Friday: shenanigans

We went for a walk to get some pet food today.  Since we had a lot of pet food to bring back, we brought the stroller.  I was teasing the boys that they should push me, so Isaac finally said, "sure."  I got in and they ran away.

A little bit later Isaac said that he'd actually push me.  So he turned the stroller around and started pushing me back the way we came...until he pushed me into the grass.

On the way home the boys yelled one of the following at the top of their lungs almost the whole time: "wet hei-hei" or "volcano lava monster living chicken nuggets".  I think they were trying to get it stuck in my head.  It didn't really work, but I was rather annoyed by the time we got home.  I didn't stop them though, since it wasn't really hurting anything and they were laughing.

Joshua made a cage for his new dragon.  It has a fire bed, fire to eat, and lava to drink.

He also melted his Popsicle.  I don't know why.

 

Tuesday: 6 years old

Joshua turned six on Tuesday.  (I'm just a little bit behind in posting.)

He was so excited for his birthday.  Hopefully it lived up to his expectations.  His meal of choice was Froot Loops and pineapple.  We also had a chocolate cake.

At his well child appointment he's in the 15th percentile for weight and 36th percentile for height.  Small, but I'm also surprised lately at how old he's looking lately.

Thursday: butterflies

It was a pretty normal day.  We took a walk around the lake today instead of a hike.  It wasn't really what I wanted to do, but the boys were happy and I got some exercise in.

There were three butterflies around our pink flowers.  I've been watching one butterfly on them on a regular basis, but it was fun to see three.

We got some new blinds today.  They're motorized and have an app so we can schedule them going up and down and it will be so much easier to open and close them for the TV.  The old ones were hard to open.

Wednesday: eventually worked

We went on a hike this morning.  The boys complained the whole time.

We did a puzzle this afternoon.  Everyone was happy.

Monday: friends, classroom

Some friends came over today to play in the lake.  Isaac finally spent a few minutes with them near the end, but Joshua was in a bit of a funk and sat bored on the deck for a while.

I also got to see my classroom for the next semester.  It looks a lot different from the one I've been teaching in.  I'm not sure if it is good or bad or, probably, just different.  I'll get to see the students' faces instead of the back of their heads.

Joshua turned some "glasses" Ben made into a robot head and added a shield and sword.

Joshua

I came out of the bedroom Friday morning to get (second) breakfast ready for the boys, and Joshua is "barely" moving. 

A: What's wrong?
J, groaning: I do all the hard work.
A: oh.  Go pick out a yogurt.

*****************
J: ok mom, let's play a game.  [Out of this pile of things, you] tell Joshua what to hide and then Puppy will go find it.
A: uh, ok

He played hide-and-seek with himself for a solid 20 minutes.

*****************
Joshua is currently sleeping on the couch.  I think he's suddenly afraid of spiders in his room.  But I've run the duster in all the corners and there aren't any spiders.  Ben and I are wondering if it's the shadows + rough ceiling + being half awake.  He decided to sleep on the couch tonight and before we knew what was happening, apparently both Ben and I had agreed.

Thursday/Friday

Yesterday we went to visit Aunt Sue and Uncle Lee.  A lot of the things that we normally do with them, including the pool and mini-golf, were closed, but we still had a good time.  We drove around in the golf cart, stopped at all the playgrounds, and had ice cream.

Today was a pretty normal day.  We had some school, we went for a hike, and the boys made an edible experiment.

The goal was to make an edible pinecone because that's what Isaac wanted to make.  I gave them pretty much free range and just left them alone.  They ended up using cookie cutters to cut circles out of fig bars, put nutella on them and stuck chocolate chips and peanuts to them.  They tried using pretzels as sticks to hold them, but I think it was around that time that it all started falling apart.  Apparently it was still yummy though.

interlude

The boys decided to sleep in the tent in the basement tonight.  Joshua came in to tell me and figure out what to get ready.

J: what do we need to get ready?

A: Just get everything you need for bed.

J, yelling to Isaac: all we need is everything we need!

Wednesday: school and Legos

Well, we very tentatively signed the boys up for virtual schooling in the Fall.  We emailed the principal and Isaac's old teacher with some questions, and only Isaac's teacher got back to us.  She thinks that we are not locked into this way of schooling.  While I hope she is correct since they gave us such minimal information, I'm also just a bit worried.  But let's be honest, I'd probably feel this way in either case.

Some of the thoughts that are leading me this way:
*We don't know what in-school learning looks like.  If the students need to sit at their desks most of the day, that isn't ideal.
*There can be serious and lasting side effects of getting the virus, even if you "recover".  How that looks in is unknown, how that looks in children even more so.  (Although also keeping in mind that are also can be no side effects.)

Side thoughts:
*If schools return to virtual learning for all students, we will have less of a disruption
*Recent data about X can be hard to come by.  I've noticed this with a few other things I've tried to Google recently about COVID.  You really need to watch the date: something published a month ago is already susceptible to changes in knowledge.
*I'd really like Isaac to go back to school.  He's driving me nuts.

The cats were looking mischievously at the fridge this morning.  For several minutes.

Isaac made a map out of Legos of Secret Coders for the library reading program.

Joshua made Flurry

Along with a bunch of bad guys.  These bad guys are especially bad because they are mixing types.  (So the middle one is gold + silver.  The Right one is water + something else).  There's also a B for Bad guy.

He also added to his Bad Dragon collection with an ice + water dragon.

Tuesday: hard day

Isaac had a hard day again today.  He didn't want to do his school stuff, and after a half hour of moping around and sort of working on it I sat next to him and he knocked it out in a minute.  We have school because otherwise this summer would be really boring, and it isn't as though there aren't fun things to choose as part of school.  It's frustrating.  And I don't know how much is him being stubborn and how much is dealing with COVID isolation.

