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.