Covid-19 Social Distancing Week 6: A day in the (quarantine) life

6:30 - I wake up, usually in Mary's bed. I drift in and out of sleep until 7:00 when I remember that is WAY too late to sleep in. Here's why.

7:00 - I get dressed to run. Try to wake Kevin. Go downstairs, make coffee, feed the fish and turn on the turtle light (unbeknownst to Peto, he is now our class pet), clean dishes. Read the news. Remind myself not to read the news so much. Organize the school table and make sure I wrote plans in everyone's notebooks and that DJ did his "night job" of plugging in all the devices.

7:45ish - I just start to think seriously about heading down to the treadmill when I hear the first set of feet on the stairs. Then starts a cycle of making breakfasts and pouring juice and helping kids in the bathroom. That's why 7:00 is too late to wake up. Eventually, Kevin and I go running, then I eat breakfast, make breakfast for the later risers, and barely make it in and out of the shower before Kevin's meetings start in our office/bedroom. Okay, I am using "in and out" loosely, here. The shower is so very quiet. I'm not proud of its effects on the environment or our water bill, but even Kevin has noticed that my showers are twice as long as usual.

9:00 - I'm showered and dressed, and it's time to drag Annie, our night owl, out of bed. It's not really clear to me why, but I dress for teaching every day. I think it helps me separate work and school time and "off" time and weekdays from weekends when the days mostly feel the same. There's also a nagging fear that my boss will email me and be like, "We need to have a Zoom meeting in 3 minutes." I don't want to be in my pajamas or running clothes only fit to see my basement. I do work in slippers, though! Until school starts at 10, I flit between responding to emails, snuggling kids, making sure my messages to students went out on time, getting ready for "school," cleaning the kitchen, starting laundry, and anything else that urgently needs doing.

10:00 - This is the fastest-flying part of my day, every day--time for homeschool. It's a not-unpleasant whirlwind. Everyone starts out together each day. We have a "razzle dazzle," which is the preschool version of a star student, who leads the Pledge of Allegiance, chooses how we count to the date, shares a show-and-tell, and reads the devotion. Five kids, five days of the week--it's perfect! Nellie especially thinks this plan is perfect. She just loves this part of the day. 😀 Then I support Nellie and Annie with whatever they need and check their work. I read DJ his words to practice, make him go back and spend more than one minute on science and social studies, upload photos of his work, and help him navigate Google Classroom. There are videos of Eddie and Mary's kindergarten and preschool teachers and all kinds of corresponding projects and worksheets. We measure and chart our little plants' growth. I do my best at piano lessons for the boys and do puzzles and read with Mary when she runs out of "school work." Although it's pretty chaotic with five devices and five kids' questions to manage all at once, I am super thankful for this little window into the kids' more formal learning. I love hearing how the older kids think and seeing what they're like as students and learners.

12:00 - The kids are usually finishing up their schoolwork and its time for lunch. The girls each have a day on rotation to make lunch so I can get ready for teaching. I try to eat and get things cleaned up pretty quickly, then make a "must do before screens" list before heading up to work.

1:00 - We've officially hired the girls to babysit every day for a few hours each afternoon so I can work. Nellie's room has become my office, where I teach lessons on Mondays and Thursdays and plan, attend Zoom meetings, and/or work on other non-teaching responsibilities on the other days. It's been going okay. I definitely feel better each day knowing that I'll have at least a small window to focus on my own school work. The kids have assignments like playing outside, doing puzzles, cleaning, playing board games, and reading before they can watch TV or play Switch. How well it works depends on how much the girls feel like enforcing it. I'm learning a whole bunch about teaching remotely every single day.

4ish - I'm back downstairs for the most "fun" part of the day. By now, the kids are bored and I am feeling stressed by all the work there is to do. It's a challenge to pull the kids away from their shows or games.  We go for walks or pick up the house or any number of other things that keep us occupied. There's a lot of baking! Time always gets away from me and we don't eat dinner until later than I intended.

6:00, or 7:00... - Dinner time. Together, around the table. Every night. To me, this is one of the greatest parts of staying home, though I'm reminded how labor-intensive it is to actually cook something new every night. It's very different than "normal life." I have to plan way ahead because Kevin's doing the shopping and only going every week or two if we can manage it. So I have to come up with the ideas and make complete shopping lists. We eat every bit of leftovers on the rare occasions there are any. I've gone through all of our favorite dinners and tried a few new ones. I don't take for granted the privilege of having food on the table every day and night or this opportunity to spend time together.

