Dear Tobin,

We’re entering into the last month of summer and your last month as an eleven-year-old. You’ve spent most of the summer with friends, whether playing basketball and soccer outside, jumping on trampolines, going to the swimming pool, playing video games, or attending sleepovers. You going to sleepovers isn’t my favorite thing in the world, partly because I miss you and partly because of health anxiety. COVID isn’t over, and especially with Callum’s newly immunosuppressed status, colds and flu are just as big a problem. However, you are someone who could probably never be happy without lots of socializing, so I’ve been trying to calm down and let you do some unmasked hanging out. We got an air purifier for the room you and Callum share, and the plan is to have the two of you sleep in separate rooms if either of you is at all ill. It’s not easy for me, but I want you to have a fun and fulfilling life. We all have to bend sometimes.

It won’t be long before you start sixth grade. In fact, the back-to-school ice cream social is on your birthday, and the first day of school is just two days after that. It might not be as exciting as previous years, since you’ve been seeing your friends just about every day this summer anyway. Our school system is changing the year after next; it has been organized with students in kindergarten through sixth grade in the elementary schools and seventh and eighth graders in junior high. They’ll be moving to a middle school model with sixth grade in the junior high building, but not until after you’ve completed your sixth grade year. You’re pretty happy about that, and I’m glad for you too. You’ve gotten such a good friend group established over the last couple of years, you’ll surely relish being the top dogs in the elementary school. Plus, as you pointed out, you won’t have to be the youngest kids in the school next year. I’m sure it will be good times.

You’ve earned some money this summer doing science experiments. The picture above came from an experiment in the department of audiology. The researcher connected electrodes to your scalp (just with gel, no needles) and you heard a series of sounds through headphones. The electrodes communicated your brain activity to a computer that did some kind of analysis. The goal of the experiment was to learn about how people of different ages differentiate between similar sounds (e.g., p and b), with the long-term goal of making better hearing aids and cochlear implants. It’s a pretty well-paying gig for a kid, and you have told me that you want to do any other research opportunity that comes along. I just replied to another one today, so we’ll see how that pans out. You love accumulating money, though you haven’t decided yet what you’re saving up to buy. You mentioned something about a new gaming console, but I could see you changing your mind about the specifics between now and the time you earn enough money for it.

Our family vacation was a big deal. We don’t often make a major trip in the summer, as we usually save our money and energy for our Florida Keys trips every other spring. This year, though, we were invited to a family reunion in Ithaca, New York. You had a lot of fun getting to know cousins you hadn’t spent much time with before. It was a very outdoorsy trip, featuring lots of waterfalls and fresh-air time (actually kind of smokey-air, due to the Canadian wildfires). We also took side trips to the Corning Museum of Glass, where you got to design and help make a glass ornament, and to Niagara Falls. You kids all seemed to really enjoy the Maid of the Mist ride. I didn’t get any great pictures of the falls proper, because when we were very close to them on the boat, it was much too misty to take out my phone. We didn’t get too went thanks to the ponchos, and it was a lot of fun.

The ride home was a bit challenging due to a malfunctioning air conditioner in the van, but you kids all behaved very well and responded positively to frequent stops for slushies and stretches. We made it safely home, and you were ready to jump back into your regular summer friend hangouts almost immediately.

Another cousin-centric part of your summer was time with your Tennessee-based cousins. They don’t get up to Iowa much. We usually see them either by going to Tennessee or meeting in Missouri, but this time they made the trip. You loved having a person in the same house (your cousin Aleks) who was willing to play basketball with you at any moment. You had fun going to the baseball fields, making s’mores in Mubby and Skitter’s firepit, and sampling new sports drinks.

I can always count on you to have fun, especially when sports and treats and friends are involved. I love your cheerful nature and constant state of readiness for action and excitement. Sometimes it’s tiring, which is why it’s helpful that you get along so well with cousins and other kids. Whenever I hear balls banging around and people shouting in the basement, I can be sure it’s because you’ve talked Callum into a game of Hamper Ball.

Your current favorites: helping me cook and trying new foods, going to the pool, sleepovers, video games (alone and networked with your friends), special lunch dates downtown with food from Z’Marik’s, frozen yogurt, audiobooks, and sleeping in. You sometimes want to wake up early to play online games with your friends, but more often lately you’ve been enjoying a teenage schedule.

You’ve had a heck of a summer, and I hope you enjoy the last weeks of it, as well as your last weeks of being eleven. I couldn’t ask for a better tween.

Love,

Mom

Dear Callum,

I am pleased to report that this month has been pretty darn fun. You started your Humira shots for Crohn’s Disease (more on that below), you finished out your baseball season, and we went on an epic road trip. You’ve been enjoying going to your “camp” a couple of mornings a week, which is a Parks & Rec-sponsored playgroup in the park right by our house. You, a teenage counselor two, and other neighborhood kids make crafts, play games, and chat. You weren’t shy about attending at all, even though it’s been two years since you did it. Our park was under construction last summer, so they didn’t hold the camp there, but you were ready to bounce right back as if no time had passed. You’re brave about meeting the counselors, even though they change frequently. You get along with the other kids. I’m so glad your return to pretty-much-normal life has gone so smoothly. I credit your wonderful second grade teacher, Ms. Hill, with guiding into socialization. I’m confident that the next school year will go well for you too.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves—we’re not done with summer yet. You made big gains in baseball this year, becoming a consistent hitter and a valuable member of the Diamondbacks. You also had a lot of fun hanging out after your games to watch Tobin play. More often, you hung out with your friends who also had big brothers playing. You also enjoyed quite a few concession stand snacks. You really enjoyed the pizza, popcorn, and Snickers bars.

