It’s the last day of “school.”
And as much as I am the first cheerleader in the crowd hallelujah-ing the end of this year (Dear Jesus, if we have to do this again in the fall, I quit. I absolutely quit. You will have to provide both an espresso machine and unlimited quantities of high voltage coffee at my doorstep if four boys on four devices with the worst internet on the face of the planet all the live long day is next year’s mom life), I’m also finding myself leaking all over my Zoom meeting spacebar mute keys at the end of this season.
Because it’s really more like the end of a chapter.
After three months of distance learning and three years in middle school, the 8th grader is graduating to high school.
With a county boys’ cross country champion title, a 1st chair trumpet placement at All-District band, a Student of the Month honor last month and a brand new title as a member of the Odyssey of the Mind team who placed 2nd overall in the world in their problem and division, it has been a bit of a banner year for Superhero 1. But what’s been more beautiful than any title is the character, dedication and work ethic we’ve seen this boy develop behind the scenes.
Superhero 1’s team’s network device that earned them 2nd place in the World for Odyssey of the Mind
May the Fourth be With You, trumpet style: https://youtu.be/xcM2yNgOSIY
For three months of quarantine, this relentless runner logged 30 to 40 miles per week, many of those completed running circles on the path we cleared around our home. He picked back up guitar, practiced trumpet more than an hour every day and, in his free time, took online cooking classes on both a website and with his aunt. The result was homemade baklava and from-scratch pasta and incredible ethnic dishes that we got to devour regularly while dinner was the highlight of our entire day.
He’s been digging into online youth group and his own nightly devotions, and he’s brought so much to our family conversations about what it looks like to live for Jesus in this fallen, broken world.
I learn FAR more from this focused, self-motivated, insanely disciplined and dedicated boy (who, this month, grew to exactly my height) these days than he could ever possibly learn from me.
While the 8th grader leaves middle school this year, the 5th grader now moves up to join it.
5th grade promotion parade for Superhero 2
Superhero 2’s biggest disappointment of the year was missing his team’s Battle of the Books competition, scheduled for the month that quarantine cut off the school year. This avid reader had read the entire book list not just twice, but three and four times, and he was devastated when his team couldn’t take their knowledge to competition.
So, in his grief, he read War and Peace (because that’s the clear and normal response of an 11-year-old to tragedy) and simply started the middle school Battle of the Books list instead.
He is now halfway through the 22-book list.
Although I admit that 10 has thus far not been my favorite age in the parenting world, 11 has been *so* sweet. Especially in quarantine at home.
This compassionate sweetheart who loves talking about his feelings all the live long day has just *melted* us in this season. He made it his personal goal to use quarantine to strengthen his relationships with each member of our household, including the furry one (his obsession), and three months later, he calls Superman and Superhero 4 his very best friends. (Let’s just be honest, the competitive relationship between Superhero 1 and Superhero 2 is still a work in progress.)
Brothers at the Beach: https://youtu.be/fpEYDXS-q68
This week, I had to take Superhero 4 to a specialist appointment an hour away. By the time I returned, Superhero 2 was waiting for us with scooters in the garage, begging to please skip online tae kwon do (which he has been so dedicated to complete multiple times per week from our garage) to play with the brother he hadn’t seen all day.
Yesterday, the three younger boys spent their afternoon looking up onesie pajamas online (because the only thing Superhero 2 loves more than books and tae kwon do is enjoying both in a onesie). Superhero 2 wanted to use his own money to buy the three of them matching onesies (the new high schooler opted out of this sweet offer), but they couldn’t decide which would be better, the bat — clearly cuter, but not as comfy — or the bunny/squirrel, fuzzier and more suitable for lounge reading.
During our weekend at the beach, it was Superhero 2 who asked if we could wake up before dawn and watch the sun rise over the ocean together.
And when Covid shut-downs first began, it was Superhero 2 who designed the Cards for a Cause: Coronavirus Comeback website that encouraged locals to purchase gift cards from struggling restaurants and regift them to now-struggling families.
He’s still the one who comes up from behind to offer huge surprise hugs, still the one who kisses me in front of his friends hello and goodbye. And as he heads off to middle school, I am just trying with everything I have to absolutely TREASURE this overwhelming kindness and compassion we have enjoyed so much in this season.
