s workplace. I doubt you would ever say you got enough candy, but you certainly got a respectable quantity. You and Callum have an ongoing conversation about how you would rate and rank the various candies you received. You’re a big Butterfinger fan.

The rest of the fall has been busy as usual, with soccer, Family Folk Machine, playing saxophone in the school band, and bass lessons. You had been doing your bass lessons on Zoom, but you’re going to switch to in-person starting next week. It’s a bigger hassle for me, since your teacher’s studio is in Coralville, which means traffic and winter driving. You prefer in-person lessons, though, and I want to do what I can to make your music-learning experience the best it can be. You’ll have your first school band concert in a couple of weeks. It will probably be a shock for us audience members, because we’ve grown accustomed to the level of performance that the high school band provides. Listening to a bunch of fifth graders who have been playing their instruments for two months might be a big jarring. In any case, I’m proud of you for starting your saxophone journey. It’s hard to say whether you’ll continue with it like Art has; I could see you putting your focus into sports or other activities rather than music. Still, I’m glad you’re part of it and getting the experience.

We had your school conference recently, and your teacher said she loves having you in her class. She mentioned that you’re always willing to volunteer to answer a question or explain a problem in front of the class. You’re also getting better about not being too talkative at inappropriate times. One comment she made that made especially glad was how caring you are. She has two little kids, and one had been sick recently. She said that you often asked how he was doing and really seemed concerned about him (he’s okay now). Caring about others is a fundamental quality I want my kids to have, and it made me so proud to know you’re displaying that.

Another major family accomplishment this month was the making of New York style pizza. You found a YouTube video that described a method and recipe, and we gathered up the ingredients and made it happen. We ended up having to combine a couple of different techniques due to local availability of certain ingredients and hardware. It was a great success. The pizza was delicious, the process was fun, and most of the family got involved. I’ve been impressed lately with your interest in food, both from the perspectives of trying new foods and being part of the cooking process. It’s nice to see you being brave about new flavors and wanting to be on the creative end as well. You’re my kitchen buddy, and I love that about you.

Your current favorites: board games, Jurassic Park, YouTube, playing with your friends, playing outside, audiobooks, grey t-shirts and your fuzzy blue hoodie, being silly and goofy, and watching shows with your dad. You and your siblings verbally spar a lot, but it’s almost always good-natured. You don’t let things get you down too much, and your low moments never last long. I can always count on a Tobin smile.

I love you so much, my sunshine son.

Love,

Mom

Make the dough at least 24 hours in advance, up to 7 days in advance:

2 1/4 cups (530 ml) warm water (110-115F)
1 tbsp sugar (12g) sugar
1 tbsp (9g) active dry yeast
2 tbsp (30 ml) olive oil
1 tbsp (18 g) kosher salt
5 cups (600g) bread flour, plus more for working the dough
additional oil for greasing the dough cornmeal, semolina flour, or coarse-ground whole wheat flour for dusting

Sauce, Pastene version:

1 28 oz (828 ml) can Pastene Kitchen ready crushed tomatoes
2-4 tbsp (30-60 ml) olive oil
1 tsp (4g) sugar
2 tsp dried oregano

Sauce, San Marzano version:

1 28-ounce can whole San Marzano tomatoes (we used Cento brand)
¼ cup olive oil
½ teaspoon sugar, or more to taste
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 tablespoons tomato paste

Remove tomatoes from their canning liquid and discard the liquid (only for San Marzano version). Squish or blend the tomatoes until smooth. Add remaining ingredients and mix until smooth. Makes enough for four pizzas.

Cheese:

24-32 oz (680-910 g) whole-milk, low-moisture mozzarella (check the Co-op)
freshly grated (6-8 oz / 170-225 g per pizza) grated parmesan for dusting (maybe 10 g per pizza?)

Toppings of choice

Method:

Start the dough by combining the water, sugar and yeast in a large bowl and let sit for a few minutes. If the yeast goes foamy, it’s alive and you’re good to proceed (if it doesn’t, it’s dead and you need new yeast). Add the olive oil and salt and 5 cups (600g) of bread flour. Knead in stand mixer with dough hook. Add just enough additional flour to keep the dough workable (i.e. not too sticky) and kneed until you can stretch some of the dough into a thin sheet without it tearing. This took about 10 minutes on medium speed.

Divide the dough into four equal balls and put them in four containers (ideally glass) and lightly coat the balls and the interior of their containers with olive oil. Cover, and either rise at room temperature for two hours, or put them in the refrigerator and let them rise for 1-7 days.

