Iceberg Dead Ahead

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from yesterday. Kyle took Nora and Otto for a long bike ride to Dunkin Donuts (Otto went in the iBert) and Lincoln opted to stay home with me for special mom time. We made pancakes for breakfast and hung out until the others got back. It was a hot day but Kyle was on a mission and got both lawns mowed while I cleaned up around the house a bit and put the game room mostly back together. At least this week he'll be able to wander safely around his "office" while he's on all of his calls.

Anyway...that brings us to today! Kyle kept up his active streak and went for an early run, we had a delicious family waffle breakfast and then he set to work some on the baby's room and made a decent amount of progress throughout the day. I worked on Nora's school work for the week - and after a mid-level mental breakdown upon receiving the less than cohesive list of assignments/requirements, etc managed to get organized and feel less overwhelmed and pretty good heading into our first week of "online" school. So, now it's super late - despite the fact that Kyle and I were in bed set to hangout and relax by about 9:15 with all the kids down. So...what does the picture have to do with anything?

Early in the evening I went in Nora's room to gather cups, water bottles, etc. from her disaster and I stepped in a wet spot (not totally unusual with an Otto living in the house). I told her to take a towel and sop up the spill. Fast forward to about 10pm and Nora comes in saying she can't sleep and in an effort to further avoid going to bed, asked for more towels because the ones she had used earlier were soaked. Kyle took her back to bed and investigated further, only to realize that Nora's room was in fact, flooded. The carpet was completely swamped. She immediately plead the 5th but eventually fessed up to having noticed "maybe Friday, maybe yesterday" that her carpet was wet by carpet she also meant EVERYTHING on the carpet - we didn't notice because there was SO MUCH stuff all over her floor. We immediately set to work clearing the floor and trying to figure out what had happened. Bucket of water - potentially? Sprinkler or hose through an open window - very possible! But we think the actual issue might be that the spigot outside of Nora's room - the ones the kids play with constantly may have a leak. The paint is bubbling off the wall and the baseboard is popping not to mention the carpet was soaked. I spent about an hour sucking water out while Nora moaned and groaned and couldn't sleep I ended up getting 3 tanks worth out and it's still pretty wet. Now Nora's asleep on her trundle mattress in Otto's room, there's a fan running on high and the water to that end of the house is shut off. Tomorrow we'll further assess how much of the wall we're going to need to tear out and replace and hopefully the carpet will dry enough that it can be saved. So, that's how I spent my relaxing, early to bed evening. And, so much for thinking that the end of this pregnancy was going to be without a major project to complete. Needless to say I'm grateful that Lowes and Home Depot are considered essential because from the looks of Nora's room, they are going to be! Have a good week everyone!

Can You Dig It

When it's a lovely morning and all of your kids are playing nicely together outside in the dirt - digging for rocks and dinosaur bones, you chalk it up to science and then give them a bin of soapy water to wash all their trucks and outside toys and call that practical life while you clean up around the house a bit. Haha! There was the minor snafu of them digging beside the porch and finding a whole bunch of rocks...under the pad. They took the relocation request well though. And because they worked so well together when they did do school stuff it was a short "Fun Friday" so they were happy campers all around. Nora even FINALLY did anything at all to get her room to a point where you can kind of see the floor in bringing her laundry down and starting it - don't be fooled though, she didn't do it because of a sudden change of heart, it was totally fueled by

Yep, the opportunity to Zoom meet with 3 of her classmates this afternoon. At this point though, I'm totally willing to leverage healthy and desperately needed peer socialization to make our house a more pleasant place for all of us. Speaking of Zoom (quite the buzzword these days!) we did get the kids to bed in time to meet up with our friends again and have a little hangout...although conversation is universally the same these days with the exception of everyone wanting full reports about the experiences of those who are deemed essential in these times and get to go out into the world. Remember when we thought January was the longest year ever??? I have a hunch 2020 is on a mission to make a name for itself!

Just Keeps Giving

The weeks feel longer these days and the "official" homeschooling (ya know the assigned from teachers, millions of digital things to keep track of) hasn't even started yet. I'm not in any way at all looking forward to it - at all! I appreciate that the teachers are putting in a lot of work to set everything up but there are a lot of different required sites to log into and blah blah blah. Anyway, enough whining about something that I don't even know how it's going to go yet. As for the scene you see here, after the boys came in covered in mud from their dirt and water play this afternoon I stuck them both straight in the shower. I got them both out, put them in towels and sent them to go get dressed...then there was giggling and a sound I didn't immediately recognize. Styrofoam. Two naked boys, giggling and shredding styrofoam into tiny little floaty pieces. They know to their core how much I HATE when then break up styrofoam but they also have a love of doing it that is so deep it makes it worth it to them to do it no matter the consequence. I love love love sensory play but not this version. I put them in charge of cleaning it all up, which then resulted in Otto's shopvac being brought out - totally reasonable plan except for the exhaust that blows all the little pieces all over the entire house. Needless to say I'm sure I'll be the one who ends up chasing floaty little foamies all over with a broom, vacuum, swiffer and whatever other supplies are necessary to get them all. Oh, and by the time Kyle got home from the office (yes, he went in today and spent the day on his own away from kids in a quiet place where he could think whole grown up thoughts and probably even pee without being interrupted by a kid or 3) the boys were still naked, because frankly, whatever. Anyone else ready for the weekend - which lets face it is just a slightly looser version of what we're all living every day now?

Hit & Miss!

While the kids were playing this morning tempers momentarily flared and this little kaleidoscope thingy went flying in the direction of a sibling. It missed - the window paid the price! Only took a week and a half for the house destruction to escalate beyond rooms you can't walk into. Good news is, the rest of the day went fairly smoothly. Nora's teacher started sending out info on what's going to come next week when they start doing online school and tomorrow we pick up Lincoln's packet of work from his teachers.

