Week 2 of Social Distancing: Snow, Wii Playing, Homeschooling, Outdoor Exploring, Pictures of Owen Napping, and Family Movie Night

Samantha: 106 Months, Week 2
Aedan: 72 Months, Week 4
Owen: 30 Months, Week 2

Sunday morning before watching church online, I went on a trip to Tractor Supply in order to get dog food for Izzy. It was about twenty-five minutes away, so it was an hour trip there and back and it was kind of nice to just have some time to myself, listening to music, even if it was just to run an errand in the car.

After having a hard time watching church online the week before, we decided to set up the kids with a Veggie Tales movie in the basement while Ben and I watched the service on our TV in the living room. It definitely worked out better, and we were able to focus more on the sermon. It's a little different getting used to "watching" church on television.

Here are pictures Ben took of Owen sleeping with him on Sunday afternoon. He had the same thoughts I have had lately. Who knows how long he will fall asleep in our arms like this, so we will try to soak it in and remember it as much as we can now.

I was searching on Facebook Marketplace and discovered that someone was selling several scooters for $5 each. Especially with this extended time at home, I thought the kids would enjoy having scooters to ride around on in the driveway or when we go for walks. On Sunday once Owen woke up from his nap, we went down the Lakeside Skillet parking lot and let Samantha and Aedan ride their scooters around, while Owen rode his tricycle. It was a still a little chilly out, so the kids still have their winter coats and hoods on, but the sun was shining and it was a good way to spend some time outside and get some exercise. Here they are all riding around.

With the cold front that came through on Sunday, it got even colder on Monday and it was actually snowing on and off for most of the day. We weren't getting very much. It wasn't even covering the grass, and for awhile it was more rain than snow. However, it was coming down in thick chunks, and even though I wasn't too excited about it snowing at the end of March, it was pretty to sit on the couch for a little while that afternoon and just watch the snow come down. I am trying really hard to use this extra time at home to get caught up on my blog when I have some extra time in the afternoon and evening. So it was kind of nice sitting on the couch in the quiet living room while Ben worked, Owen napped, and Samantha and Aedan played with their Legos in the basement.

Owen had developed a pretty bad cold and cough Sunday into Monday, and on Monday it was even worse. He just couldn't stop coughing all day long. It seemed like he was sleeping okay for his nap. I was worried that he might cough so much that he wouldn't nap, but that didn't seem to be a problem. Owen is so bad at covering his mouth that I felt like it was only a matter of time before everyone in the house was going to be sick with a cough. Although, to be fair, the coughing started with Samantha, so she was the one who passed it to him. It was hard for my mind not to jump to conclusions and think that he might have the coronavirus. I knew that coughing was one of the symptoms, but he didn't have any other symptoms, so I was trying to not think about it too much. He had a runny nose, so he was probably coughing because of the snot going down his throat, but I was definitely going to be keeping my eye on how things were going. He didn't have a fever or anything, and neither did Samantha. Her cough was mostly gone, so I wasn't too worried about him having the virus, but just wanted him to get better.

I was very glad that Owen took a good nap that afternoon and was really getting a lot of good sleep. I was hoping that would help him feel better faster. It is normally a lot harder for him to nap when Samantha and Aedan are home because he realizes he is missing out on fun play time. However, it was better the last few days because I moved their Lego tables down into the basement, so now that is how they have been spending their afternoons. It keeps their noise farther away from Owen's room, and it gives us a break from having them wanting us to entertain them all the time.

I am definitely an introvert, and even though I am used to being a stay at home mom, we did not usually spend this much time at home. Owen and I would go out and do things together several mornings a week, followed by coming home for lunch and a quiet afternoon while he napped. Well, it's been a challenge for me in the last week because everyone is here all day long, and there is always someone around me and I don't have any space or quiet time to myself. I don't do well with constant noise or activity. It's hard for me to focus and concentrate, so I know I'm going to have to work on how to find a new normal in these weird days of the kids not going to school and Ben working from home. I have to find a balance between doing things with the kids and spending time with my family, and also seeking out quiet and solitude for my own brain to be able to rest and rejuvenate, or else I know I will feel emotionally and mentally depleted from not having some time to myself with quiet in order to think, process, and rest.

Another thing I have found difficult during this time is making time to keep exercising. I was trying to start back up with my Pilates work outs through The Balanced Life Sisterhood, and to follow the calendar every day so that I can keep my body active and moving. However, with all the craziness of life and things changing, I have gotten away from it in the last week or so. However, I have been working in the yard quite a bit and going on more walks with Izzy and the kids, so at least I'm getting outside and doing some things still.

We found out on Monday afternoon that school closures would remain in effect for another two weeks, instead of being over in a week, so another two weeks would get us to April 6th. We will see how all of this plays out, as we are anticipating that this will all go on for much longer than any of us are expecting or wishing. With school being pushed back another two weeks, Ben and I were debating about taking a trip to Upland for a few days next week, just for a change of scenery. We have already been around Ben's parents last weekend, so I figured we have traded germs enough, and we would just stay at their house and have different places to play outside and take walks, while also being able to see Ben's parents. We were just trying to weigh the pros and cons and decide if it would be a wise choice to travel or not.

