Snow, snow, snow

Winter is dragging on. February is always like this. Facebook is good for reminding me of that, prompting me with photos from the past 11 years where I am praying for 2 hour delays when I was teaching, and then later praying for no snow days, because that meant a houseful of kids for the whole day...my own kids, and then the neighbors and then the kids of whatever other desperate mom who called me in a panic that morning. Limit 8, I would say to myself. Ok, maybe 10 would be ok. No more than that. 

M used to bring home all the brown bananas from his break room. I always had like 20 pounds of brown bananas in the freezer. I made banana bread if I was expecting a crowd. Sneak in some flax seeds for the good omegas. I sprinkled sugar on top instead of mixing it into the batter. Popcorn was my other go-to snack. Easy on the budget, fills up the belly. 

Anyway, February has always been dreary and gray and cold and often snow covered, but it's different this year without Ms. Molly and the library, or Phipps or the museums or working at the Blue Goose to break it up.

Today we combatted the winter blahs by having a play date with our pandemic pod buddies. They loved playing in the backyard snow fort and were out there for a long time. We made a dutch baby and apples friend in butter for the snack. Their youngest child just turned 2 and he is warming up to us, letting me take care of him while his mom steps out for a little bit, without tears! 

As for school, it was a very hands off/unschooly day. 

Laurel did her live chat for the Arrow Book Club. They all did tons of Just Dance songs and the Nintendo LABO games where you put on a backpack and physically punch your way through the game. Max has been refusing to do anything for himself but we had a little breakthrough, maybe since we had another 5 year old with us today? Anyway, he dressed himself in his snow clothes independently, even the boots. 

Marko has been obsessed with Grimm's Fairy Tales lately, which are so scary! The kids had a conversation about the scariest details in Grimm's vs. the People Could Fly. One thing we are doing well is reading a lot of different myths, legends, folktales and fables from around the world. We have a huge collection of books, and there are more on Libby from the library, or Epic, which is a subscription children's ebook service we use. I think this lays a really great foundation for future study of history, world religions and cultures, and even current events. How people view the world often has to do with a subconscious knowledge from tales they've been told. 

I got yet another headache, which I think is actually the same headache rearing its head every day, so M took over after work and watched Clone Wars with the kids and ordered a pizza. Hopefully I can rid myself of this headache this weekend once and for all. I need to cut back on caffeine generally, and also watch my salt/electrolytes. I also have some a very tight psoas muscle which flares up from time to time. I thought I was having a gall bladder attack or my appendix had burst before, but it's really a muscle spasm. So painful and scary if you don't know what your body is doing. Oddly, this sometimes causes a headache, as well. 

An Avalanche of ToDos

I made a list of all the things I need to do to close out the school year. It's only February, but if we are going to drive to California, we might want to have the formal, school-y, legal stuff all done by early May. I have to organize our medical records. Our pediatrician was closed at various times during the year, so we missed some well-child visits. 

School "year" has become sort of irrelevant to us, on a practical level. We have decided sometimes to take time off of certain subjects or programs, but I can't find a time when we are like, ok, we're done learning for a while now. Sometimes the least structured or planned days provide the most opportunities for growth and learning. Sometimes you can only learn things at a certain time of year. You can't cross country ski in July! We are all very curious and like to learn new things, but sometimes the challenge is in the pruning...staying focused on a small number of things at a time so you can actually master or finish things.

Max continued with his science class on zoom today. He insisted on wearing headphones this time so I didn't hear as much of it, but he was pretty engaged the whole time. They are studying states of matter, and sorted little cards we had cut out before the class. I am amazed at how engaging zoom classes can be for little kids, and how much Max seems to learn and retain from this class. Online education is totally possible, maybe even really great for little kids! What it is not good for is occupying them for large amounts of time while their parents work. This class only lasts about 30 minutes and I have to help him prepare materials beforehand. 

Marko read about the Perseverance landing on Mars. He signed up for a daily science email newsletter and that is how he found out it was happening today. He was absolutely amazed by it. We didn't watch all the videos, but I am now extremely curious about the potential discoveries. 

Laurel's homework for her anxiety class was to teach us the class content for the week. She made us each draw little cartoon representations of the "worry" voices in our heads, and then she explained how our bodies physically react to perceived danger. Then she taught us a 4-7-8 breathing exercise. 

