The COVID Diaries, Week 8

Monday

On Sunday we did a repeat art project and made more window clings. So Ben and Isaac were very excited to put them up Monday morning. We learned a few things from our first time around - the colors like to bleed and the sun bleaches some of the colors out sooner than others. Jason joined us and created a beautiful bird and a peace symbol. Ben went to his math roots and went for pi. He has memorized something like 67 digits of pi and is still working on it. 

Ben has been struggling to be motivated to do schoolwork so we went on a field trip in the morning. I texted his friend's mom and asked her to keep him busy while Ben, Isaac, and I made some chalk art in his driveway. It's difficult not seeing friends and play soccer.

Our bathroom renovation continued this week. It was the last week so we were able to see exciting progress almost every day.

Tuesday
Another bike ride to the garden where I had to come to terms with the fact that one of the beds just wasn't going to grow...anything. My friend dropped off some purple string bean seeds so we planted some of those and more carrots and peas.

Slow but steady on the other bed.

A quick stop off at Aunt Rachel's house on the way home. Hopefully she doesn't mind these little invasions during her work-at-home day.

Wednesday
Paint and floor! Since we couldn't find any bathroom paint in our garage collection of buckets-of-paints-that-came-with-the-house, we had an excuse to get it painted in a new color. A trip to Lowe's and we had a lovely light blue for the painters to use on the walls and ceiling. I love it!

By the end of the day we had vinyl flooring (new!) and vanity (new top!) put in.

Wednesday evening is also when an unexpected but always welcome visitor arrived! Uncle Doug!

Thursday
Uncle Doug made us a lovely fajita dinner. Then jet lag caught up to him and the rest of us played Uno Flip. Also there was some arm wrestling during which Jason schooled the older boys.....

....and was vanquished by Isaac.

And the bathroom was soooo close to being done I could almost hear the boys using their own shower instead of mine.

Friday
The state parks had opened up at the beginning of the week, but we opted to wait until later in the week to avoid the hiking-starved crowds. We headed to Mima Mounds ever hopeful that we'll make it there during the peak of spring flowers. I can't decide if our expectations are too high or if missing the peak of spring flowers will be our new thing (sorry missing the peak of fall in Shenandoah). There were some pretty flowers, but it wasn't as stunning I was hoping.

And this time "we" included Doug! In case you are wondering who is my mom's favorite child, check out who she is allowing to take MULTIPLE pictures of her with him.

Just saying. ;)

Also, do these mounds look like they are covered in wild flowers? Yeah, didn't think so.

Saturday

Our marvelous contractor and his crew finished the bathroom on Friday, but we waited until absolutely all the paint was dry before putting up the curtain and rod. We are going to paint the vanity white, but otherwise the room is looking great. Silver lining to cost and mess of unexpected house damage during a pandemic.

And I am supposed to record the following for posterity:
--Isaac was the first to pee in the new potty
--Michael was the first to poop in the new potty
--Michael was the first to take a shower in the new bathroom

Ben and I continued our Saturday morning walk tradition sans Rachel (something about drill...likely story!). We stopped off at Rachel's house though to raid the candy currently residing in her kitchen.

We saw several bunnies and scads of flowers on our walk. Sadly only the latter hung around for pictures.

This weekend is turning out to be a little taste of summer weather and I have to say I'm okay with the rain and cooler temps coming next week. It is exciting to have the ability to get and hike, but I am not ready for us all to be home (still) in the heat.

The COVID Diaries, Week 7

Monday

If your bathroom doesn't look like this, are you even doing this pandemic right?  Just a question to think about.

Right, so at the beginning of the week the bathroom didn't look like much. Luckily, one contractor and one plumber and two painters later it improved quite a bit by the end of the week.

Random Facebook post inspired a craft project. That and the crazy amount of toilet paper rolls we've accumulated. We actually save them to make fire starters, which is not so weird. But we just kept on saving them long after we had enough for a summer of camping, so then it got weird. But then I saw this project and I knew we were back to being cool again.

A bag full of markers and the shoe box kept Isaac busy while I meticulously removed every last scrap of TP from the rolls.

Which is just about as fun as you'd image it would be.

A couple of glue sticks later and we have a car garage.

 Later in the afternoon I did some weeding and planting. Two upsides - kids left me alone out of fear of getting roped into it and the lilac bushes a friend gave me might actually survive. Might. Setting my expectations low.