We did go to a friends house (outside) today!  There were some trampolines and a fun swing.  Isaac enjoyed it, but maybe not quite as much as I was hoping.  We also took a walk to a nearby playground, which went over a bit better.  In any case, it was something different to do, made school end sooner and lunch start later.  And I had a great time chatting with Amie.

Joshua is still doing fine.  No significant attitude changes, especially now that he has an earlier bedtime.  It's made a huge difference and I haven't heard one word of complaint from him, so I don't know if he doesn't realize that Isaac gets to stay up a little later or if he just doesn't care.

We'll try again tomorrow, although I have even fewer plans than today.

Sunday: birthday party

Joshua had his first (early) birthday party today.

He's starting to look so old.

Saturday: fruit

Raspberries are starting!  I had one crazy outlier that ripened about two weeks ago, but today there were three.  I saw a few more that will be ready in a few days and lots of blossoms!

We made orange bread this afternoon.  This was one of my favorite foods when I was working at Resthaven, and I hope that this bread lives up to that one.  I was a bit disappointed in the glaze; it was more of a sauce that somewhat soaked in.  I'm sure it's orangy though.

We got a fruit tray from some friends earlier this week and sadly finished it up today.  The fruit was delicious and the fruit dipped in chocolate was even more delicious.  I might need to do that on a more regular basis.

We got an email from the school today asking if we wanted to do in-person learning or virtual learning.  (Hybrid learning is still on the table, but that wasn't an option with this email.)  It has stressed me out because the only detail that we know is that we can change our minds.  But is it easy to change our minds?  School is still five weeks out and just as the school isn't ready to decide anything, neither am I.  What should we default to if we don't want to make up our minds yet?  What does in-person learning look like?  What about virtual?  I expect they're just trying to figure out where people stand, but then they should have asked it differently.  But...hmm...to tie this into the fruit theme...it's been nice not needing to only buy good fruit for lunch boxes the last several months.  In fact, it was nice not to have to pack lunches completely.

Friday: nice day

Today was a pretty nice day.  I think it helped that Aunt C came over to babysit so I could have an eye appointment (and I snuck in a few errands too).  By the time I did that and we walked around the house talking about plant and flower plans, it was 11:20.  The boys were entertaining themselves well, so we skipped having more school.  They didn't complain. :D

Tornado, surprisingly, was the cat that joined me for nap time.  Usually Horizon is the one that comes when you say "nap time", but today Horizon just looked at me blankly and Tornado came.  Horizon was probably exhausted from seeing his second favorite person, Aunt C.

Thursday: the funny things.

1. I learned from a reliable source that there will probably be a butter shortage around the holidays.  Get some extra and throw it in the deep freeze.

2. I had a dream that my foot was getting sprayed by a sprinkler (the ch-ch-ch kind.)  So my feet switched places and then the other one was getting wet.  Turns out a cat was licking them.  Which makes a lot more sense the a sprinkler in bed.

3. For Joshua's math today I had him tell me the two numbers after a number I gave him.  (I've noticed that he always starts counting at one with addition problems, so I want to make the process easier to start at a different number so you can 'skip' counting the first number.)  Anyway, we did a lot of 7-8-9 aughhs! because it kept him engaged in the activity.

4. We went for a walk in a forest.  It had rained early this morning so the forest was damp and wonderful.

5. I have this whole pile to move down the the basement.  It's been growing and growing, but I never want to take the few extra steps to put it in the right place when I'm going downstairs.  It finally hit a tipping point today and I got about half of it down.  The duplo table also got played with for the first time in a while since it moved to a new spot.  Joshua hasn't been playing with it in his room, so I thought we could clear some space and move it to the basement, at least for a bit.

Wednesday: blueberries

We went to pick blueberries today.  We were a little early, so the boys were able to play on the playground.  They did a great job picking blueberries...I was actually rather surprised!  We didn't end up with a ton, but that's ok because we have plenty of fruit in the house.

The boys did my hair.

Monday and Tuesday: stuff

Monday was pretty boring and I was grumpy Tuesday, which is why there weren't posts.  There were a lot of Legos though!

Joshua made a lot of dragons.

They were both doing Lego challenge at the same time, so I wanted to give them the same thing and see the different results.  After a lot of asking, we finally settled on a bed.  Isaac made a bed with a mattress that came out and a monster under it.

Joshua made a tiny bed.

Then Joshua made a castle.  With lots of flags.

Isaac made some hearts.

Joshua made another dragon with a dragon mech.  The little dragon can take it's tail off and store it in the mech.  It can also change into a little mech and use it's tail as a sword

This is a barn for all the dragons.

Sunday: honorable mention

Joshua got mentioned in today's sermon!  Here's the video:  (the mention really starts at 30:05)

https://youtu.be/Si9Cj3x6eN8?t=1786


There's another brief mention at 38:23

By the numbers

For reference, here are the websites I follow for my COVID-19 numbers.

World: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
World/State (normalized): http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
Michigan: https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-coronavirus-dashboard-cases-deaths-and-maps
Ottawa county: https://ottawacountymi.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/8e2955c071394c70a6b69aff394c1a49

It's been a depressing week or two.

Thursday: VBS, Lego

 We had a VBS lesson.  It was rather nice because it was all off-line.  (It wasn't nice because it took until 10am for the lesson to come out.)  It was Noah's story.

We were supposed to make rainbow fruit skewers.  It was grocery day, so all we had green grapes.  So we colored some marshmallows instead.

Then we had a rainbow art project.

There were lots of Lego things.

A good guy vehicle.

An ark for all of Joshua's lovies.  (This was part of VBS.)

Isaac made giraffe an ark too.

Isaac got a bunch of gold Lego pieces and made a lot of darts.