Dear Callum,

Hello, my little sunshine boy. You are officially a kindergartner now. You’re perfectly pleased to be doing it online, since you’re more comfortable with a screen than with strangers anyway.  You were okay with starting out the school year on your first Zoom session, but you wanted to be sure that I would be there with you. As the first week of school progressed, we got better at it, and now it’s going pretty smoothly.  I was working from home on Friday, so your dad handled getting you into your Zoom sessions, and he ran into a few snags, but I’m sure as the year moves along, we’ll all get it sorted out.  There are a lot of moving parts in the online education world, and it takes a lot of everyone working together and getting everything right.  That’s hard when the technologies are new to the parents and teachers, the schedule is new to the district, and the kindergartners are new to everything. But we are doing fine.

You surprised me the other night by pointing to a word on your calendar and saying, “Does that say Sunday?” It did, in fact. I asked you how you knew that, and you said, “I just did.” We worked on sounding out some more words on the calendar, and Thursday was a little tricky, not to mention Wednesday. Maybe we should find another reading primer.

Backing up a bit, we finished out the summer with some good fun in Ames before we headed back home.  You had a lot of fun playing with water, sometimes with squirters, sometimes with splort balls, sometimes just by dunking your head in a bucket. You’re used to getting wet, since your allergies are so bad that a nightly bath with full hair-wash is a step we can’t skip. You didn’t catch on to playing poker as much as your brothers did, so sometimes when the rest of the gang was playing cards, you’d just entertain yourself in the back yard.  I appreciate how well you can find interesting things to do on your own. I remember doing that when I was a kid, too, mostly because I didn’t get a sibling until I was six.  You don’t know what a world without siblings is like, but maybe that is part of your motivation for enjoying alone time now and then.

You love mimicking your brothers, which makes you say funny things I’m not sure you fully understand (and maybe I don’t fully understand).  You yell “Ya boy!” at semi-opportune times, you describe things as “clutch,” and you can’t understand why your kindergarten teacher wouldn’t want to stop what she’s doing on Zoom and meet Miles and Tobin. I’m so glad the three of you have each other during this sometimes-lonely period, because things are never truly lonely around here.  It’s not quite the same as being in a class full of other kindergartners, but you learn a lot about human interaction from living with them.

One of the best surprises of the first day of school was finding out that your beloved Ms. Dee is an assistant in your online classroom.  It’s not the same as being able to hug her and talk to her every day, but seeing her smiling face is a big plus for you.  I don’t have any way of proving this, but based on her reaction to seeing you when you logged in for the first time (delighted, but not surprised), something tells me she might have requested to be with your class. Before we knew that COVID-19 classes in our community were going to skyrocket, mostly due to the poor choices of many university students, I had assuaged some of your kindergarten nervousness by promising that you’d still see Ms. Dee around sometimes. I’m happy I got to keep that promise in a way even though you see her online. Even if she’s retired from teaching by the time it’s safe to spend time together again, we’ll find a way.

I remember, before I had kids, I read a letter in an advice column asking how often it was appropriate to change nannies. The advice seeker assumed it was natural and reasonable not to want her kids to get too attached to a nanny, for fear that they wouldn’t love her as much.  I remember thinking that was a strange perspective, and now, it’s unfathomable. Anyone who makes you feel loved, safe, and comfortable is someone I want in your life. I never doubt for a minute that you and I love each other, and I can’t imagine feeling jealous of anyone who brings more care into your world.

Your current favorites: Dreambox (a school math program that has a video game aesthetic that really motivates you), square cheese, playing games with your brothers, dancing like a maniac, and getting outside.  We had a rainy week, but it’s nice out today, and you spend a lot of time helping your dad clean up our yard. The upcoming week is supposed to be nice, so I hope we can get outside a lot.  It was wonderful to get down to the creek last weekend, and I anticipate doing that again before the true fall chill sets in.

You’re a joy, my sweet Callum. Thank you for your flexibility and growth. I love you so much.

Love,

Mommy