Wednesday
There was a lot of banging and sawing and just noise, but by the end of the day we had a new bathtub.  Super exciting.

Saturday
Keeping the tradition of our running/walking/whatever group alive! The weather wasn't great when we started.

But Ben was determined to make it to Aunt Rachel's house because there was a crazy rumor spreading about a lemon meringue pie. Usually we take a chocolate break at her house, but he was willing to change things up for lemon.

And lemon it was.

Mouth puckering lemon.

It turns out she used ONE MORE CUP OF LEMON JUICE than the recipe called for. She is going to try redeem herself next week.

The skies were grey and foreboding, but Ben was insistent that we finish our walk. We did so. And it took days for our shoes to dry out.

Ben may not get to make any more walking decisions for us for a while.

April on Facebook

While I am incredibly grateful for the size home we live in now, for the past 6 weeks the house seems to be getting smaller every week. 😆 Anyone else experiencing the same phenomenon?

There's something both frustrating and reassuring about the fact that no matter how much I weed, there will be more to pull tomorrow.

Michael: Dad, I feel like in the future doctors will find out that vegetables are as bad as smoking. Farmers are just paying doctors to say vegetables are healthy.

In case you're wondering how we're doing: the trampoline is covered in pollen and 5 out of the 6 of us are on claritin.

Only 3 of us have seasonal allergies.

Sometimes a superhero is a mysterious recluse who drives a batmobile to save Gotham City. And sometimes a superhero is your Aunt Rachel who drives a small blue car to rescue you when you get heat exhaustion 5 miles from home on a bike ride.

September 14th. Promises were made. Isaac IS going to elementary school. September 14th

God bless the teachers, staff, and administrators in our school district. They all kept posting and emailing that they missed their students, but I guarantee they didn't miss my kids as much as I missed all school employees for the last 4 weeks.

We have now spent how-you-chew-your-food-really-irritates-me days together.

If your children have spent the last 3.5 weeks growing closer and creating beautiful memories to last them a lifetime, I salute you.

If you've spent the last 3.5 weeks wondering how the Lord of the Flies/survival of the fittest scenario your children play out daily is going to end, I see you.

Musician arguments (trying to tune Ben's cello):

Ben: Your (electronic) piano is flat, Michael!
Michael: You don't know what notes you're playing, Ben!!

Ben: Can you hand me my rosin?
Michael: Stop making up words!

Ben: I just thought 5 year olds would be more logical. 🤔

For some, sewing is therapeutic and a creative outlet.

For me, it's more of a post-apocalyptic battle of woman versus machine and the machine usually wins.

Trying to plan for alternatives to hand shaking for the long term. Some options:
A) Vulcan salute
B) Buddhist Anjali Mudra
C) Japanese Ojigi

Any one have another idea?

Anyone else think there's going to be an America's Funniest Home Videos: Covid19 Zoom Meetings edition? 😆

Me: We need to be careful because COVID19 can be especially dangerous for people over 60 years old.

Boys: Good thing Nana is only 29!

Pandemic Pro Tips for Parents

1. When everyone else is stocking up on (insert random item here), stock up on your favorite treat. Then have someone in your house hide it all (preferably someone who can't eat it or doesn't like it) and supply you only on rough days. Kind of like the energy stations at a race - you're going to need your happy food to keep you going every once in a while.

2. If you haven't already, now is the time to delegate chores to the kids. Now more chores. Seriously. Whatever work there is normally to do in your house, there will be so. much. more. when you're all home all the time.

3. Regular times are for dieting. Pandemic times are for putting on your Covid 19 (pounds). Plus, if we all put on 19 lbs then it maintains balance in the universe. Otherwise the rotation of the earth will be seriously off-kilter and the climate will warm up at an unprecedented rate. Oh, wait....

4. Need some time away from the kids? Develop a hobby they hate. For example, I've started working on the yard a bit. The kids hate doing yard work so now all of a sudden the people who will follow me to the bathroom or wake me from a power nap stay far, far away for hours if coming near me means being conscripted into the cause of weeding. Voila! Alone time.

5. "Eating take out" may feel like splurging, but "supporting local businesses" is helping your community.

6. Start everyone in the house on allergy meds. It will save you a lot of unnecessary worry if your pandemic comes with some respiratory symptoms. It will save you even more unnecessary worry if epic amounts of pollen are falling from the sky and flying in your face when you walk and bike.

