Skipping Town

Last day of March. It seems incredible that just a few short weeks ago the kids were still going to school, I was still meandering around Target buying random stuff every Tuesday while the kids were at CCD, we were still planning to be in Costa Rica for spring break. What a month. March is always awful--the tease of a lingering winter when so many signs are signaling spring--but this March won't fade into the general rhythm of an ordinary year. Homeschool today included sudoku. The girls loved it. They started on 4x4 puzzles, moved on to 6x6, and then moved to 9x9. That was a fun introduction. After lunch and a game of Zombie Kidz, L&G had some quiet time, reading, while I wrote some book reviews and cut out fabric for face masks. Then they played all afternoon in the basement, mostly with Playmobil and Keva planks. I'll be interested to see what other long-dormant toys come out during this lockdown. Steak fajitas for dinner, piano practicing, showers, and that's ...

We didn't do any homeschool today. I've been very confused about the first two days of this week, whether they were days off or part of the first two weeks' work, and I think we WERE supposed to be doing stuff today, but alas, we did not. It's fine. Both girls are finished with their assigned work, and they had a busy day: they caught up on four episodes of Mo Willems's Lunch Doodles, played with their LOL house, sewed dresses for their dolls, had a Zoom check-in with their sewing instructor, went for a bike ride, did typing and math facts practice, practiced piano, and read. I made another banana cake. We didn't even have time for a Little House tonight. Andrew's looking at real estate in far-flung places (ie rural, FAR FROM THE NYC METRO AREA). Our conversations are wild and life-upending. Could this quarantine be what pushes us to make big changes, structural changes, to our life? Maybe we'll just disappear in the dark of night and no one will be th...

This weather. THIS WEATHER. I feel like I'm in a fog. There's no uplift. Or if there is a brief momentary uplift it's erased with a glance at the headlines. What a time. What time, what a time. I made peanut butter banana muffins for breakfast, because what's stopping me? Limited time? A schedule ? The girls played in the basement with their LOL house for most of the morning, while Andrew and I set up an Easter tree with branches from the yard and tiny miniature egg ornaments (me) and cleaned the bathrooms (Andrew). I summoned Ma Ingalls and did all the mending that's been piled on my sewing table for months (CHARLES!). I made a double batch of stuffed shells--one batch for dinner, one batch to freeze, because I panic-ordered two pounds of ricotta last week. After dinner we watched two episodes of Pick of the Litter, a Disney documentary about puppies in training to be guide dogs. This show is pretty much the exact opposite of Tiger King, where animals are explo...

Everyone slept in, even Farrah, who refused to come out of her crate even at 10am. L&G immediately went downstairs to work on their LOL house, which now includes a library, a trampoline, a climbing wall, a slide, and a zipline. (Real talk: the basement might never recover from the aftermath of breaking apart large pieces of styrofoam and hot glue guns that don't always make it onto a piece of scrap paper to rest.) I made a Dutch baby for breakfast, one of the NYT's suggested quarantine foods. Delish. Sadly, Lucia had to do a bunch of schoolwork today, because although we've been homeschooling for hours every day, we hadn't gotten around to doing any of the assignments for science, art, or music. Science I get. We need to do some science. But art and music? Our whole home life is art and music. I'm just not sure how much leeway there is in actually turning in assignments. Regardless, Lucia did a couple of experiments and drew a picture. We'll work on the mu...

Friday feels like a relief, the end of homeschooling for the week. I'm dreading the beginning of all the new procedures and requirements next week. Maybe it'll feel less overwhelming once we get more information. Right now all we have is a long letter from the district that feels, to me, like a long list of PLATFORMS we'll be using. Or might be using. How am I supposed to keep track of what's where??? This is going to replace online grocery shopping as my top anxiety. This morning we paused our homeschooling to have our family portrait taken by a local photographer who's offering porch portraits as a way to get some work in lieu of the usual big events she photographs. We've actually never had family pictures taken before, and it was a lot of fun. Farrah was in the pics too. Can't wait to see how they turned out! The kids couldn't wait to be done with their schoolwork today so they could get back to the basement and work on their LOL dollhouse. They ...

