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.