7. Buy a bike helmet. If you already have one, buy one and donate it to one of the teeming masses who are spending their newly found free time biking with bare, unprotected heads on local trails. If the pandemic doesn't get them, a head injury probably will.

8. Try as best as you can not to need emergency home renovations. I'm sure a pandemic is less stressful without one, but I can't speak from experience.

9. If there is ANY chance everything will be closed down, make a RUN on the library and check out a bunch of fun stuff and RETURN any super irritating kid DVD's that might get stranded at your house when the library stops taking returns.

10. You do you. If learning new skills makes you happy, do that. If binge-watching old TV shows makes you happy, do that. Just remember the goal is for everyone to be healthy and still like each other when life reaches its new normal.

Down and Dirty Tips:
11. Put everyone on an ear hygiene schedule. Trust me, you'll thank me when your child urgently needs to use your bluetooth earbuds for a class video chat RIGHT AWAY.

12. Is it crazy if everyone stock piles toilet paper? Yes. But if you don't buy some right away too it may be 5 weeks before you can get some more. And everyone is home. All the time. If you think you have enough, you don't.

The COVID Diaries, Week 6

Well, I've officially started losing days.

Sunday
Maybe I went on a bike ride? I know we started our church later than usual because of a high stakes Catan game that got started late. We watched a Holland talk and then....ate dinner or something?

Monday
Second week of continuing learning was less stressful as everyone knew mostly how the routine was going to go.  I think this was the day the contractor came to have us pick out floor samples for the bathroom. Maybe?

Tuesday
Unsure. Seems like we biked to the garden at some point early in the week.

Wednesday
First day of the bathroom demo before the bathroom reno. And why are we doing such a ridiculous project in the middle of a pandemic? Behold, the effects of a slowly leaking toilet. Don't worry, there's more hiding under the tub and the walls.

Isaac keeps finding random beads around the house so I finally brought out my beading gear and tools. I haven't used this stuff for a few years so I let him use whatever struck his fancy. 

A lot struck his fancy.

Ben is often easily distracted from his school work these days and joined in the jewelry-making fun.

Yeah, this was definitely Isaac's idea of a good time.

I think we may have used up all of my fun ideas on Wednesday because in the afternoon we did some chalk art.

As you can tell, Ben wasn't the most productive with his school work on Wednesday, but Isaac got a really neat chalk balloon out of it.

Thursday
Michael has been hired to do some yard work at Rachel's house. Sometimes it involves me hauling the mower over there in the back of the van and sometimes he bikes over to chop down unsuspecting bushes and dig out enormous roots.  I don't know the particulars but they've arranged some sort of payment system that may or may not involve a bass guitar. I've decided to stay out of it.

We heard quite a bit of banging throughout the day and at the end of it the bathroom looked like this:

Like our new window view of the garage?  Our contractor assures us it's temporary, which is exactly what you want to hear from your contractor!

Friday
All the work Rachel, Mom and Michael have been putting into destroying things in Rachel's backyard created a far amount of waste that needed to be hauled to the dump. While I was bagging up a bit of it I found a little friend. I invited her in the house, but she seemed more interested in the hole in the paver stones in the yard.

Interestingly enough, when you've spent the better part of 6 weeks not going anywhere, going to the dump can seem like an exotic adventure. We even drove on the highway!

Saturday
There was rain, there was sunshine, there was chocolate - another Saturday morning 5k on the books.

The COVID Diaries, Week 5

Monday

Week 5 started with the day that I have been waiting for all my life....well, waiting for since March 13th - the day school started again! This time online, but still! I was no longer running the educational piece all by myself. 

All by myself...don't wanna be all by myself...anymore...

With each email I got from each teacher I felt just a little bit more relief. But it turns out that my relief was roughly inversely proportional to the boys' dread. Even though we had a "school" schedule the last 4 weeks, they weren't really accountable. Here come the deadlines and grades!

With all of the excitement and dread there also came some irritation and fun. Michael was excited to get some new band music as well as "flex" on his friends in a video chat by playing several of his instruments. There were a few hiccups in the online format that increased confusion. All in all, it's a work in progress, but we've got great teachers and administrators and I've got pretty great kids so I think we'll get there.

Tuesday

Washington is blessing us with some more spring sunshine and opportunities to play outside.