When ready to bake, preheat oven on convection roast setting to 550F and let the pizza stone or steel heat for at least 1 hour.

Liberally dust a pizza peel with cornmeal (or something similar). Take the cold dough out of the fridge and dust it in flour. Stretch to the widest size and shape that will fit on your peel and stone/steel. Top with just enough sauce to lightly coat the surface. Dust the sauce layer with parmesan, then cover with the mozzarella. Transfer the pizza to the stone/steel and bake until the crust is well-browned and the cheese has browned a bit (but, ideally, has not started oozing out an orange grease layer), 6-7 minutes.

Dear Callum,

You are such a smart and funny little guy. You’ve really been thriving at in-person school. Your dad asked you the other day whether you prefer online or in-person, and you said you like school so much that “Sometimes I wish recess would end so I can get back to learning.” You’ve made good friends, aced every spelling test you’ve had, and been accepted into the enrichment program. You were so excited to tell me when I picked you up from school the first day you had enrichment class. Later, when we were talking to your dad, I suggested that you tell him your big news. You said, “I’m in enrichment! And we had a sub for P.E.!”

You’ve really been enjoying all the special activities and events that come with in-person school. Your class got to travel to another local school to join other second-graders as a visiting author-illustrator spoke. Her name is Juana Martínez-Neal, and you were so inspired by her that you decided you also want to be an author-illustrator. You drew a whole bunch of pictures of the same thing, the titular character from Martínez-Neal’s book How Alma Got Her Name. I don’t know if repeating the same drawing was a technique Ms. Martínez-Neal told you about in her talk, like maybe as a way to build consistency, but it’s certainly a practice you embraced. You’ve also been interested in painting and writing in your journal lately, so I guess you’re on track for the author-illustrator life.

You’ve been having a great time being part of Family Folk Machine. You had a special set of ukulele lessons as part of the group’s educational component, and you were a proud singer at our concert. When your siblings were your age, they were already taking piano lessons. That all got horked up by the pandemic, and their beloved piano teacher no longer offers lessons. However, Tobin’s bass teacher also teaches other stringed instruments, so maybe a higher-quality ukulele and some lessons on that could be in your future. You did a great job with your introductory skills, and it would be fun to see and hear you strumming away. Plus, a ukulele is a lot easier to toss into the car than a trombone or saxophone or piano. You could be very entertaining at family gatherings.

Halloween was a good time. You came up with the idea of being a plague doctor and never swayed from it. We talked about how they looked scary but they were actually helpers, and you found the idea very appealing. I think the image has been floating around popular culture in these pandemic years, though I don’t know exactly where you first saw them. I found a pattern to make a plague doctor mask, and between that and a repurposed Hogwarts robe, you were very cute and creepy. “They won’t know if I’m a trick or a treat!” you said.

You and Tobin attended a trunk-or-treat event hosted by your dad’s workplace, and you also went around the neighborhood. You even went to the house on the far end of our street that always goes all-out in terms of yard decorations. It’s out of our usual walking zone, so we’d never visited it before, but you and Tobin and your dad made a special trip. I stayed home with Artemis to answer the door, but I bet it was fun to get an up-close view of all the skeletons and inflatables we’d driven by so many times.

You are a kind and tender-hearted little pup. The other night at bedtime, I was about to start our nightly ritual of saying goodnight to a stuffed animal of your choosing. That day, you had gotten a special temporary tattoo as some kind of reward in school, and you were really excited about it. I suggested that I could say goodnight to your lizard tattoo. That was partly because the ritual involves me giving the selected stuffed animal several kisses, and it usually happens after I’ve put on my thick overnight lip balm. Things can get linty. Kissing your forearm sounded like a better proposition. I asked you your lizard tattoo’s name, and you got a little teary and said you didn’t want to name it, because that would make it sadder when it comes off. Perhaps I overemphasized its temporary nature when we were talking about the difference between tattoo-gun tattoos and the rub-on kind popular among elementary schoolers. I did eventually get you to commit to the name Flame with the promise that we could get more temporary tattoos in the future. I’ll have to put those on your Christmas and birthday lists.

You’re also very kind and sweet to me. You like to keep a water bottle by your bed, and a couple of nights ago I refilled the water before you asked me to. When you found that it was full of fresh, icy water, you said, “I really appreciate you filling my water bottle.” Then you looked at me earnestly and said, “I really appreciate your existence.”

Your current favorites: Twix bars from your dwindling Halloween stash, playing board games, your school friends (especially Connor, Griffin, and Kash), The Magic Tree House and Humphrey book series, making Scratch games with Artemis, waffles with butter and syrup, chicken thighs, steak, six centimeters of Kool-Aid or lemonade with ice, dancing and skipping everywhere you need to go rather than walking, and being a snuggly little cutie-pie.