7:30 - Inexplicably, the kids get along the best they ever do in the after-dinner hours. They always go sort of insane for a while and inevitably Kevin and I order them to run around outside or in the basement to get all the extra energy out.

9:00 and 10:00 which turns into 11:00 - Bedtimes. The goal is to get the littles in bed by 9, at which point I sit down to do grading, respond to emails, and work on whatever projects are going that day. The big kids push their bedtime back as late as they think they can get away with. By the time one of us notices, it's usually well past when all of us should have been in bed.

We feed the fish, turn off lights, remember to switch the laundry to the dryer, take care of the dogs, tuck in the big kids, and chase down water bottles and books. There are usually about five minutes there before falling asleep when the adults get a little peace and quiet to read or check the news one last time.

Quarantine life is basically an odd variation of our former life that is at once calmer and more crazy. DJ is sitting with me right now and he disagrees. He said it's just weird. He's not wrong. I think that we've just focused on doing our best with one day at a time. Every couple of days I really feel the weight of what's going on, but by necessity I have to shake it and keep going. There's a lot to miss, but so very much to appreciate.

These girls are bold bakers and I love it (though it still usually involves extra work for me!) Nellie asked if she could make cookies, and ended up trying apple strudel, sticking with the German theme. It required a lot of new skills and turned out delicious!

Covid-19 Social Distancing Week 5 part 2

What was the highlight of this week?

Mary Cate: Being with mommy all the time. [Oh me too, Mary. Me too.]

Eddie: Flying my kite really high and starting to play Mario Odyssey again.

DJ: Flying my kite really high, too. And playing outside a lot this weekend.

Annie: Making fruit tarts and a chocolate cake for Nellie.

The 0 candle is for "zero cast." 😊

Nellie: Getting my cast off!

Mom: It was a long week coming off a break. I think my highlights are mostly the same as the kids. It was too cold to be outside most of the week, so getting out to fly kites this weekend was great. We're also SO happy that Nellie got her cast off, though we learned it's still going to be a long road with starting to put weight on it over the next four weeks. Work-wise, we went to a new, more streamlined schedule. That's helped a lot with cutting down on working until midnight! The kids are starting "school" with their own teachers this week, so while it will be nice not to have to think up all the learning activities, I'll miss it a little, too. Which reminds me, another highlight (after quite a bit of frustration in the form of yelling and throwing LEGOs--I won't name names) was a LEGO bridge-building challenge. DJ and Eddie were the most creative in their designs but Annie's and my bridges held the most weight. All met the basic requirement of spanning the river teeming with sharks and ducks.

Motherhood and a broken leg

I've gone through several stages of cognitive and emotional overhaul following Nellie's accident. Today, as we near the end of this chapter, Nellie's crutches and wheelchair are very much normal. But the earlier days brought minute-by-minute waves of life-changing realizations.

Stage 1: Uncertain concern. In the first minutes, there was screaming, yelling, nausea, scrapes, and bruises. But...here was a child known for strong reactions to physical discomfort. We carried her gingerly from the sledding hill in the neighbor's yard, then into Sarah and Alex's house. When Nellie got up to use the bathroom a couple of hours later, however, she couldn't put weight on it and it swelled up like a cantaloupe. Kevin and I shared one look and he swept her off to urgent care. Still, Kevin quietly told me that if she broke it, she'd still be yelling and screaming. Right?

Stage 2: Shock and adrenaline. "I'm not a doctor, but that's a broken leg," Kevin texted me as the x-ray lit the screen. I was surprised, though I also felt that little sense of relief that comes with having a diagnosis and knowing you're with smart people who know what to do. Nellie rode in an ambulance to the hospital where they would put a splint on her leg. I immediately went into mom-mode. I picked up the house in record time, cleaned her room, the stairs, and the hallway to clear her path, folded her clean laundry that had lingered for a week, and turned down her bed. I set out ibuprofen and Tylenol, water, and her books. I gathered extra pillows and made sure the ice packs were in the freezer.