I feel like we're kind of burning out on these distance-learning assignments, and we have more and more weeks to go. We got a letter from the district tonight outlining all the new initiatives and platforms and strategies that I guess? maybe? will be used going forward, and TBH it kind of gave me a panic attack. I didn't recognize any of the "platforms" listed (aside from Google, obvs), and the scheduling suggestions seem, to me, a little unrealistic. Don't get me wrong: we like routine around here. But a routine that *we* create and work with. I don't think I can just impose the district's schedule onto our home life. And I definitely don't think we can sustain 4+ hours of schoolwork plus homework, the recommended instructional time for fourth graders. What the heck. (It should be noted that it's the fourth-grade requirements that are getting to me. Greta's assigned work is manageable and home-appropriate, IMHO.) There are so very very very ...

Homeschool is now extended till April 17. I'll be surprised if it's not cancelled for the rest of the year. It's so bafflingly huge--all this--that it's hard to really digest. We blinked, and there was no more school. I got three grocery deliveries today. My panic-shopping has finally yielded actual food in the fridge. We'd planned to buy a chest freezer to hold all the extra, but we got to this too late, and no chest freezers are available anywhere. So we have to reorganize the two freezers we do have. It'll be okay. I was hoping to do a lot of cooking and freezing, but I'll be happy now to just get the meat safely frozen. Andrew and I planned to cook salmon tonight, because I'd received a wrapped seafood-like parcel from Whole Foods yesterday. Andrew prepared everything and when we unwrapped the parcel we discovered it held ground beef, not salmon. Two steaks had also arrived so we cooked that instead, along with some asparagus and potatoes and kal...

Sun makes all the difference. The kids can play outside. The dog can hang out outside. We can go for a walk and a bike ride. The smallness of our quarantined world expands a little on these nice days. Regular schoolwork in the morning. Typing. Math facts work for Greta. Lucia made us all grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, using our homemade bread. Making grilled cheese sandwiches is her current favorite thing to do. She calls them her "perfecto" grilled cheeses because they're not over-toasted, which is the despicable way I make them. She was so fed up with my over-toasting that she finally just decided to make them herself and she's made one or two for herself every single day of homeschool. There was lunch and doodling with Mo Willems, and then Greta and I went into town so I could drop off two pieces of mail in a mailbox. Then I took everyone outside for a chalk activity I'd seen in one of the RESOURCES that crossed my consciousness over the past few days...

So my bread last night was a disaster. Instead of a warm loaf of wheat bread, after three hours I had a torn-up, half-baked pile of dough and unmixed flour. Any number of things could have gone wrong. BUT! I tried again this morning and wound up with a lovely small loaf of perfectly baked white bread. Success. As long as I can keep us stocked with flour and yeast (not so easy), we'll be set for bread. Lucia had hours of schoolwork today, so the morning was focused on actual homeschooling for her, while Greta worked on schoolwork and then typing and addition facts. After lunch, more schoolwork for Lucia. The girls had a Zoom call with their sewing teacher. Then the girls played with LOL dolls while I paid a stack of bills, and then we mixed up some Snow in a Can, and that was the afternoon. Later in the day, I took Farrah and the kids on a rain walk. I feel like I can't relax yet during the day--our new routine is just too new--but our walk was a peaceful moment. It was very v...