And so is Superman.
Twice this week, Superman has run back out to the couch after bedtime tuck-ins in tears, bawling in hysterics as he’s lamented the fact that brothers are growing up and “soon, they’ll be leaving.”
My heart.
There has been nothing sweeter for this boy who hasn’t always had brothers to love than to spend unlimited time immersed in board games and Nerf gun battles with three other boys who just adore him.
As the peacemaker of the family, Superman is everyone’s go-to friend.
He’s the first one Superhero 1 asks to join him for a family room floor board game.
He’s the first one Superhero 2 asks to ride bikes outside.
And he’s the first one Superhero 4 asks if he will please homeschool him (because, after one day of “subbing,” the ever-sweet, ever-patient Superman apparently knocked kindergarten homeschool out of the park —and Superhero 4 never wanted this girl to execute it again).
His joy is contagious, his dance moves in the background of brothers’ Flip Grid videos, hilarious. And his tender and sensitive spirit are so in tune with other people’s feelings that you just feel loved when you’re around him.
At age 8, he still crawls up in my lap and snuggles in my arms, and he’s the only one who Superhero 1 will allow to snuggle up beside on Friday movie nights on “his” couch.
Although his favorite sport of soccer was cut off this year, he spent his quarantine running paths with brothers and is consistently running two 8-minute miles.
And he became a board game master inside our house.
I literally cannot beat this brilliant kid in checkers, his brothers lament his great skills in Catan and he will kick even his daddy’s booty all the way across a chess board every day of the week. He is a Lego master, an engineering genius and a budding artist who is enjoying drawing in his free quarantine time.
And next year, he gets the insane privilege of looping up to 3rd grade with the incredible teacher he had for 2nd!
Which, in a year of uncertain distance learning and so many questions and variables, is an absolute gift from God.
Especially because we will have ALL FOUR superheroes in school come August.
After a year of homeschool learning, Superhero 4 has just grown, shined and THRIVED.
Superhero 4 on Rings: https://youtu.be/AdSPr2owFXc
This little character who had only heard the English language for two years when we began our homeschool year last August has gone from not being able to recognize every letter of the alphabet to both recognizing capital and lowercase letters and knowing all their sounds. He’s learned basic phonics, has tackled and nearly mastered beginning blends and can read the first five BOB books like an English champ!
He can now independently write his name, knows his basic colors and shapes, can name and recognize numbers 1 to 20 and can count reliably to 50.
And, with four sessions of various tele-therapies throughout each week, he is making major progress in properly pronouncing his L sounds and getting his fingers to draw diagonals.
He is a fierce fighter and a determined little worker, and he takes a glass-half-full approach to almost everything in life.
Walking on Sunshine: https://youtu.be/1XVvblfnYQs
When we saw a specialist this week to examine his CP diagnosis, the neurologist told him he would have to get a brain scan.
“What I do when I get brain scan?” he asked.
“Well, you’ll have to be really still,” he told him.
“But what else?” Superhero 4 asked.
“Well, the children’s hospital does have a little television screen you can watch inside their machine.”
At that news, this 40-pound boy leapt off the table, shook his booty and cried, “Superhero 4 get to watch T.V.! NOT brothers! Just Superhero 4. Oh yeah (shake, shake), Superhero 4 be awesome.”
(Clearly self-confidence is not on our list of “in progress” traits.)
At home during quarantine, he’s gotten more than his fill of his primary love language, physical touch, and been a cuddle hog with every member of the family who not-so-secretly adore him and think he’s pretty much the cutest thing we’ve ever seen.
And like his brother, he has just THRIVED with the entire family at home.
So much so that, when he spent two hours at Grandma’s for the first time in three months, he broke down in tears letting us go.
I don’t even know how I’m going to kiss him goodbye at his kindergarten doorway next fall.
It will be the first time since I became a mama that all of our kiddos are in school. (Superhero 4 came home the weekend before Superman’s first day of kindergarten.) And as I look forward to all the beautiful adventures I know our God has in store, I look back on this season with so much fondness and love.
The days sometimes move slowly, but the years, they fly so fast.
Lord, thank you for this season, this chapter, this beautiful piece of our family’s story.
May the coffee be strong and the tissues be plentiful as we enter this new season of “school-aged,” “big kid” life.