In the evening, I went to a zoom meeting for our Girl Scout service unit. There is a lot to do to try and get our Bronze award project going, plus the service unit wants to organize activities in the spring and summer where we could somehow get together but also not all be in the same place at once. I would love to make some archery happen. 

The key is going to be picking the right things to work on, and mentally setting the rest aside. 

Some Days

M went back to work today and I got a migraine so the whole day felt like a blur.

We did poetry teatime with leftover king cake and an extra special treat of coffee for the boys, who used to have little cups of coffee with M every morning but don't anymore. Max drank his cup down in one gulp like it was a shot of whiskey and asked for more immediately. Marlene brought them a book of poetry for children by Robert Louis Stevenson. The sun was out most of the day, but by the afternoon I was sitting in my bedroom with all the curtains drawn trying to keep it as dim as possible. 

Laurel and Marko did their copywork and math without too much complaining. Laurel actually seems to have developed a lot of confidence in math since we switched to doing it on paper and pencil. She works out problems, then checks her answers in the answer key. If she gets an answer wrong she works out the problem again. Occasionally she can't find her mistake, but normally she does and it seems to be a really good way to reinforce it. My favorite thing is when she gets Max to sit next to her to help her by holding the times table chart. 

I put their snacks outside today, and that was an effective way to get them out for fresh air and a little sunshine. They tromped around in the snow in the backyard, gathered the shattered bits of icicles that fell down last night and chatted with the neighbors. 

In the afternoon, they put together a birthday present for their little friend and Laurel and Marko walked to the mailbox together to send some thank you notes. 

We had a sudden realization that if Western States actually happens this year, and M is going to run in it, we have to leave to drive out there....like really soon! We've been in stay-at-home mode for so long, it's hard to imagine being anywhere else. We want to make sure covid cases are definitively on the decrease before we head out. Still trying to avoid getting it and spreading it! 

It feels like wishful thinking, since we said the same thing last year and pretty much all things got worse and worse as the year progressed. Part of me is afraid of what we'll find when we go. M and I have been criss-crossing America by car and foot and bike since the start of our relationship. Two lane roads and regional fast food cooking have been an integral part of those journeys. I love meeting people in libraries and at bus stops. Listening to subtle accents and finding out what they think of Pittsburgh. Seeing what the "local authors" shelf is stocked with in the bookstores. We know that this pandemic has hit some communities harder than others. Will people be wary of outsiders? 

Mardi Gras

It got wild here tonight! We had an impromptu Mardi Gras party in our house. M loves New Orleans, especially the food and the music. He made red beans and rice for dinner, and also baked a king cake. I had a few decorations and masks squirreled away so we surprised him by taking down our Valentine's decorations and putting up green, gold and purple streamers and tinsel. We even had a sazarac before dinner.

At dinner time we were talking about the power outages in Texas and the kids turned out all the lights and lit candles. A show of solidarity, or perhaps a rehearsal since it is not unheard of to lose power around here during the winter. The water mains also burst all the time. M put on some music and it suddenly became very festive. The kids ran upstairs and put their best clothes on. Everyone was wearing a mask and we danced for an hour. Shadow the Cat woke up for her all-day nap and was shocked to see how noisy the house was and that our faces were covered in feathers. She immediately retreated. The king cake was delicious.

Earlier in the day, I took the two older kids to the eye doctor. Marko's eyes are fine, but Laurel's prescription changed again. After that, even though the temperature was plummeting, Laurel still wanted to go on her lunch/walk with her friend who lives down the street. She invited Marko to join them and treated everyone to pizza and ice cream with her allowance money. I can't believe they were game for eating pizza outside in 20 degree weather, but they were in great moods when they came back. (And had very wind-chapped cheeks.) 

Max had his science class. Today they did some exploration of states of matter using balloons that were filled with ice, water or air. It was slightly messy, but they were all making good observations (Max said the water used to be the shape of the balloon, but when he popped it, it became the shape of the bowl). I've enjoyed watching her teaching strategies, as I think she does a really outstanding job of keeping the kids involved. She uses their names a lot, and asks specific questions of each kid. She gives a lot of wait time for them to answer, without appearing impatient. Thirty minutes seems to be a good amount of time for this kind of engagement. 