I’m so proud of how well you’ve adjusted to the new challenges in-person second grade has brought. You’re a joy and a great source of laughter. Have a good month, my sweet Callum.

Love,

Mommy

Dear Artie-heartie,

A frequent sight this month has been you and Callum working together on computer programming. You introduced him to a simple coding language called Scratch, and you two have been having a lot of fun together. He really feels excited and special to do something like that with you, and you seem to enjoy it as well. He’s made quite a few different games with your guidance. My favorite one was a maze. I thought I had it solved, but then it turned that finding the treasure chest was not enough—I had to find the key as well. You both got a kick out of my dismay at the false success.

You’re nearing the end of the first trimester of school, and you seem to be doing very well. Your grades are solid, you’ve been accepted into Honors English for the coming trimester, and marching band was a mostly good experience. You claim to be relieved it’s over, and I can understand why the actual football game parts wouldn’t be so fun. We had a pretty mild fall, and I don’t think you had any game nights that were too miserable, but it wouldn’t be my choice for a Friday night activity either. We did attend a couple of games to watch you play, and that part was fun, but I prefer a nice auditorium. You start jazz band this month, and that will probably be more your speed. I’m looking forward to hearing your jazz trombone stylings. As you get further into the high school band trajectory, you’ll have more opportunities to go on small- and large-scale trips for band contests and events. I bet you’ll enjoy that. Trips were always the most fun part of school activities for me, and I hope you continue to develop friendships with fellow band members.

You also seem to be really enjoying your French class. You usually walk home from school, but now and then I pick you up. French class is your last period of the day, so you always have a tête plein de français at those moments. The other day, you were really excited to tell me that you’re learning to conjugate -er verbs. I told you that I’d never met anyone else who gets worked up about verb conjugations. I don’t know if that’s strictly true, as there are a lot of language nerds in my milieu, but it’s the first time it’s come up in my immediate family. I enjoy hearing about the French you’re learning. It’s fun to share an area of interest. I compare it to analogous Spanish, you call me une espèce d’andouille, and we both chuckle. I’ve decided that you’ll be in charge of the France segment of the Great Clarke-Crall European Vacation, which for the moment exists only in our dreams.

Next month you’ll have your biannual x-ray and appointment with orthopaedics to address your scoliosis. It will be interesting to see whether our cessation of physical therapy has made any difference in your progress. You’ve certainly been growing, and I’m very proud to say that you’re vigilant about wearing your brace. I never have to nag you about wearing it, and you never complain. You do a good job making up any hours that you miss due to band or other schedule irregularities. I hope we get the news that you’re still on track to developing a fully-grown spine that sits within the normal range.

I got a call from the office that did your parotid gland surgery over the summer checking on your progress and recovery. The fact of your surgery had almost completely disappeared from my radar. It was a pretty big deal for our family at the time, but the whole thing went so well that I had almost forgotten about it. You never had any trouble playing trombone afterward, and your scar is only visible if you really look for it.

This was the first year you didn’t do anything for Halloween. In past years, you went trick-or-treating, but this time you stayed home with me and passed out candy to the neighborhood kids. You were so sweet to them, asking about their costumes and encouraging them to grab another mini Twix. You still had fun carving your pumpkin, anyway. It’s nice that you’re old enough to wield a knife responsibly.

You currently hold the position that you don’t want kids, but considering how good you are with Callum and how well you interacted with the trick-or-treaters, I hope you change your mind. Of course, you haven’t had a haircut since third grade, so you’ve been known to cling to ideas past their expiration date. On the other hand, your wild head of hair is part of what makes your surgery scar less detectable. I suppose that supports your case for haircut evasion.

Overall, you’ve seemed pretty happy and pleasant to be around this month. Your dad and I give you pep talks most mornings before school, encouraging you to take risks, explore, reach out to new people, and work toward success. They’re goofy and self-effacing, but I hope you take a little something from them. I appreciate the few minutes I get with you in the morning after the younger kids have gone to school. I hope laughing at our silly pep talks sets your day in a positive direction.

Your current favorites: wearing comfortable pants (sweatpants or pajama pants), pasta with tomato sauce, root beer and cream soda, Minecraft, Dungeons & Dragons, escaping from family cocktail hour as soon as you’ve finished your beverage, Doritos, Honey Nut Cheerios, and hanging out in your room.

Your smile makes me smile.

Love,

Mom