The plants we haven't killed yet are flowering.

The boys are getting creative with games to play when I send them outside with a time requirement. On Tuesday they played beach ball baseball. There was quite a bit of heated discussion about what constituted a home run or a foul and the ball had to be knocked out of the tree more than once, but they seemed to have a good time.

Tuesday evening my very creative photographer friend drove around the neighborhood and took "porch portraits" for interested families. A fun socially distant picture to help remind us of this unique time in our life.  After some discussion we chose our motto and Jason made a sign.

Good times. Good times.

Wednesday/Thursday/whenever

Through a series of unrelated but unfortunate circumstances, we are in the middle of pandemic while experiencing epic levels of tree pollen. You probably can't tell, but in this picture there is yellow pollen piled on the red border of the trampoline and when the kids get on it and jump you can see the yellow powder fly in the air.

The upshot is that some of us who do not generally have seasonal allergies have been miserable coughing, sneezing, headachy messes until we started taking claritin. While there is only a little bit of overlap of the symptoms of allergies and COVID19, it was just a tiny bit worrisome.  Thankfully, allergy meds, a shower, and closing the windows cured what ails us so I think we're good.

After using up Mom's fancy flower fabric, I moved on to na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na BATMAN! I made kid-sized ones this time and Ben at least is a fan.

Early on I tried to institute a brief dance party after an hour of school time just to break things up and get bodies moving. It was incredibly unpopular from the beginning.  BUT Josh borrowed this bar from Aunt Rachel and now the boys like to take break and compare their arm strength prowess.  Apparently that is a lot more fun than getting their dance moves on.

Friday
The last day of the school week has sort of become an unofficial art day. On the kids' school schedule it is technically a catch-up day open for tutoring, group meetings, or finishing late work. Since Ben is either completely done with his work or avoiding a persuasive essay by Friday, he likes to join us. This week made window clings we saw from a Canadian kid art show.  Probably the fact that is Canadian doesn't really matter, but every time the host talks I can hear his accent.

With glue, dish soap, food dye, page protectors, and paintbrushes we ready to go.

Some of us were clearly more ready than others.

One of Isaac's creations was a "bloody" rainbow. His words, not mine.

Ben worked on some abstract art.

A while later we had some very colorful, very wet gluey creations.

I was rather concerned that this was going to be an art fail, but they turned out really well and (thankfully) came off the plastic and clung to the window.

It worked out so well that I think we will repeat this project again later and maybe we can convince the rest of the crew to join us.

Friday afternoon I took all of the boys on an ill-fated bike ride. 

It was in the 70s and sunny. Our destination was 5 miles south. 

None of the boys would bring water. I did forbid Ben from wearing long johns, but he did wear jeans and a jacket. And he tried to keep up with Josh. 

At about 3.5 miles Michael felt ill. I had him take a break and told him to wait for us on boulders while I went ahead to meet up with Josh and Ben. 

When I got to the 5 mile point, I made Ben take off his jacket as soon as I saw the bright, bright color of his face. I shared my water with him and then sent Josh back to Michael with the water. I figured that Ben and I (with Isaac in tow) could just slowly bike back to Michael. I figured wrong. Ben was shaking and all the blood drained out of his face and lips. 

So that's not great.

After I had him sit on the ground and put his head between his knees, I started making some calls to get him a ride home. Jason was in meetings and Mom was painting, but Rachel saved the day and took Ben and his bike back to the house (after Google Maps pin drama and despite the risk of Ben possibly puking).  Ben got to ride in the front seat of her car, so I think he probably thinks the whole experience was worth it.

New rules: everyone MUST bring water and Ben MUST wear shorts and no jacket.

Saturday

More virtual walking time. Couldn't get Michael out on the trail with the memory of Friday so freshly in his mind, but Rachel, Ben and I got a 4.4 mile walk in. We walked from our house to hers and tried to convince Mom to join us for the walk. We were unsuccessful on that point, but Ben did get to eat a fair amount of chocolate so he likely calls that a win.

Another week on the books.

The COVID Diaries, Week 4

Welcome to week 4. I've gotten to the point where I will probably need to work on this post every day because the days are just blurring together. 

Sunday

One of our new coronacation traditions is cinnamon roll crescent rolls for Sunday breakfast. Dairy free, sugar full, and brings a smile to all the boys' faces (okay, not a full on smile from Josh, but he doesn't seem quite so upset to be awake).