We had to move poetry teatime to tomorrow. Hopefully there will be leftover king cake. 

Ice Dam Disruption

We have some serious freeze-thaw action happening in our city right now and I spent all morning fighting with a gutter. I think the problem is at least temporarily fixed. Our furnace is making a troubling noise. Old houses always seem to break in multiple ways at once. We are plugging away at the painting/waterproofing work on the basement, but it is so slow going. Homeschooling took a bit of a back burner this morning since we were trying to dislodge life-threatening icicles from my neighbor's house and chipping ice off the driveway in anticipation of the freezing-rain-snow-sleet-whatever is going to hit later tonight. 

Laurel hopped on to her online classes today, tackling another week of writing responses about the People Could Fly. She is doing this pretty independently and enjoys interacting with other kids, even though it's all just on the message board. I helped my neighbor, who is also in 5th grade, with an essay he had to write. It was about this Thai football team from a floating village. When they were kids they wanted to learn to play so they built themselves a floating field. It was wobbly and small and had no edges so they had to get very good with their footwork to keep the ball in play. What was originally a hardship, actually helped them get so good they became very competitive in mainland tournaments. An amazing story! 

Laurel and Marko did some math pages. Max worked on Scratch. It wasn't a totally productive day of school, but some days are like that.

We ate pizza for dinner. We spent a lot of time trying to describe the style of pizza that M makes. It's focaccia dough, super light but very thick and cooked on cast iron skillets in a very hot oven. The bottom is crusty, the middle is airy. It's not like anything I have ever eaten at a pizza restaurant. The best pizza tonight had apples and gorgonzola.

Party Time

Laurel organized a Valentine's Day party for our kids and the neighbor kids. The weather is so gross right now so we hosted it inside, with masks on and the windows cracked with the ceiling fan going. Laurel made up a game where she collected pink objects and hid them in a bag. Kids took turns taking out an object without anyone seeing it and describing it until the others guessed what it was. She prepared two crafts....pompom love monsters and heart shaped faux stained glass with contact paper and tissue paper. She had everyone decorate a bag with their name on it, and they all exchanged valentines they made before the party. I printed out scavenger hunt clues and hid them around the house and yard. They played Just Dance, which is a Nintendo game where you play by following the moves on the screen and getting points if you do them right. At the end of the party, she gave out favor bags with little things she bought at Walgreens with her allowance money. She went down there with Marlene, so I didn't even know what was in there! Everyone was thrilled to have a little holiday fun and the kids' valentines to each other were so sweet. They really love each other. 

Saturday

I ran six miles and walked six miles today. It was supposed to rain or snow but it did not. The sidewalks were very icy and slushy in spots. I have not run that far in a long time, and it felt great to stretch my legs. I walked part of the day with two friends. 

We didn't do much schoolwork today. Everyone crafted some valentines decorations and played around with the synthesizer. Laurel went on a walk with her friend. I met with my troop co-leader to discuss some work we need to do to help guide the girls on their next project. We sat outside with hot water bottles in our laps! Sitting in the cold keeps meetings from going too long.

In the evening, we all piled on the couch again to watch the last episode of James Herriot. I'm really sad it was the last one. I love finding things to watch on television that we all love. I probably need to start making a list. We have a million subscription services and we are definitely not using them enough. When it comes time to actually watch something we do a lot of scrolling and arguing as a family. M and I enjoyed the Queen's Gambit and Ted Lasso this year. With the kids we watched the Great British Baking Show and the Mandalorian. Both of those made us break out in applause or cheers from time to time. (James Herriot just makes us want to time travel to 1930s Yorkshire.)

Happy Birthday to M!

We are celebrating another birthday, the last of the five of us to have a birthday during this pandemic year. M asked for a pork shoulder so he could smoke it (nevermind the six inches of snow on the ground). The kids got him an analog synthesizer and a muscle massager. I got him a new knife. We are about to have a bbq feast with greens, mac n cheese, baked beans, texas toast style bread and of course, pulled pork. I baked a pumpkin ginger bundt cake with lots of extra spice. I'm going to attempt molasses whipped cream to top it. 