Until official school fires back up, we've settled into a pretty good routine around here. Each night I set up the general plan for the next day - a similar daily schedule with enough structure that they kind of know what is coming when, but plenty of time to play play play (and do some fighting of course) and have some choices in what they want to do. There's about 1:45-2 hours of settled in school work where they can choose from different lessons what they want to work on (with the exception of Otto, for him, it's like a half hour or so then he wanders off to play or dumps things out!) Throughout the day I try to get them to pick up here and there and we've been reading tons of books during reading/quiet time. Otto zonked out on the couch while we were reading today. We've managed to keep the playroom pretty clean and main living areas fairly under control too...their rooms however are a battle I'm not sure I'm ready to undertake yet. I think their favorite part (and Cort's too) has become walks/bike rides in the evening because we get to say hi to people in passing. Anyway, we'll see how we need to adjust next week as things kick off for Nora. Tomorrow starts our official stay at home order for 2 weeks...only outings to the grocery store, etc - walks are still allowed so it's not that much different than what we've been doing. Ever the fluid situation around here!

Some Work, Lots of Play

Today was a rough school day but at least I started out strong. I was pretty happy with our germs lesson that we began the day with. First they drew their hands and then what they thought germs look like, then we looked up pictures of real germs. Then we did the glitter activity where they could see how easily germs went from their hands to whatever they touched and most importantly how hard and long they needed to scrub in order to get them off their hands. We finished off with the Hippos book to talk about exponential growth of both germs in the body AND how quickly an illness can spread to people! I high fived myself on that on the fly idea and link! After lunch Kyle headed to a job site leaving recess responsibilities up to me.

Remember how I said we couldn't keep up on foot anymore, well, today was our first group bike ride. We only have sidewalks on some streets, so in order to avoid the bigger hills in the neighborhood we took to the streets for part. Otto crashed into a lot of curbs, blew a stop sign and did his best to give me as many heart attacks as possible, but we survived and all made it home in 1 piece. Day three of riding in the books. The bike ride didn't drain the rest of the energy so it was back to squirters outside.

Yep, Lincoln spraying the hose and Otto being insanely unsafe trying to swim in the cooler - needless to say, dangers were discussed and that activity was kiboshed quickly! I snuck out this evening to pick up some take-out food - although the lack of traffic really shortened my solo drive time, so that was a bit of a bummer. To top off our long day, Nora & Lincoln are still awake at 10:30, so that is just freaking fantastic! Argh!

New Normalcy?

Considering how much of a bummer things have been lately the kids are being pretty good sports about it. Today Otto did want really badly to go out and give Gatorade to the garb guys but he was willing to settle for waving from the family room window. I think it was a pleasant surprise when we were out for "recess" after lunch and they did actually get to see Mr. Eddie & Mr. Max and say hi as they were riding bikes past. Happy campers all around, although no Gatorade exchanged. School went well today, it was Otto's best day by far but I don't know if I'll be able to come up with the right combo of lessons/activities again.

This afternoon's outdoor activity was graffiti chalking some of the neighbor's driveways/sidewalks so the kids could let their friends know that they're missed. We also made up a little sidewalk game to engage some of the walkers that come by during the day, but much to our disappointment we haven't seen anyone do it yet. Maybe we'll have to come up with another to add! Anyway, we closed out the day with another walk/bike ride and quickly realized that our children are now too fast on bikes for us to keep up on foot without running. Otto is both hilarious and terrifying to watch as he tears off down the street narrowly avoiding temporary and permanently affixed obstacles and when he gets just far enough ahead that we can't see him around a bend we're never really sure if we'll find him wiped out, still pedaling or waiting patiently for us to catch up. At least he has a helmet! Tuesday on tap! Maybe we should start playing over/under on how many people Nora requests to Facetime, what time the requests begin and we can also open the betting to who gets the most requests on a given day. Seriously, there are so many ways to break it down! But again, I can't complain too much...they're really doing well all things considered!

Back Active

Kyle and I had our heads in the game a little more today. He was going to go for a run this morning and when Otto heard he immediately wanted to go. In an effort to turn him off from the idea I told him he could only go if he rode his orange bike. (That's the two wheeler he's been against riding in favor of his balance bike for quite some time now) As I should have known, he was like, Ok! Grabbed his helmet and his bike and was out the door with a Kyle who I'm sure was just thrilled with me at the moment. I watched from inside as Kyle got Otto set up on the bike and off he went! We've known he could do it...today was the day he proved it to himself and he LOVES it! He likes to talk about how fast he goes. So now we're the proud chasers of a bike parade! Haha!  After the kids were sufficiently tired out and hot from their back and forth biking Kyle snuck out for his solo run. I cut everyone's hair over the course of the morning and then this afternoon made some chicken salad, egg, salad and a big garden salad to have on hand in the fridge for lunches and such this week. We got an e-mail mid-afternoon that the teachers at Nora's school had a little surprise up their sleeve, so at 6:00 we headed out and picked a corner of our neighbor's yard that wasn't close to anyone and watched for...

The teacher parade. Nora's teacher lead the whole caravan which was exciting for her. Otto was most impressed because "there's so much dogs!" and Lincoln was a little bummed his teachers weren't there. The hardest part of the whole thing - despite how nice it was for the teachers to surprise the kids - was that all the kids in the neighborhood were out and they couldn't play together or even get close.  Out of sight/out of mind had been working well for most of them but it was no longer!  We carried a screaming Otto back in the house because he couldn't play with the rest of the kids. Anyway, it was nice to see some other grown-ups in person even if it was yelling back and forth from a distance - at least we know we're all going slowly crazy together!