Stage 3: Realization. I drove to pick up Nellie and Kevin at midnight. After getting through security and figuring out how to access the pediatric ER, I finally found them. Nellie was trying to stand and try crutches for the first time, in a heavy full-leg splint and wrap. She was still a little loopy and talkative. The nurses found the right size crutches and I accompanied them to the bathroom. That's when I realized lots of things all at once.

For one, I realized how much pain she was in. Every movement was slow and anguished. Second, I realized how much help she would need--an understanding that continued to unfold over the next few days. This child who is independent by nature and growing more so by the day as a 12-and-a-half-year-old was going to be fully dependent, primarily on me, for all her physical needs for a long time. Third, I realized that my "preparations" at home meant nothing. Nellie would not be going upstairs to her bedroom. She would not be hopping around on crutches any time soon. She would be laid up for a while. With her leg fully extended, she couldn't ride in the car without sitting across the bench seat--we wouldn't go anywhere in the car all together for weeks. She couldn't sit in a desk at school. She couldn't move her leg to stand up, sit down, or shift position without someone else lifting it for her. There would be no scooter or walking cast. Fourth, all the questions and disappointments around school and the musical came rushing at me. Could she? Would she? I wasn't at all sure.

We made it home, running on adrenaline and in Nellie's case, serious medication. We got her somewhat settled on the couch, which worked for part of a night before it was too painful for her heel (we discovered weeks later it had ulcers from too much cast pressure). We moved her into the chair, where she slept for the next eight weeks; the first two weeks one of us slept on the couch to be nearby. In all this came little waves of horror. I kept replaying the moment she fell of the sled in my mind, no matter how hard I tried not to. What if she'd hit her head instead? What if the sled had just gone a couple feet to the side and it had never happened? The look on her face as her eyes searched mine for some ounce of comfort still haunts me. I suppose it was a reminder more than a new discovery, but this broken leg was one of those defining moments when you recognize that there's really very little you can do to protect your children, and one second can change you for good. And we all have to live knowing that every day.

It was so good to see Nellie smile in those first days! This chair, with four pillows and two blankets arranged just right, would be her seat and bed for eight weeks.

Stage 4: Logistics, learning, and growth. We learned so much. We learned about orthopedic medicine, splits, casts, and how to adjust and navigate wheelchairs. We learned how to get in and out of large vehicles, which was no small feat. We learned what worked to sleep and bathe. A strange form of muscle memory set in and I drew from my experience caring for a girl about Nellie's age with cerebral palsy for two summers while I was in college. We learned, eventually, how to ease Nellie's pain and discomfort, which waxed and waned through different activities and new casts. We learned how to navigate school dropoff and pickup and Nellie learned how to do school from a wheelchair. Nellie would miss nearly a week and a half of school. We learned how to function when we lost our "big kid" helper and she became the one in need of the most care.

First meal at the table, over two weeks after the accident

I knew from that first morning after that Nellie's broken leg was changing me. As I mentioned, it added this strange fear/trust dichotomy--there's so much fear in knowing that your kids will face difficulty that you can't control or fix that the only way to survive it is to trust that God will equip you to walk through it. And that's what He did. My prayer was basically God, please help me. I don't know how to do this. Please be with me and help me to be the kind of mom Nellie needs.

And He did. At school, we've been talking for a few years about formational learning experiences. I got a first-hand look at what it feels like to be formed in a hurry. Caring for Nellie has required me to be better than I am--more patient, calmer, stronger physically and emotionally, and certainly more empathetic to parents of children with disabilities that don't heal. Early on, there were many times I didn't think we'd survive eight weeks. If I'm being honest, I was afraid Nellie and I might kill each other. Let's just say that a strong-willed preteen in pain plus a no-nonsense mom isn't a great combination. But even in those moments--maybe especially in those moments--there was a sweetness, a strange bending of time in which I was again taking care of my Nellie-baby. I've never been particularly sentimental about parenting; this was new. Nellie had been in a phase where I'd have to use a sneak attack just to hug her, and there we were, in a near-constant state of physical and emotional closeness. Even in the middle of that stage with all its challenges, I already missed it.

I hope and pray that our family is done with broken bones and injuries for a long time. But I also recognize the ways in which we are changed as a family and changed as individuals. It's just another chapter in our story, one that in the end, I'm grateful for.