Unfortunately, we had to miss tournament week in baseball, because our vacation eastward was set to begin. It was a family reunion for my cousins, their kids, and some aunts and uncles. You jumped right in and had fun getting to know some cousins you hadn’t spent much time with before, especially cousins Torin and Evan. I hope we can make another trip out to the Ithaca area, because there was so much to see and do. We saw many waterfalls, frolicked in a beautiful swimming hole, played games in Uncle Al and Aunt Barb’s amazing basement, and got a sense of Ithaca as a community. After we got done with the family time in Ithaca, we took a day trip to Corning to see the Corning Museum of Glass. Your favorite part of that day, besides the pizza and French fries from the museum café, was the glass-making activity. Under the guidance of an instructor, you designed and blew a glass holiday ornament. You and your siblings so enjoy the ritual of decorating the Christmas tree every year. I know it’s going to be extra special as you remember our trip to New York when you hang our ornament.

We had the ornaments shipped to our house, because they were too hot to take home the same day, and it didn’t work in our travel plans to stop by Corning again the following day. When they arrived, you were very pleased to see the beautiful blue and purple ornament you designed, but you were even more excited about the cornstarch-based packing peanuts included in the package.You took it upon yourself to design and create a packing peanut cube. I haven’t figured out what we’re going to do with that yet, but it might end up on the Christmas tree as well.

Toward the end of our trip, you decided you want to become ambidextrous. You spent a lot of our last night and much of the drive home writing “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” with your left hand. It’s a good thing we got a bunch of free souvenir postcards with our admission to the Maid of the Mist in Niagara Falls, because you used just about every bit of scrap paper we could find. You also made thorough use of the notepad that was in our hotel room in Erie, Pennsylvania. I hope the skill proves useful for you in some way. It was a long, hot drive home, because the air conditioning stopped working in the van we had borrowed, but you didn’t complain. I guess all that left-handed writing kept your mind occupied.

An important development for you this month was starting your Humira shots. You got your first one at the Children’s Hospital before we left. Your dad has volunteered to be the main shot-giver in the family, though I imagine I will need to learn to do it as well. The specialty pharmacist walked your dad through it the first time. He did a good job, but you were not so happy about it. The needle is small and the poke is shallow, just into the fat under your skin. However, you said the medicine felt like “burning hot needles” as it went into you. The first dose was eighty milligrams, and we were optimistic that the second dose would be easier, as it was only forty milligrams. Your dad did that one at home, and you agreed that it wasn’t very bad. The anticipation was a lot worse than the actual injection. Moving forward, your doses will only be twenty milligrams, so we hope that will be easier still. I don’t like seeing you scared and stressed, so I hope you’ll get more and more used to the shots and confident that they’re not very painful.

The doctors told us it could take eight to twelve weeks to see any improvement, but I feel like you might already be feeling results. One of your more troubling symptoms was sores in your mouth. We’d tried several strategies to address it, like cutting out citrus (a big bummer for a kid who loves orange slices, lemonade, and orange juice) and switching to a toothpaste with no sodium lauryl sulfate. Once we got the Crohn’s diagnosis and learned that mouth sores can be part of Crohn’s disease, we were hopeful that your mouth sores would improve too. Well, they already have. That’s made your teeth-brushing a lot easier, and you’re back to enjoying your favorite citrus foods and beverages. I told you we could go back to Crest Kids or whatever normal toothpaste you used to use, but you said you prefer the (more expensive) SLS-free kind. So it goes.

You’re the kind of person who wants a lot of advanced notice for things. We recently had a follow-up visit with your gastroenterologist, and she suggested getting you a pneumonia vaccine then and there. The Crohn’s medication make you immunosuppressed, so you are more susceptible to pneumonia. Also, the typical pneumonia vaccine contains a live virus, and you are no longer eligible for that type of vaccine. You were not okay with the idea of having a shot sprung on you, but your doctor was very understanding and said it was fine for you to get it at your next appointment with your pediatrician. That’s next month, so you’ll have some time to get used to the idea.

Your current favorites: watching fishing videos on YouTube, practicing Spanish and beginning Russian on DuoLingo, playing with friends and cousins, mini muffins, accumulating sticks, referring to your dad and me as “Denny” and “Aprille” when speaking to others (e.g., you asked your gastroenterologist, “Have you met Denny?”), singing and dancing, and going around shirtless. You’re having a ton of fun this summer, and I’m so glad your health is improving and you’re living a fantastic life.

