The boys had a blind-folded Easter egg hunt. The teachers were kind enough to drop some eggs off for us!
Well, I've got nothing for today. Oh, yesterday we were told that Isaac's class is in quarantine. The sad thing is that spring break starts on Thursday. The nice part is that it doesn't affect us...it was nice not to race around to figure out what to do with Isaac while I was working.
After my last handwriting post I got some feedback. Dad wrote me a nice note.
Ben said that he always prints.
Isaac's been working on the battle between red and blue for about two weeks now. There are a bunch of rules...the cores give extra power, they're harder to take over, etc. etc. I've been impressed with how long he's stuck with it. (Tonight he finally said he was bored of it, so we'll see if it's just a one night thing or if it's done for good.)
Isaac is writing a report on electricity. He wanted a picture of a magnet coil, and I remembered that a long time ago I had brought one home. I looked on the blog for a picture, but could only find a video:
Ben got his first vaccine shot today (Moderna)! It was a rather unexpected call yesterday, but I'm very, very excited that he has the first one.
Well, we've made the decision to pull back activities again. Michigan COVID numbers are spiking Ottawa is averaging over well 50 cases per 7days (roughly equal to 25 per 100,000) and that was the number we arbitrarily set several weeks ago that let us resume some activities.
To be fair, the only thing that changes this time is that we'll be doing karate on-line again. I hadn't started going back to the grocery store, the kids are still in virtual school (not that we could change that), we're still watching church from home, and we're only doing take-out from restaurants. I'll still be going to work, Ben will still be going to work, and we'll need babysitters. (Side note: I realized that I didn't write about going back to karate...I had been curious to know how long the dip lasted. Based on Ottawa county numbers it looks like five to seven weeks, but the data I'm looking at doesn't show the 7day average. This is a depressingly short period of time.)
I'm optimistic that this spike won't be as bad, but I've also read that it is mainly hitting the 10-19 age bracket. They didn't have many cases in prior spikes and most can't get the vaccine yet, so I also feel like it could be worse than I think. Luckily it's also starting to warm up, so some activities may move outside and I feel much more comfortable with that.
Today it was Joshua's loveys' birthdays. It was Grey Bear's 50th and everyone elses' 1st.
We also packed some bags for Kids' Food Basket.
After we got home Joshua was a bit sad, but willing to snuggle on my lap as a rock. Normally he just hides in his room, so I'm hoping this is a new thing we can do.
We had games with our grad school friends!
This was my favorite T-shirt competition.
We also booked a vacation with them for this summer!! Woo-hoo!!
Isaac finally pulled out some gummy Legos and made lots of things with them. Before I realized it he had sent about six pictures to his teacher, which was a bit excessive.
Joshua was excited to find a piece of gold in his Leprechaun trap. (It was a coin from an arcade that I had sitting around.) He made a pot of gold to hide it in.
Sunday night was capped by the death of a coworker. While I wouldn't call her a close friend, we did always stop to chat for a minute in the hallway when we saw each other and there was a relationship.
Grieving yesterday felt muffled. I was at home and the family didn't know her. They went about their day as normal. I've noticed this with the few deaths that have happened this year. It seems as though there should be more mourning, but it can be hard to do so when circumstances are already so weird this year.
Today all feelings felt muted. Oh, except for the time Joshua spilled water on our good laptop. Those feelings were loud. (It is currently drying and I'm optimistic, but we'll see.) It's been a hard few weeks, and so not having many feelings was a relief.
Every day is different, so we'll see how tomorrow goes.
The boys decided to do Lego fights with me this morning. They always look a little different, but always consist of some Lego item coming upstairs to attack me. Today I also got a lot of loot from them. So much loot that it was about two handfuls.
At one point I started hiding in between attacks because...well, it isn't really a fun game. Joshua decided to hide with me because at that point he was on my side. So he took a blanket from the couch and put it in a place where it normally isn't. Then he proceeded to put his head, but not his arms, under the blanket to hide better. I just smiled and took a picture.
Isaac had his eye appointment today. I remembered to go, so that's a bonus. His eyes are great!
Yesterday I had a student who managed to hide their excel file while working on their exam. (Instead of freezing rows.) It took us five minutes, but we eventually found the file back. The same thing happened today to a student while taking a make-up exam on zoom. Her level of stress immediately went through the roof, but I knew what had happened and was able to walk her through it. It wasn't stress-free, but I at least knew how to guide her.
Isaac is making a zoo-under-construction. They let all the animals in too early.
Isaac is learning cursive in school this year. And by learning it, I mean he's doing a few pages in a workbook every week.
It has made me think about handwriting. My grandparents' generation hand-writing was all cursive, all the time. It also had a specific feel to it...handwriting between people is obviously different, but they were all taught it the same way. It's a bit hard to read and a bit slanty.
I haven't really noticed much about my parents' generation, at least not that I can make broad statements about. My mom had a wide cursive. Dad...hmm. I'm not sure. The generation still writes in a lot of cursive I think, but I'm not as sure about that.
Then we get to my generation. I've made my own print/cursive hybrid, which I think is rather common. You'll notice on the chore list that I didn't even do "min" the same way within a minute. Some words are print, some cursive, some a mix. In school we had to write in cursive from 3rd-5th grade, if I recall correctly. Enough to get it stuck in our brain, but not enough to make it stick well. (I do tend to make my lower case l's in cursive though, because otherwise they look like 1's. It's a problem in math.)
