Dear Callum,

As we move into the darker days of fall, you are a bright spot. You are sweet and affectionate, and you always have something funny and interesting to say.

We had conferences with both your regular classroom teacher, your student teacher, and your ELP teacher over the last week. You’re doing great, going above and beyond academically and doing well socially also. You have some good friends, especially Griffin and Josie, and you have even gotten to know some fourth graders through soccer and ELP. Your ELP teacher said you have a true love of learning, and she enjoys watching how excited you get when you learn something interesting. That doesn’t surprise me; you’ve been enjoying a lot of nonfiction lately at bedtime. Lately we’ve been reading a book about animals, including some very exotic ones. Last night I kind of blew it by telling you how to pronounce axolotl before asking if you already knew how. Spoiler: you knew, and you were mad at me for stealing your thunder. I don’t know where you learned about axolotls, but they’re very interesting animals, and it was fun to read about them with you.

You dived right into the Halloween festivities. I was planning on having you draw a design on your pumpkin and I would carve it, but you insisted on wielding the knife yourself. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that you’re not a baby, that you’re a smart and capable kid who is able to do a lot of things. I was talking to your dad about this: with each of the older kids, there was always an actual baby around during their little-kid time. It behooved us to encourage their independence, because babies take so much time and energy that having the bigger kids take care of themselves more helped the general family dynamic. With you, there’s no baby who needs our energy, so we don’t have an impetus to push you toward more independence. You are serving as that impetus. You’re pushing boundaries more and working on your skills, and your dad and I have to remind ourselves that it’s good for you to grow. Sometimes that means making mistakes and messes, but there’s not much we can’t clean up. Luckily, the knife stayed mostly in the jack-o-lantern, and we didn’t have to clean up any blood.

For trick-or-treating, you went with a big group that was mostly Tobin’s friends. Your good friend Griffin is the little brother of one of Tobin’s friends, so it worked out well for you to start off with the whole gang. The bigger kids broke off and took their own trick-or-treating path, and you and Griffin (accompanied by a couple of parents) hit the neighborhood. It was a chilly night, pretty much the coldest night we’ve had so far in this warm fall. You had to put extra layers under your costume, and I think your hands still got cold, but overall it was a success. You chose to be Link from the Legend of Zelda video game series, and I had a fun time putting your costume together. You were happy with how it turned out, and you got a whole lot of candy. I don’t think you’ve even finished it yet, weeks later.

Health-wise, things seem to be going pretty well. One thing I’ve noticed is that your energy has been very high. This year, you run and jump and dance all the way home from school almost every day. This is new; last year I don’t remember you doing anything besides a mid-paced walk. You may be having a little bit of trouble from the iron supplement you added a couple of months ago. I plan to talk to your doctor about that at your appointment next month. I don’t know what the clinical definition of remission is for Crohn’s disease; no one has said that word to us yet, and I don’t know exactly how they’ll determine it. Your last set of labs were good, except for being a bit low on iron, which is why you started taking the iron supplements. It’s very good that you’re able to swallow pills if they’re smallish, which your iron pills are. The doctor was originally planning to prescribe you a liquid, which rumor has it is nasty. I’ve researched it a fair amount, and it’s hard to even find chewable vitamins with iron that aren’t gross. Luckily, you can slurp that iron pill right down with orange juice and be on your way.

You have to get a lot of shots. Along with your every-other-week Humira, you’ve had to repeat the series of Hepatitis B vaccines because your body didn’t produce antibodies the first time around. Apparently that can happen to some subset of the population anyway, which may be why you didn’t respond to the series you got as a baby. I really hope the series you just completed with get you immunity. You’ve been pretty healthy so far this fall. We’ve had a few colds and other bugs run through the family, but you haven’t seemed to suffer too terribly. I’ve been vigilant about keeping you away from sick family members (Tobin had to sleep in the guest room for a while) and cleaning common surfaces frequently. I hope we can continue to protect your health as we treat your Crohn’s.

Your current favorites: playing in the creek with the neighbor girls, reading, playing video games, meat of most kinds, mini muffins, wearing as little clothing as possible, Manchego cheese, eschewing any babyish words (“Don’t call them jammies”), ELP, watching YouTube, and our bedtime reading routine.

I love you so much, my sweet Callum. I know you’re not a baby anymore, but I’m so glad you’re mine no matter what.

Love,

Mom