Dear Callum,

What a summer it’s been for you. In June, we heard from  friends that the local Parks & Rec department was running a daily park playtime for area kids. Since it was held right in our back yard, I signed you up and sent you over. For the first few weeks, you came home after only an hour or so, but as the summer moved along, you got more and more confident. You played with other kids, did lots of arts and crafts, and bonded with the counselors. We called it camp, to help you feel like a big deal like your brothers who go to camps. The idea was that it would help you gain some independence in preparation for attending first grade in person.

Well, that didn’t work out. As much as I think it would be good for you to go to school in person, with the surging rates of delta variant COVID and your current unvaccinated state (with the possibility that the vaccine won’t even be available to you until winter), I just couldn’t stomach it. You were thrilled, actually. I’ve heard a lot of families say that their kids had a bad experience with online school last year, but you had a very positive experience. You liked your teachers, you did fine with Zoom, and between our work at home and the work your teachers put in, you learned a lot. I have the flexibility of schedule to support you, and while it will mean sacrificing some of my ability to work, it’s worth it to me. You said you want to do online school forever. I certainly hope it doesn’t come to that, but I guess we’ve proven we can do it.

I felt conflicted, of course, but worrying about you going to school was seriously impacting my mental health. I told your dad that if we sent you and Tobin (also unvaccinated) to school in person, I was going to have to get therapy. It just wasn’t healthy for me to keep living the way I was, sleeping terribly due to worry, feeling sick to my stomach all the time, crying every day. Our schools are prohibited by state law from requiring masks, and even among those kids whose parents send them with masks, it’s a long shot to expect them to wear masks consistently and correctly. It’s bad enough that I have to be concerned about the chance of Miles getting a breakthrough infection from an unmasked classmate and bringing it home to you. Now my current worry is that I’m being selfish and doing this for me more than for you. As much as I want to wrap all three of you up in bubble wrap with little airholes in front of your faces, I recognize that Miles really needs to go to school. It will certainly be better once all three of you are vaccinated. For the time being, we’re going to have to sit with this compromise.

Photo by Denny

We’ve had a lot of outdoor fun this summer, including a couple of trips to splash in the downtown fountain. We went to the water park near Mubby and Skitter’s house, and you were very brave about going down the kids’ slide and dunking your head in the water. We’re getting ready for a mini-vacation to a lake cottage, and I hope we can enjoy some nice time together, making s’mores over the fire pit and enjoying some relaxed time together. I don’t know how good it is for swimming, or if you’d even want to swim in a body of water that doesn’t smell like chlorine, but I’ll pack your swimsuit just in case.  I think and your brothers may be more excited about the video game machine we saw in the cottage’s VRBO pictures. We’ll try to find a balance of activities.

A major development for you this summer was the loss of your first tooth. I don’t know why, since you got your bottom teeth first, but you lost a top front tooth. Your dentist noticed it was loose at a recent appointment, and an ear of corn threw the final blow while we were visiting Mubby and Skitter. Your new one hasn’t started to grow in yet, so you’ll definitely get that gap-toothed first grade picture that is such a mantle classic. The online program is holding a special school pictures day in a safe(r) environment, so I think we’ll do that. I liked the not-school portraits I took of you and your brothers last fall, but there’s something about that mottled blue background that marks the year in its own inimitable way.

We’ve been playing a lot of King’s Quest lately, a game series from my childhood that you really enjoy. You usually want me to read the captions out loud, and they are very wordy in number six, the version we’ve been playing the most often lately. I try to make you do a good amount of the reading, and I’m glad to say that your reading skills are still strong after a summer away from school.

Your current favorites: granola bars; Skitter Mix (2:1 blend of lemonade and orange juice); “chicken bones” (aka drumsticks); YouTube videos; making your own toys and inventions with sticks, gaffer’s tape, and various household objects; King’s Quest (mostly number six), the books Little Rabbit’s Loose Tooth, Laura Joffe Numeroff’s If You Give a… series, and Move Over, Rover.  We have a whole routine of actions that go with the text in Move Over, Rover, and we have fun doing it together every night. You also have an extended goodnight routine that involves me kissing you and your stuffed animals and saying rhymes we’ve adapted from another book. It’s tough when I have heavy nighttime lip moisturizer on and I have to kiss Stuffle the Panda, but I do it because it’s a lot easier to pick some fluff off my lips than face the consequences of skipping any part of the routine.

Consistency and stability mean a lot to kids, which is another reason why I had hoped to send you to in-person school in the fall. Right now it’s looking like we’ll have to make a mid-year switch, which isn’t ideal. I’m hoping that, much like camp, you take to it after a brief transition period. I’m sure you can. I need to trust that you’re smart and capable. It’s okay to be scared. I’m scared too. We’ll work on it.

Photo by Denny

I love you so much, sweet Callum. Off we go into another learning adventure together. We can do it.

Love,

Mommy