So I wonder about Isaac's generation. Will he need to write in cursive in the coming years or is it something that is slowly dying out, with other things, like keyboarding skills, becoming more important? What will his handwriting look like? Will he incorporate any cursive? For that matter, will his handwriting ever not look like a kid's?
I got my first vaccine shot today!! (It's the Pfizer one, if anyone cares.) I had to go about a half hour away to get it, but my audio book is good. I feel like I'm jumping the line a little bit, but I told the person on the phone that I'm not a K-12 educator but a higher ed educator. She didn't seem to care and told me to take it. (I'd like to note that I did refuse one in Holland. They said that the higher ed people got lumped into the educator status before they realized the state was separating them.) I'm not going to turn it down at that point! As expected, the clinic was well run. It was quite busy, but they were moving people through quickly too. I got there a bit early...the paperwork said to get there 15 minutes early and then there was a sign by the door to wait until 5 minutes early. Since I was already at the door I went in anyway and got my shot at 3:23, seven minutes before my scheduled appointment. (The only reason I know the time is they wrote it on my paperwork because everyone has to stay around for 15 min.) There was a place for a picture...it was supposed to be taken by someone else, but I just sort of snapped one on my way out.
Oddly enough, it is one year since all the COVID stuff started affecting me. I was teaching last year (on a Tuesday) and was talking with some of the students before they left for spring break. I had made a questionnaire to see which students would have problems if things were they didn't come back. They asked if I thought we'd be back together after spring break and I said 50/50. Little did I know... It's really quite amazing what's been done in a year.
All the virtual students are also getting some free meals through the school. I thought about declining, but we really could use a change up in the food choices. There's really only enough food for one student. I'm not complaining because 1) it's free and 2) it's probably about the right amount of food. I know the boys...they'll love the breakfasts but can split the lunches. I made Joshua eat two green beans before he could have any more food and he really took it to heart, especially since I told him he couldn't even have food tomorrow if he didn't eat his two green beans. He eventually put them in applesauce and got them down that way, but it was a bit of a struggle.
Isaac looked rather old this afternoon while he was doing a search on something.
Parent-teacher conferences were tonight. Both boys are doing very well. The biggest difference is that Joshua likes writing and Isaac doesn't. Joshua needs to add spaces to his writing, but other than that the teacher is happy on how he is progressing. Isaac's spelling is getting better. (I've noticed it and his teacher noticed it.) It's still not great, but he's about in the right spot for where he needs to be in third grade. There are still some dumb mistakes that he makes, but it's getting there. He also needs to do more reading aloud. This one surprised me a little bit. I've thought his out-loud reading has been fine. Sometimes the cadence is off a bit, but it's not too bad. (Some of that is probably because he can't read ahead while talking. I've noticed I do that quite a bit to help with voices and different emphases, but it's probably an advanced skill.) Anyway, we'll get it into the rotation homework. He can read to Joshua, who probably needs a bit more reading to anyway.
Isaac and I had karate testing for our next belt rank today. I can't remember if I've mentioned this or not, but our dojang recently left their franchise and is now working independently. While not a lot is changing functionally, there are a lot of little changes. So testing this time had a lot of motions that we've been doing for a while and a new (and easy) form.
But, as always, they managed to put in some things during testing that we had either never done or hadn't worked on in a while. One of the things I still haven't started to love and I get out of breath so quickly. It's actually rather embarrassing, but it is what it is.
Of course, I still rank up because testing isn't necessarily a test. You can't go to testing until you've passed a pretest, so it isn't too big of a deal.
Today was a busy day. After doing school in the morning (along with proctoring a test and holding a help session), Isaac had piano lessons. They had been rescheduled last minute. It fit into our schedule, but right after they were done we went to the dojang to play with the obstacle course. Er, I tried to catch up on some of my work. I'm not sure if I was successful, but I tried. There was another family there for some reason with a little boy and my boys played very well with him. (It was especially nice because they needed the course pieces for something else so we didn't have to wipe them down and put them away!)
Then a quick stop at the grocery store and the library. I continued my trend of not really finishing anything by getting the groceries in the house (and the cold stuff put away) and then leaving it. This continues the trend of getting the laundry in the washer but not started, the continuing problem of the kitchen always having dirty dishes, and overall starting one thing and then realizing there is something more important that I should be doing.
We also had our games tonight and we played some different on-line games. I really enjoyed the games themselves, but the background music was a bit much and made it harder to talk.
The boys do love the cats.
I also found Tornado relaxing last night on the steps. It was a poor choice, since he's grey and was laying in a grey shadow. (Photo taken on night mode to actually see him.)
Ben: What were you dreaming about this morning? You were all twitchy.
Amanda: Someone was going to superglue me to a piano. [I didn't mention it, but it wasn't just my fingers. It was all of me. It was a bad person. I was trying to escape while at the same time wondering if they'd be dumb enough to superglue my clothes to the piano instead of my skin.]
Ben: ...
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Immediately after Joshua finished his morning meeting he said, "I want to talk to Grandpa Paul."
"Ok, " I said.
"Do you want to know what it's about?"
"Sure."
"Leprechauns."
Well, that wasn't what I was expecting him to say as I thought that maybe I could have answered any questions he had about leprechauns. I thought maybe there was an inside joke though, so I set up the meeting.
Joshua's two questions were: 1) Are leprechauns real? and 2) Is there a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Dad did a great job answering them, but I still haven't figured out why it was Grandpa Paul that had to answer them.
During church both boys wanted to snuggle with Ben. I got to snuggle with Joshua's foot...for a few minutes.