Covid-19 Social Distancing: Week 5

Eddie had a writing prompt, "I'm thankful for..." I decided to assign it to everyone. Here's what they said today.

I am thankful for my mama. [No surprise here.]

I am thankful for Baby Chief

I am thankful for the people that are working on cures for Covid-19. And even though these people are very important, I am also thankful for brownies.

I am thankful for my cassl (castle).

I am thankful for doctors and nurses because they take care of people with coronavirus, and keep us healthy.

Easter 2020, quarantine-style

As we sat down to Easter dinner today, we remarked on how it's the first major holiday our family has ever spent "alone." I always felt some sympathy for others who didn't have family nearby on holidays, and although it wasn't what we would have chosen, we found it to be quite lovely. It was an all-day affair.

At our house, we leave our decorated eggs and filled baskets on the counter at night and the sneaky trickster Easter bunny comes and hides them. The kids found the eggs, then their baskets. Toys and candy were harder to come by this year, but they were happy with their little gifts, spending the next couple of hours running around the yard with mini-kites, digging in the garden, and building with Legos.

After getting dressed up in some version of our Easter best, we had our little home church service. We prepared a ham that would have fed our extended family and then some (we need to learn to pare down holiday meals when it's "just" us). We managed cheesy potatoes without frozen potatoes and hot fruit salad without the cherries. (We also learned how to dye eggs this week without a kit, and they turned out great!) We realized we didn't have any rolls or bread, but I survived. We broke out the china dishes and didn't break any.

This was actually pre-Easter--dying eggs. That night, Mary's prayer included, "We dyed eggs today, and it was SO fun."

Great-Grandee's deviled eggs

As soon as we finished eating, it was time to Zoom with the Ward-Wernet family, then sneak in an egg hunt before it rained. Kevin stuffed eggs with jelly beans and whatever was in his change basket. So the kids each got a bag full of jelly beans, a dollar and change, and a variety of random objects like safety pins, buttons, and parking tokens. This is always the kids' favorite part. Once the hunt was over, they re-hid them for each other and Nellie made up a scavenger hunt while I cleaned up the kitchen. Which was just fine with me...it was quite peaceful.

We wrapped up our day with a parents-only long walk, getting ready to get back to remote learning, and another Star Wars movie night.

It was easy to focus on what we missed this week--school Easter parties, family gatherings, going to church, and eggs hunts with cousins. But it was a memorable day filled with fun, worship, and reflection.

Covid-19 Social Distancing: Week 4

This was our spring break week, spent all together (again) but NOT doing any school work. Or, mostly not doing school work...it was a good time for me to plan out the rest of the school year and get ready for the new extended remote learning schedule.

Mary Cate has started calling this our "home break," which I love. Most of our week was spent rotating between playing outdoors (if the sun was shining, I pretty much herded everyone outside to make the most of it), playing board games, eating, and watching Star Wars. We started with Episode 9 then went back to 1 to work our way through.

We tried our hands at some new foods--homemade bread, hot cross buns, guacamole, and cheesy potatoes--as well as some second-attempts and old favorites like no-bake cookies and eclairs. Basically, we've been eating well. Certain ingredients are hard to get right now, so I have to leave my comfort zone of strictly following recipes and try to be more creative. (And yes, I know that a grown-up woman with a bunch of kids should have learned to make things like cheesy potatoes and guacamole ages ago, but here we are.)

One piece of good news is that Nellie is finally getting around a bit better with a new knee-length cast. She took a real bath and slept in her own bed for the first time in 7 weeks! And she has been able to pitch in with things like dishes and playing with the kids, which makes a big difference for all of us!

The other news is that our "stay home, stay safe" order was extended through the end of April. It's wasn't surprising, but between the extension and coming back from spring break, it does seem like the weight of this whole thing is hitting me in a new way. Looking at the entire rest of the school year and (at least) three more weeks at home can feel overwhelming. The kids have taken it in stride, but there are certainly hints at the underlying tension and sadness around missed friends and events and this level of extreme togetherness. But--we live and worry and trust one day at a time. We are constantly thankful for the health of our loved ones and the safety of our home.

Found on one of our many walks

Jackpot! Kevin was finally able to get flour!

