11.

Addison is 11. It’s the second birthday of the pandemic but Texas has been basically open since Spring Break, but we are still masking and distancing as much as is “reasonable” so we got a video game bus to come to the house.

If you don’t know any children, video game buses are a trailer with like 6 flat screens screwed to the wall with the most popular video games and systems. The kids sit on a bench and pick up the sticks and play for 2 hours in your driveway. It is phenomenal.

Addy is very much into middle-grade graphic novels now. I don’t know if they were a thing when I was a kid because in the 90s we just had scary stories from the book fair that one kid bought and we just passed around. Or we checked out from the school library. And then I went straight to murder books (Addy says this is why I like murder shows as an adult) so the idea of middle school problems in comic book form is new and exciting to me.

We have not prepared for actual middle school yet and it is not a thing that I am ready to think about. It’s not that 5th grade has been hard it’s just that we are still in the midst of a pandemic but the systems in place are not allowing anyone an adjustment. It’s a lot.

We are deep into the Tween Life, so the hashtag is sticking around (that was always the plan I can not come up with anything that even goes with eleven anyway).