Our focus today was the basement. We cleared junk off a bookshelf in the attic and brought it down to the basement so we could finally organize all the food we've purchased over the past couple of weeks. We emptied our kitchen cupboards and all the grocery bags, and created a pantry-shelf. We have a good amount of food. Our stores include fourteen packs of ramen, among more nourishing items. Not enough pasta or rice. We're ordering a chest freezer tonight so we can slowly build up more frozen meats, veggies, and fruits. Our goal is to not go to stores at all. NYC is the eye of this storm, and we're spitting distance from the city. But staying homebound is not an easy proposition. After attempting all day to snag a delivery slot for three different grocery stores, I finally got a slot from Amazon Fresh for tomorrow. Fourteen of the items in my cart were out of stock. But between tomorrow's order and the order we ostensibly have coming from another store on Wednesday, w...

We started attacking the mess of the house today. We cleaned up both kids' rooms, rearranged Lucia's furniture, vaccuumed, changed the sheets, removed all the junk that has migrated upstairs from the playroom. Then I made the kids try on all their spring clothes, because who knows when supply chains will break down? I wanted to make sure I could order whatever spring clothes they need, while we still can. (Fortunately, turns out they're both in good shape clothes-wise.) I spent some time filling a virtual Whole Foods cart that I will attempt to actually purchase for the next week. We went for a family bike ride, the kids played outside, and Farrah hung out outside most of the day, refusing to be lured inside even with treats. Later in the day we had a FaceTime happy hour with Andrew's sister and dad. We made the girls Shirley Temples, which they love. Tonight we ordered dinner from Porto Falafel, and then watched an episode of Little House. We all hated this episo...

Homeschooling and not leaving the house are big changes etc etc etc but TBH? The thing stressing me out the most right now is food. Procuring food. I have filled multiple carts online, from multiple stores, only to be thwarted at checkout with no possible delivery times. I finally managed to complete a purchase from a local grocery store, with a delivery scheduled for Wednesday. The stores here are open, of course, but the lines are long--out the door and around the parking lot at Trader Joe's, people spaced six feet apart, a max of 25 people allowed in the store at any one time. Other stores let everyone in and are therefore much too crowded. So we've been trying to avoid actually going shopping. I don't know if that's going to be sustainable. Besides trying to match up assignments with digital notebooks and different student logins for different sites, I've been focusing on getting food. I'm pretty sure my mysterious stomach pain is linked to the upheaval ...

Another day of quarantine. We're edging into a rhythm. Schoolwork and typing, playing, lunch, Mo Willems, two rounds of Zombie Kidz board game, a sewing project, playing. Piano lessons via FaceTime. Playing. Dinner. A TV show. A few years ago, I found two boxed DVD sets of Little House on the Prairie, seasons 1 and 2. I may have said something like, "If we're ever quarantined, we can binge watch these 50 episodes!" Kidding. I didn't say that. BUT we are now quarantined, and these two seasons do comprise about 50 episodes, and tonight we watched season 1, episode 1. We just finished reading A Long Winter and are going to start On the Banks of Plum Creek, which is apparently where season 1 picks up, so it's perfect. The girls were enthralled. Pa works all the time EVEN THOUGH HE'S HURT! Wait--now MA'S pulling the oxen! OH NO LITTLE CARRIE IS CLIMBING INTO THE LOFT! It's thrilling to witness their easy wonder with the Ingalls family. They're all...

We did a little better with scheduling today, but there still wasn't enough time to fit in everything we wanted to do. I think I need to adjust my expectations for what we can and should realistically squeeze in each day. After all--we have time to do absolutely everything we could possibly want to do. We don't have to do it all this week. Or next. (Or next or next...) Here's a rundown of today: Schoolwork Typing Kids played outside / I exercised Lunch Mo Willems doodling (a highlight of the quarantine so far) More doodling Kids Facetimed with Mom and Dad, while I baked banana cake Learned to play Zombie Kidz; played three times Ate banana cake Reading Playing outside / riding bikes Reading and doodling, basement playing Dinner Piano practicing Watched season one, episode one of Fuller House (FAIL. I cannot stress enough how HORRIFIC this show is. We won't be watching another one.) That's a full day. We have a lot of crafting and sewing goals tha...