Social distancing day 23: Going out in public

Back in the beginning of January I had a mammogram that looked a little weird so I had to go back for a diagnostic mammogram and an ultra sound.  It took 7 weeks to get that appointment.  That also came back not looking so good so I was told I should get a couple of needle biopsies.  Fun.  I finally got that done yesterday.  I can think of better ways to spend a morning. 

I was not allowed into the building until I verified who I was, that I did not have a fever, that I have not been in contact with anyone who has Covid19 in the last 14 days, that I haven't been in contact with anyone who is suspected of having Covid19 in the last 14 days and that I haven't traveled to anywhere that is a hot spot and so on and so forth.  Just being in public was super weird.  Talking to people.  Getting touched by people.  I wore a face mask and so did everyone I came in contact with.  When I was there in the end of February, no one wore a face mask.  I was very conscious of everything I touched.  It was very strange.  Everyone was extremely nice and I thanked every single person on my way out of the building. 

I will be glad when I finally get the results in a couple of days.  I could use one less thing to worry about. 

Because of having many holes poked in a sensitive part of my body and the recommendation to not do anything strenuous, lift anything heavier than 15 lbs, get bumped or bounced for 48 hours after the procedure, Jeff took a couple of days off of work to be on kid duty.  I try and get him to put in some entries and be a "guest blogger".

Social distancing day 22: Nature art

Today we actually had a good project.  We took a nice long walk in the foothills.  It was an absolutely beautiful day.  I brought along a bag and we collected sticks and stones and dried flowers and seed pods.  We climbed rocks and explored.  It was great!

Later that afternoon we took some of our nature items and glued them on to some paper.  I found some rotting wood and glued some sticks and flowers to it because mom gets to play too.  Wren decided it looked cool and wanted to add to it and of course broke half of the flowers and knocked things off of it but that's okay, I still had fun and the kids did too.

We also finished painting the last of our Easter tree and hung up the last of the ornaments.  I think it turned out really cute.

Social distancing days 20 and 21: Weekend

Social distancing over the weekends really doesn't look or feel that different for me than a normal weekend.  I get out for a run, try and get Jeff to take a mountain bike ride and do some yard work projects. 

I will totally admit to being a slacker this weekend and not taking any pictures of our yard work project.  We took out an old juniper push in the back corner of our yard.  It was really ugly, half dead and full of spiders.  There were some old half rotter stairs that it was half grown over that we pulled out as well.  I think we must have removed 100 nails.  The stairs were also full of spiders including a huge black widow which totally creeped me out.  It is nice not to have that hazard around.  The kids have been starting to explore that area of the yard and I'm glad its a little safer now.  It has the potential to be really nice once we get it planted up.  The kids were slightly helpful.  Flynt mostly wanted to play with the rake and Wren helped drag some of the smaller branches over to Jeff so he could stuff them in the can.  It was a good project.

Sunday was pretty chill.  Books and pretend play.

Social distancing day 19: Easter counting loops

We have done counting loops a couple of times.  I was reminded of what a good idea this is from one of Wren's classmates at school.  Wren has been obsessing about Easter, which is funny since we aren't religious and we really don't do all that much for Easter so I have no idea why she has been so excited about it.  Anyhow, she asked me for the last time this morning.  I don't think I can answer that question one more time without something inside me breaking.  SO we made counting loops.

We have one loop for each day between now and Easter.  She can open one loop a day after dinner.  When she opens the last loop she knows its Easter Eve and that it will be Easter in the morning.

I drew the lines on the paper for Wren to try and cut out her strips.  I cut Flynt's.  Apparently we don't actually own a good ruler anymore so I used a roof piece from the Lincoln logs, meh, it worked.  I wanted Wren to practice her writing so we picked some good spring/Easter words and I wrote them on Flynt's strips and let Wren write them on hers.  We then added a tiny picture to go with the word (we also get to practice reading the words when we open each strip).

Flynt loves glue sticks so very very very much that he helped glue his strips (and me, and the table, and himself and everything in a 2 foot radius - thank goodness for easy clean glue).  Wren did her gluing all by herself.  I hang these from my dining room light.  It's not like I'm going to have friends over for dinner.

It was a slightly shorter but good project.  We also painted a little on our ornaments for the Easter tree had a dance party, called grandparents and lots of random things today for play.