Laurel did a live chat for her Brave Writer class today, and she was very nervous. There is no video in this class, but the teacher opened up a discussion thread and the kids were all supposed to add comments and respond to each other for an hour today. I was impressed, and a little surprised, when we were able to talk about her anxiety before the class started. Talking about her feelings normally results in an explosion of feelings pouring out, which makes it then hard to move in to a new activity! But she is taking a class on stress and now knows about the physiological responses your body has to stressful situations. 

Marko did 2 columns of problems on a math page and read a myth about ursa minor that he found in a magazine. At one point while he was working on the math worksheet, he came to find me to tell me that he was just trying to lie on his bed and imagine the answers on the problem. Is that working? I asked him. He said not really, I think I'll go back to doing it on the paper the way you showed me. And off he went and he did finish the problems on paper much faster. 

Max spent most of the morning playing with M's new synthesizer. I sent him out to play in the snow in the afternoon. 

Tonight we'll video chat with M's parents and watch some more James Herriot. 

Ending the day on a high note

It snowed again! I was up and outside early shoveling the driveway. My neighbor gave me a bag of salt, which was very helpful to get rid of the ice before I had to drive over it. I went to the grocery store to get food to cook for M's birthday tomorrow (he wants to smoke a pork shoulder). While I was shopping the kids made pancakes and did some duolingo and typing lessons on the computer.

Later in the morning, we watched a presentation from the National Archive by a Harriet Tubman actor. I wanted us to enjoy it a lot more than we did. The feed was a little grainy, although the actor was very enthusiastic. It definitely felt more like checking a Black History Month box than anything else and that was on my mind all day.

Max had another science class on zoom, which concluded the unit on the senses. He spent a lot of time looking at his own video feed and making faces at it, although he did answer questions when the teacher called on him. 

There was a somewhat spontaneous sledding outing with the neighbors. Miraculously, there were no other children on the very popular sledding hill in our neighborhood and the snow was very fresh. I remember bringing the five of them to that hill once when Max was a baby. They were 7, 6, 5, 4 and 1 at the time and I must have been completely insane, although I guess the idea of staying in the house all day with all those kids was more insane. I carried Max in a backpack because the snow was too deep for a stroller. When I took him out, he promptly face planted in the snow and started screaming. Now everybody can walk and the "big" kids take care of Max.

Tonight I skipped my evening walk to watch a presentation from Amber O'Neal Johnston about embracing heritage in your homeschooling. It was spiritually inspirational, but also contained practical tips I can imagine doing without too much additional effort. It also helped me to rethink our reaction to the Harriet Tubman video, and even my choice in viewing it with them. So much more to say on that, but I think I'm going to rewatch the presentation when they post it and take some notes.

Homeschooling feels like adjusting the focus on binoculars. At first, maybe you don't even have them pointed in exactly the right place, but tiny movements can bring clarity. 

Wednesday

The best thing about this day was dropping my kids off with my friend so I could watch Jeopardy while mopping my dining room floor. Wild! M and I also got to hang out for a short while. The kids had a great time crafting and climbing on this jungle gym they have in their living room. We have mostly avoided any sort of pandemic podding, mainly because we hate negotiating and, frankly, we kind of like pandemic life just fine. (Not the half a million fellow Americans dying part. Just the empty spaces on the calendar part.) Possibly, we are introverts. Life feels very "enough" this past year. But it has worked out great to have a little playdate swapping with another family that can be inside, just to get us all through the winter. 

Shout-out to Myles, who was actually ON Jeopardy and the entire reason I watched. He did great! Although, spoiler alert, he did not win. I did have a thought that maybe Jeopardy was something my whole family would like to watch together, although a lot of trivia questions are sort of generation-based, and Jeopardy definitely skews 40+. We can try it out with old episodes on Netflix, as I am unsure how i can watch it live without a tv antenae or something.

Laurel is getting more comfortable with her online classes. She can be very good about getting things done when she writes her goals out for the day. I just listened to a lecture on developing executive functioning in kid and it really hit home that I tend to do more "doing for" than coaching sometimes. Something to work on. 

When I went out for my evening walk (yeah I got two blocks of solo time today, what's it to ya?!) it was snowing like crazy, again! The trees were very beautiful. I got to talk to Leah on the phone while I was walking and we planned a half a dozen possible road trips for the upcoming year. What will happen? Something will happen, that's all I know.