Working hard

Playing "Caps for Sale"

Covid-19 Social Distancing: Week 3

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” --Matthew 6:34

"I won't look too far ahead, it's too much for me to take. But break it down to this next breath, this next step, this next choice--is one that I can make."  --Anna, in Disney's Frozen II

During the last week, which was supposed to be the big kids' spring break, I've been thinking a bit about some things I'd been worried about. Like, things I spent a lot of time mulling and wringing my hands over, with all the what-ifs and worst-case scenarios. Among them:

1) Different spring break weeks. Since Kevin alerted me to it in the spring, I worried about how to manage the kids' spring break being the week before ours. Would they stay home alone? Go to the babysitter's? Try to take time off? No perfect solution presented itself, and mostly I felt really sad that we couldn't spend the week together.

2) Any spring break plans we might have made went out the window, anyway, when Nellie broke her leg. That brought a whole new slew of worries, but one pressing one was how to get Nellie to and from school for 6 to 8 weeks (turns out it would have been significantly more than that by the time she'll really be able to get around). Kevin was able to take her to school, fortunately, but I was leaving early every day to pick her up, taking sick time and scrambling to get back to get the littles or recruit help bringing them home. I couldn't see that being sustainable, but there really wasn't a better option.

3) The highway that we take to school was closing for the last two months of school. Closing! There's another, longer route, but how busy would that be? How early would we have to leave? What if there was an accident--was there a plan C? It seems silly, but I was dreading that added complicating factor to our lives.

I wasted a lot of time worrying about those things. Along came the coronavirus and changed everything. Nellie doesn't even have to go to school. I made the kids "do school" last week so we could all take the week off together this week. The highway closed this week--oh well! We have no reason to drive that route. It certainly brought to mind Matthey 6:34 and highlighted the futility of all that worry.

Of course, there are plenty of things to worry about. Bigger things. The night Governor Whitmer closed schools, I stayed up until 3am writing unit plans and lesson plans and signing up for webinars on hosting online meetings. By Monday morning, I had written up five sets of activities and projects for the kids. And that was just the beginning. The days have been long and full. And there's plenty more to keep me up at night. People in our communities who aren't as healthy or safe at home as they are at school and work. The health of the people we love. How to manage our time at home, with work and school all happening at once. My students. Not having access to the things we need. Job security. The economy. Getting sick. But like Anna said, I can't look too far ahead. It is too much to take. 

Of course, we can't ignore the vast, foreboding changes. Only Kevin goes out, and only for groceries and occasional trips to work--with a mask, hand sanitizer (hanitizer, as Mary calls it), and disinfecting wipes. He strips down in the laundry room as soon as he walks in the door and tells stories about the tape on the floor marking standing distances and plastic shields at the cashier stands. We visit with family through FaceTime and Zoom meetings. Everyone in the neighborhood is out and about running, walking, and biking--but we give one another a wave and a wide berth. No playdates. No date nights. No activities. No eating out. No lattes (sniff!) I take all of our temperatures on a near-hourly basis (only a slight exaggeration) and Kevin and I give each other the side-eye every time a kid coughs. We've been letting Mary Cate sleep in our bed. And although we've never spoken about why, it likely has to do with the idea that if one of us got sick, we wouldn't be able to see the kids for...two weeks? Or if [please, no] they get sick, there's the possibility of leaving them alone in the hospital. I can't stop reading the news, no matter how hard I try to avoid it.

I like to think that just maybe, though, this quarantine actually has taught me something about worrying. All I can be sure of, after all, is today. Today, we have meaningful jobs that need our attention. Today, I get to plan and help with the kids' learning in a way I never have. Today, we are healthy. Today, we have more than enough to eat, plus the delicious products of Annie's love of baking. Sometimes, it sort of feels like a regular spring or summer break, just with lots of work to manage. I feel guilty admitting this, but for the most part, I like staying home. I generally long for more time just to be together. In some ways, this can feel like a gift. So that's what I choose to focus on. Trusting God because he loves us and is with us. Gratitude for today.

Lunch and a read-a-thon in a fort

"Paying bills" with me

Perfect weather for outdoor art

That hair! 

I was lucky to capture this moment. I feel the need to counter this with the truth that the next day, they had a ridiculous amount of screentime...

Tiny bit of sweet peace