Week 4 of Quarantine (and Week 3 of E-Learning)

Hailey on a Zoom call with her class

Where do I begin? I'm relishing the silence and my own time away from any other human being holed up in the office typing away. I was busy homeschooling my children from 9am until 12:30pm. Then I played waitress preparing them lunch only to clean up after them and rush to get Hailey on her 1pm class conference call. I had to pop in and out on her for 45 minutes as they were requiring them to manage the call (23 kindergarteners - sounds like a nightmare to me) but the kids still needed assistance. During that time, I managed a quick call to reschedule dentist appointments and cancel my hair appointment and I also fed the dog. Then I played art teacher for both Peyton and Hailey as they needed to draw self portraits. Then it was time for PE class so I drew an extra large tic tac toe board with painters tape and stuffed animals across my hardwood floors.

Afterwards, I needed to help Hailey create her new sight words out of Lego pieces. Luckily, I coerced the other two to help me so we could walk the dog by 3pm. Finally, we were done. We took a three block walk and rushed back at the end so we could drive to our local Starbucks (after a week of no Starbucks) and secure ourselves some drinks (albeit not the kind I really need these days) after a hard day's work and before their 4pm early closing time.

Once home, Austen roped me into playing Futpong (soccer tennis) and the girls into chalking the driveway with messages. I finally called it a day at about 5:15pm only to run inside for a quick conference with Tom to figure out dinner and make a 10-second funny video for a friend in the hospital. Only then was I able to seek the solitude of my workout room for a mere 45-minutes to do a Peloton boot camp before rejoining my family for dinner and then bedtime rituals which included reading and screen time tonight while Tom and I completed cleaning out the fridge/freezer. We scrubbed that thing down over the course of two days and threw out old condiments and freezer burned food. Can't say I'd done the full scrub down in 6.5 years. See we are getting shit done thanks to the Coronavirus! But I'm starting to get irritated with it mostly because these kids need all of me all of the time (well except for Austen).

Peyton loves to leave me notes...

Peyton had a host of technology problems today that I tried to work with her on in between when I was assisting Hailey. Tough. Then I needed to check her work. She doesn't sleep anymore either. I swear she's worse than a toddler. I can't count how many times that child gets out of bed. First it was her stomachaches - that miraculously have disappeared, and now it's I'm hot or I can't sleep. Oh wait, it's 10:30pm and she just came down again for at least the third time tonight after being in bed at 8pm. She's been doing this regardless of whether she sleeps alone or with the other two at the beach house. Seriously, that kid is by far our most challenging child. She's going to be something amazing when she grows up - the hard ones always do! Or at least that's what I'm hoping! Signing off now so I can put her back to bed. Til next week...

Sight words with Legos

Drive Thru line at Starbucks

Out of bed again...