Love,

Mom

My dear Artie-heartie,

You’re on your final dwindling weeks of lazy summer. In just a couple of weeks, the busy time will begin, with band camp, Mubby/Skitter week, and Miniatures Camp on the horizon. After that, you’ll barely have time to catch your breath before school starts in the end of August. Fortunately, you’ve been doing a lot of solid resting up to this point in the summer. I hope you’re thoroughly recharged.

We recently got home from our big family summer vacation, a road trip to Ithaca, New York. The primary purpose of the trip was to reunite with some of my extended family. That was lots of fun for me but slightly less so for you, as you’re not the most social of people. I think it was also hard because it was a big group of mostly strangers, and you felt awkward and uncomfortable with the cousins who were around your age. After a while you warmed up a bit, especially after getting acquainted with my aunt and uncle’s dogs. You were also a sweet caretaker to some of the littler kids. I understand that it’s hard to find common ground with people when you feel like an outsider. I’ve felt that way many, many times before. It’s also hard when you’re an introvert and have to spend so much of your energy trying to make conversation with strangers. I hope, as you grow, that you find ways to address those feelings of discomfort and power through them. I’m sure a lot of your cousins would have enjoyed getting to know you better.

You seemed to have fun in the parts of the trip that required less intense socialization. We visited a beautiful natural area called First Dam that had a couple of waterfalls and swimming hole. I wished we’d brought water shoes, because the bottom was pretty rocky. You were brave, though, and you made it all the way across to the far side and stood under the waterfall.

After we finished up the family togetherness in Ithaca, we took a couple of side trips to the Corning Museum of Glass and Niagara Falls. I think you had a lot of fun at those locations. The Corning Museum of Glass excursion was your dad’s idea, but we all ended up enjoying it. We saw a lot of interesting modern and ancient glasswork, and you especially liked a glass chess set you saw displayed. You and your siblings also did an ornament-making project, in which you designed and helped make a blown-glass holiday ornament. They were too hot to take home the same day, so we had them shipped to our house. They arrived a few days ago, and I was so impressed with how they turned out. They’re very beautiful, and I know we’ll enjoy getting them out to hang on the Christmas tree every year. They’re quite heavy and substantial, so we’ll have to be extra careful to hang them on a strong branch.

Niagara Falls was fun, and everyone really got a kick out of the ride on the Maid of the Mist. I didn’t get any pictures from the most dramatic moments, because we were getting sprayed way too much by the giant waterfalls to risk taking out my phone. We all had a good time, though the Canadian wildfire smoke was most noticeable there. From what I understand, it drifted to our home city in a really bad way while we were gone, and we were fortunate to be elsewhere.

The only bad part of the trip was that right around Niagara Falls, the air conditioning in Skitter’s van stopped working. We had been enjoying the spacious luxury of the van for most of the trip, and aside from a few periods of heavy rain, it was an easy drive to Ithaca. Those two hours between Niagara Falls and Erie, Pennsylvania, were pretty challenging. The sun was beating down on my through the windshield as we headed west into the sunset, and we didn’t want the windows open too much due to the poor air quality. Once we arrived in Erie, your dad did some calling around to see if anyone could fix it for us, but no one could get us in. Luckily, the rest of the drive featured more cloud cover and less smoke in the air, so it was easier to find moderate comfort. Also luckily, the fix for the air conditioning wasn’t too complicated or expensive. You and your siblings did remarkably well. I credit the extra space provided by the van. You didn’t bicker or squabble at all. We listened to audiobooks and made frequent stops for cold beverages and snacks, and we all survived.

Your current favorites: cream soda, pasta, Chex Mix, online chess, the TV show Lost (which I enjoy discussing with you, but you’re way ahead of me in the rewatch schedule), making and playing Scratch games, ice cream, stay up late and sleeping in late.

I hope you enjoy your last couple of weeks of relaxation before things start getting busy again. I like having you around, though I also acknowledge that it’s good for you to be out doing things. You are not exactly excited about the outdoorsiness and physical challenge that come with band camp, but I know you’ll be glad you did them (eventually, maybe many years in the future).

Love,

Mom

Chile colorado, lightly adapted from Rick Martinez via Bon Appetit.

• 5 ancho chiles
• 2 pasilla chiles
• 2 guajillo chiles
• 3 cups chicken broth (can be partially water)

Remove stems and seeds from chiles. Place them in a heatproof bowl (e.g., heavy glass or ceramic). Boil the chicken broth and pour the hot broth over the chiles. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 30 minutes. Once softened, puree the whole mixture in the food processor or blender (may need multiple batches for the food processor). Strain and set aside. This part may be done in advance.

• 2 pounds chuck roast or pork shoulder, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• about 6 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon of ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons of chopped fresh sage
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano
• 5 cups chicken broth (can be partially water or beef stock)
• S&P

Salt and pepper the meat. Brown in a big Dutch oven in a little vegetable oil. Add garlic, herbs, and spices and saute for a minute or two until very fragrant. Add chicken stock and simmer, uncovered, for about an hour. Add chile puree and simmer for another 45 minutes until the sauce is a deep red-brown. Add salt and pepper as desired.