This Sunday was Day 2 of General Conference. We decided Saturday was optional for the boys and that was fine by them. For Sunday I tried a simple but effective strategy to keep the boys listening: I put a plate of chocolate chips on the floor and they each picked a word to listen for. Each time they heard their word, they got to each a chocolate chip. Josh chose wisely with "Joseph" and Isaac made the obvious but brilliant choice of "Jesus".  Michael and Ben chose "faith" and "Mormon", respectively and were not partakers of the chocolate. We let the middles change their words part way through for a more even distribution of sugar.

By the end of it, the boys were all fairly sugared up and Isaac was a meltdown ready to happen.  But he made it to end of the afternoon session for the closing prayer...on Jason's head.

Monday
More biking. Less examining the map in advance. Jason and I figured it was probably only 2 miles to the garden from our house. Which made it the longest 2 miles ever since it was closer to 5 miles.  Oops! We eventually made it there to soak our itty, bitty pea plants and the rest of the seeds in some water - a necessity since we've had a break from our regularly scheduled rainy weather.

During our unexpectedly long bike ride, the governor made the announcement that we knew was coming: no going to school for the rest of this school year. Online education until the middle of June it is!

Sigh.

Ironically, this week was "spring break" - rather anticlimactic when every day is a staycation.

Tuesday
Seriously, who knows? I mean, Ben had a cello lesson but I don't remember the rest.  Oh, wait, this was the day the contractor came by to tear open a part of the ceiling in the garage to check on what damage the every-so-slowly leaking upstairs toilet has done and give us a quote for that and some other work on the outside of the house. Owning a home just became so much fun!!!

Wednesday
I made the laughable decision to have Michael try to help Ben tune his cello. If it hadn't been so noisy (cello, piano, electronic tuner, Michael humming, and Isaac turning up the sound on his Kindle), it would have been hysterical. Michael was accusing Ben of not knowing which note he was playing (he did know). Ben was accusing the piano of being flat (it's electronic). Michael accused Ben of making up words (resin is a real word).

Once again it became an argument of BAND vs ORCHESTRA and it ended as a draw. Also, I texted Ben's cello teacher and she sent me a link to an app to tune cellos so we may never do that again.

Thursday
Several days this week I decided to go to battle with the sewing machine. Mom bought some fancy fabric 10 or so years ago and I decided that it was (finally) time to put it to good use and make masks.  There may have been some tears and some swearing (both from me) and it was a learning process, but I made some masks.

I spent another afternoon at the food bank. This time I scheduled to volunteer at the same time as a friend of mine so we could hang out. This time the task was to unpack, sort and repack donations from Trader Joe's - which was awesome though it definitely made my shopping list for TJ's a bit longer than it already was. Nicely played, Trader Joe's nicely played.

Friday
The kids are tired of the school stuff I have them do, I am tired of finding school stuff for them to do, and I was tired of sewing so I brought out the water colors. There wasn't much interest at first (Isaac even played a 2-4 person player game by himself to protest the paint project), but I got Isaac and Ben in the end.

I found a painting in an art book to recreate. I have to say, water colors are more finicky than I thought, but it was fun to play around with them.

I vaguely recalled that if you sprinkle salt on wet water color paints it creates cool effects so thought we should try it. Isaac took this idea all the way and I think I've seen fast food french fries with less salt than his art. He loved it, but we had to move his papers very carefully and give them A LOT of shaking over the trashcan after they dried.

Ben went geometric, less salt, and layers with white crayon under the paint.

Saturday
We decided to get our Saturday morning 5k in as a 5 mile rollerblading adventure. Except for Ben. Ben refuses to see the beauty and fun of rollerblades and ran/walked/jogged/felt a little resentful when the rest of us just rolled effortlessly on the downhill section while he ran. He did great, but was threatening to ride his bike next time so we would have to work to keep up with him.

It's crazy to think that in 2 days it will be one month since the schools closed. I am so relieved that I will be able to hand the kids' learning (mostly) over to the teachers on Monday.  Hopefully the teachers will also find ways for the kids to get more interaction with their classmates. And pretty much anything the band teacher does will make life better because Michael has really struggled with not having new music or instruction on his instruments.  I've heard that the curve is likely flattening in our state (hooray!). It's helpful to hear that the stressful changes in our lives are helping.