Social Distancing day 18: Sidewalk chalk

The big adventure of the day was to go to a friend's house and write a message for them on the side walk to say "hello".  We live in a hilly neighborhood and our friend is maybe 3/4 of a mile a way up a really steep hill.  Both kids can walk that far but that doesn't always mean it will be a pleasant walk or that I won't have to carry Flynt for a bit.  Flynt is also going though a "you can't hold my hand or I will scream like you are poking hot needles into my eyes" phase and a "if you tell me not to do something I probably will" phase and a couple other fun ones that makes walking longer distances tricky.  I brought the double jogger and by the second street crossing Flynt was in full meltdown mode, yay for two year olds.  I dumped him in the jogger and put on a Audible "Frog and Toad" book and he was happy in about 2 seconds.  I think after 3 more steps Wren declared she couldn't possibly walk any further and hopped in and they both listened to stories as I pushed the ridiculously heavy stroller up the stupidly steep hill.

Honestly, it was lovely.  I got to walk at a nice fast pace, no one was yanking on my arms or wrapping themselves around my legs.  We weren't stopping to touch everything.  There were no questions.  They were happy and quiet.  We will take more stroller walks.  I will buy more Audible books.

We got to our friends house and everyone happily clambered out of the stroller and we got to work making a fabulous mess out of their sidewalk.  First we drew a Ghost Busters symbol because the little boy who lives there is big into Ghost Busters.  I'm 99% sure he's never seen anything other than the music video for the song but he is always pretend playing he is a ghost buster.  Next Wren wanted to make a hop scotch board for him to play on and us too.  I wrote a note to his family and then Flynt wanted help drawing a rocket ship.  It is really hard to do nice chalk art with two kids helping and climbing on you but it really didn't matter what it looked like.  It was colorful and fun.  We played with chalk for about 44 minutes.  Both kids and I were covered in chalk dust.  The walk was maybe 20-30 each way (I took the long way down the hill).  It was a super pleasant afternoon for everyone.

I got a really nice text from my friend later in the evening that they found our chalk art when they were getting out for a walk and that they really loved it and it made everyone smile.  Super fun for my kids and we spread some joy in the process, bonus!

Social Distancing day 17: Seed planting and Easter tree

Today I finally tried to get Wren to do a little school work.  Her school has been a little slow to adapt.  Its preschool and she can read a little and can write the alphabet pretty good in capitals and has a okay understanding of addition, so I'm not at all worried about her needed to cram before kindergarten next year.  She got her first assignment via video today and that was to draw a picture of a plant at her house.  I upped the game and said she needed to write some descriptive words about it and write one sentence.  I helped with the spelling.  She is convinced that I'm wrong and everything should always been written in capital letters.  I also had to make lines on paper.  Next amazon order needs paper with lines.

 Next I popped out for a little run while Jeff covered snack and read some more.

After lunch we went outside and planted some snap peas.  The kids had fun pushing the peas into the ground.  Next we played a little.  While we were finding branches for our Easter tree it started to snow?!?  This week has been too weird. 

I got the tree together when we got inside and we put some of our completed ornaments on it.  I stuffed some plastic Easter eggs in the vase to keep the branches from wiggling all over.  It looks pretty festive.  Will try and get a better picture later.

Social distancing day 16: Misc?

Today was just a random assortment of things.  We didn't really do anything new today.  We called Grammy and Granddad in the morning and took a little walk before it rained and collected some new "nature treasures" as Wren likes to call sticks, stones and leaves and left them in the collection (a pile of random crap the kids collect on walks).  We did do a little more painting on items for our Easter tree before lunch but it didn't last too long.

There was a very elaborate pretend game that Flynt initiated where we were blasting off on a space ship to Saturn.  We apparently have one house on Mars and another one on Saturn but we live on the side of Saturn where the dinosaurs live.  Flynt's construction site was the rocket ship.  It was pretty awesome. 

There was also a long game of "ask a question about______" which is Flynt's version of "where did your food go?"  It goes like this:

Flynt:  Ask questions about my peanut butter and jelly
Me:  Is it in your sock?
Flynt:  giggles.  No
Me:  Did Cinnaboo (stuffed animal) eat it?
Flynt:  giggles.  No
Me:  Did you flush it down the potty?
Flynt:  giggle squeals.  No!
Me:  Is it in your tummy?
Flynt:  YEEESSSS!  (shows me his tummy)

Repeat with different locations for hiding food.  The more ridiculous the better.

The day was caped of with an earthquake which is super weird in Boise.  I've been here 18 years and this was my first earthquake.  It really freaked me out while I was trying to get dinner on the table.  It was a 6.5 with the epicenter a little ways away.  It was really not a good feeling.  Wren was pretty spooked too.  That was the end of talking about anything else with the kids for the rest of the day.