Dear Callum,

This month has been a time of major growth for you. As I was telling your dad the other day, as much as I hate COVID-19 and the devastation it has caused our state, country, and planet, it has been a real gift to spend this time watching you learn.

I hear a lot of people complaining about online education, how it’s less than ideal in X, Y, or Z way. Due to skyrocketing cases, even the families who chose “hybrid” (in-person part time) are going all-online next week, and boy are some people crabby about it. I acknowledge that it’s not perfect, and you’re not really getting the kindergarten experience that your brothers got. It’s hard for a teacher to forge bonds with kids and even harder for kids to get to know each other, but you are doing great. The curriculum is more creative and varied than anything I could come up with on my own, and I am so grateful to the educators who developed it. You love the SuperKids, a team of characters that are part of your Language Arts program. You thought you were going to move onto your next SuperKid today, but it turns out it’s not until tomorrow, and you were so disappointed. I know you’ll be enthusiastic about tomorrow’s activities.

You are truly learning to read, sounding out words and remembering exception cases like double-o’s and special letter combinations. You light up when you succeed at reading something, and I’m so proud seeing how proud you are of yourself. You’re doing really well in math, too. You use Dreambox, another online program that teaches math concepts in ways I never would have thought of. Yesterday you asked for my help on a particularly tricky exercise—a visual illustration (in a ten-frame) of a two-digit number flashed on the screen briefly, and you had to choose the correct Arabic numeral and then reconstruct the ten-frame. Dreambox is self-paced, and that’s much more challenging than what you’re doing in class. It wasn’t easy for you at first, but once you got the hang of it, you did so well. You even got the concept that it’s more efficient to make the number eight by moving a ten-piece unit and subtracting two rather than building it one-by-one. I’m sure if I read this in a year I’ll have no idea what I was talking about, but the upshot is that online education is working. You’re learning and having fun, and I really enjoy being there to watch it happen.

Getting up in the morning isn’t always easy for you, and your dad is a little sad that you haven’t wanted to do big chair time with him. That’s something both your brothers did as he hauled them out of bed in the morning: he’d guide them to the recliner and cuddle them for a few minutes to help them adjust to the morning. For some reason you haven’t wanted to do that, choosing to sit by yourself on a chair or couch while I make your breakfast. Maybe once you get back to normal school and you have to wake up earlier, you’ll appreciate a little cuddly snooze time with your dad.

It’s certainly not that you don’t enjoy spending time with him. You and your dad play all kinds of games together in the evening. Recently I’ve seen you playing Snap Circuits, Candyland, Mindo (a cool logic puzzle game we got from the Haunted Bookshop), and of course you love to play video games with him. You recently accomplished some important task in Zelda: Breath of the Wild before your dad did, and even though the specifics were meaningless to me, your joy was palpable.

You’re creative and interested in building and inventing things. You’re always fishing around in drawers for supplies like gaffer’s tape, scissors, glue, and cardboard. Today you wanted to make a doghouse, which I’m trying to avoid because we don’t have a dog. You wanted to make it with wood and screws and nails, and I don’t know if we have any extra wood lying around, and also we don’t have a dog. I may have placated you with the idea of making it out of cardboard, which I believe we do have. Maybe we could make a small one that a stuffed animal could use. You haven’t brought it up this afternoon, but something tells me you haven’t given up on the idea.

Maybe you’ll be the only one of my kids interested in making a diorama. I can’t believe nobody ever wants to do that.

Halloween was unusual but still fun. We skipped traditional trick-or-treating and instead did some outdoor, social-distanced candy-acquisition activities. Your dad’s workplace sponsored a trunk-or-treat, and we did a candy hunt in the park behind our house. Lots of neighborhood kids showed up, and I was really impressed with how well those little people kept their masks on. You guys just seem to get it. You also got lots of treats, including your favorite snack, Pirate’s Booty. You have two bags that you stashed on the barstool I use during my morning coffee and news scan, and I hope you eat them soon, because one of these times I’m going to forget to move them and turn them into Squashed-By-Mom’s-Booty.

Your current favorites: ZacScottGames on YouTube, board games with your dad, the book Potty Palooza at bedtime (you’ve been potty-trained for years now, but you still love the book), waffles, cinnamon toast, your collection of little stuffed animals, orange juice with a splash of maraschino cherry juice, and dancing to the song “It’s Raining Tacos.”

You’re a joy, little Callum, and even though I’m pretty tired of Potty Palooza, I will never get tired of you. I’m looking forward to watching your skills continue to grow, and I’m so happy I get to be your mom.

Love,

Mommy