Dear Callum,

One of my favorite moments of every day is when you burst into the room (whether from getting up in the morning or coming in from playing outside) and shout, “It’s your little cutie!”  How could a person possibly resist scooping you up into a big hug after an entrance like that?  Miles barely lets me get near him anymore, so I know my cuddling days are numbered.  That’s the best part of being home together all the time:  in a way, I cheated the universe out of an extra few months with you.  I know you miss your friends and teachers, and having Zoom sessions with him helps fill that void, but I also like that you flop down onto my lap and do the meeting from there.

A couple of nights ago, I was giving you a post-bath hug, and I said, “I’m so glad you’re my baby boy.”  Nevermind the fact that a five-year-old is not a baby by most definitions; as the occupier of the littlest guy in the family position, you’re doomed to always be my baby to some extent.  You hugged me back and said, “I’m so glad you’re my baby boy.”  I laughed and said, “I’m your baby boy?”  You clarified:  “I mean baby like sweetheart.”  That’s good enough for me.

You have such a good balance of sociability and contentment being on your own.  You play well with both your brothers in very different ways.  You often play Beyblades with Tobin, a game that’s not violent exactly but does involve launching metal and plastic spinning tops at each other with the goal of making your opponent’s top explode.  It seems like when you two play together, someone ends up crying.  When I suggest that perhaps you should take a break, you both insist through your tears that you’re having lots of fun.  With Miles, you’re more likely to end up reading a book or playing a game he designed.  He makes treasure hunts for you, and just today he designed a game of Clue with the theme of the Berenstain Bears books.  I had a work-related Zoom this afternoon, so you guys were under orders not to bother me.  After it was done, I checked on you, and you were excited to tell me about playing Miles’s special Clue game.  I’m so glad you guys have each other.

Sometime, though, your brothers want to do things on their own.  When it’s been suspiciously quiet for too long, I go and check on you, and 90% of the time you’re just sitting on the floor, playing with your toys.  I remember when you were just a baby, we went to visit Mubby and Skitter, and Mubby was still at work when we arrived.  She had thoughtfully set out a basket of baby toys in the Great Room, so I got some out for you and put you on the floor.  You couldn’t crawl yet, so you must have been pretty young.  Your brothers ran off to play somewhere else, and Skitter and your dad and I sat around the table in the Great Room.  Skitter marveled at how well you entertained yourself, just examining and playing with the toys without needing anyone’s attention.  I don’t know if that’s a basic part of your personality or if it comes from being a third-born child—maybe you learned early to cherish any alone time you could get.

This time of year is a double-edged sword for you.  The weather is finally getting nice enough that you can play outside, and you love helping me garden, running around the park, and riding your bike on the path.  Tobin has been especially nice about taking you out to ride.  The two of you race down the path, Tobin on his skateboard and you on your Strider bike.  You’ve gotten great at riding.  You’re getting better at coasting with your feet up and handling the steering.  Our path gets pretty busy on evenings and weekends, but the middle of the day isn’t too bad.  Both of you  do a good job about vacating the path and pulling over onto the sidewalk when a person passes.  The bad news is that whatever blooms in May wreaks havoc on your eyes.  If we’re strict with the medicine and hygiene regimen, it’s fairly manageable, but some days you’re a miserable, puffy-eyed little pup.  I did manage to get your prescription eyedrops into your eyes on one particularly bad night, but we save that battle for truly dire emergencies.

One fun thing we did recently was recreate a treat we saw one of our favorite YouTubers make:  kohakutou, or Japanese-inspired edible crystals.  It was fun to make them together, and it was even more fun to see how excited you were to check them every day.  They required several days to develop a crispy crust, and you took such joy in monitoring them as they developed.  There was a lot of taste-testing involved.  I posted about our project in Facebook, and a couple of our friends tried it too.  I guess you started a trend.

It’s really great having the extra time to do things like that with you.  It’s the sort of thing that normally would have ended up on our summer activity list, but we got a jump start on it this year.  We’ll have to find even more things like that to do as the summer progresses, because we probably won’t be doing much our usual adventures, like going to the library, the trampoline park, the frozen yogurt place, or the splash pad.  I anticipate a lot of time running through the sprinkler (though we have a lot less backyard than usual), sidewalk chalk drawing, and squeezing of lemons for homemade lemonade.

Your current favorites:  buttered toast, oranges, grapes, “wavily” potato chips, Wild Kratts, playing Beyblades, watering the garden, looking at your puppy calendar, sleeping in your Nemo sleep sack, and taking baths (which is fortunate, considering how important they are for allergen management).  Your hair is starting to get a little wild, but you have joined in on the family trend of resisting haircuts, and I don’t even have a balloon to use as a bribe like the haircut place does.

Thank you for being such a loving, sweet little guy.  I’ll be your baby boy as long as you’ll let me, and being with you is the best part of this whole crazy time.  I love you so much.

Love,

Mommy