Ben decided it would be fun to bust out our old Wii, set it up, and introduce the kids to it. So after Owen napped that afternoon, we had some family Wii playing time, and the kids thought it was pretty interesting. They had some trouble trying to figure out how to hold the controllers and move the correct way, but it was fun to watch them try. Neither of them have really ever played video games, so it was a new thing for them, but they had a lot of fun trying to figure it out. This will be a fun thing to do together on days when we can't just go outside to play.

Owen was still coughing quite a bit when I put him to bed Monday night. I felt so bad for the poor little guy. I gave him Zarbees honey cough medicine and some Tylenol before bed to hopefully help him sleep, as well as putting chest rub on him and having a diffuser going in his room, but he was just so congested. He could not stop coughing. For the first almost hour he was in bed, he just couldn't stop coughing, and I hoped that his little body could calm down enough to let him get some rest that night. There really was nothing else I could do to help him. He was just not feeling well at all that day, and I felt so bad for him. Then, around 11:00 he woke up crying. Luckily, we were able to get him back to sleep and even though he coughed quite a bit at the beginning of the night, he was then able to calm down and sleep after that, which I was very glad for.

On Tuesday Owen seemed to be doing a little better. He was still coughing some, but most of it seemed to turn into a runny nose, so I was hopeful that maybe all the snot would start draining out his nose instead of down his throat and into his chest.

The kids and I did our normal morning of "school time" with another art lesson from Mo Willems. They drew random shapes and then turned them into characters, so it was kind of fun to watch them be creative. They really enjoy these art lessons, and it inspires them to create other things as well. They usually end up drawing past the lesson video time. (Also, can I note here how long Samantha's hair is? She is growing her hair out because she want to cut it and donate it to kids in need, so she hasn't had a hair cut in a very long time.)

With more time at home due to the coronavirus, I decided that it would be fun to actually start teaching Samantha how to play the piano again. I tried teaching her in first grade, but she just didn't seem like she was ready yet. She didn't have the motivation to practice on her own yet, and she really wasn't independent enough to read and be independent with it. However, she has shown more interest lately, so I decided we should take advantage of this time to start again. Samantha was excited about the idea of learning how to play again, so we got out her piano book and started up again. She is just at the very beginning of the book (we didn't get very far the first time around), but I'm excited to have this time with her and to teach her this skill of mine that will help her learn how to read music, become a better singer, and learn more instruments down the road. Being around the piano again made my desire to play the piano stir up again. I took lessons from when I was in 2nd grade all through college, but since being married, and especially since having kids and not having certain music that I am learning and practicing, I have not played the piano much at all. I really would like to not lose my ability to play though, so I need to try to make time to play more myself, even if just for fun again.

Izzy doesn't always lay on the couch with us at night when the kids are in bed. She usually just passes out on the floor somewhere in the living room, but on Tuesday night she must have been really tired because this is how she fell asleep on the couch. She was super comfortable! I know Izzy is definitely okay with this extended time of having everyone at home. She gets a lot more attention and we hardly ever leave her, but now she has the job of keeping track of all five of us all day, and that is hard and tiring work for her.

How I feel about the virus forcing everyone to stay home and away from other people kind of ebbs and flows. Tuesday night, as I was talking to my sister, I just felt like this whole situation was so lonely. It's hard for people like me because I like to get out and do things. I'm not as content to just be around our house baking, making things, doing household chores, or just being more of a homebody. I enjoy feeling productive, having fun in experiencing things, and being around other people. It's strange because I am a quality time person, but it is purposeful quality time that I really like, like meeting up to do something specific with a friend, doing a project together that was planned ahead of time and then executed, going on a date, or even just purposely deciding to make cookies together or have a game night or watch a movie together. I enjoy seeing Samantha and Aedan more because I feel like I really didn't get much time with them when they were in school all day and then we were busy with various activities a few nights a week. It's also nice to have more time with Ben around, and I'm certainly not complaining because I know a lot of people have their husbands still working outside of the home or with less freedom than what Ben has with his work and teaching all his classes online. However, as I mentioned before, I am a pretty big introvert, so being constantly around everyone in our family definitely presents some challenges, too. We aren't used to living in such close quarters without breaks from each other. The home and our daily routine feels like more "my area of expertise," if that makes any sense. I have a certain natural rhythm of how I do things around the house, when I do laundry, when I do chores around the house, and that sort of thing. Ben is still very busy with work and getting his online classes and lectures all set up, so it's not like he's here to just hang out all the time, but it's definitely an adjustment getting used to him working from home. All this is new and an adjustment for everyone involved.

After taking quite a few pictures and videos of our morning school time, I hardly took any this week for some reason. We were still following our typical routine, and it really was going fairly well. The kids were enjoying the little bit of work time we would do, and we decided to go get lunches from the kids' school every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, just to switch up our routine a little, get out of the house even for twenty minutes, and help us out with a little lunch variety.

I spent most of the afternoon on Wednesday trying to figure out what I would do with getting new contacts. Before everything started closing down because of the coronavirus, I was going to call and make an appointment to get another eye exam done and order more contacts, but I never got around to it. With just moving to Pennsylvania last summer, I had a full year's worth of contacts from my doctor in Michigan. However, my prescription expired last month, and I am now unable to order more contacts on my old prescription. I only have one more pair of contacts, and I am supposed to change them every two weeks. The pair I am currently wearing I have already had in for a month because I don't want to start on my last pair before I know where I will get more. I tried calling a local eye doctor, the one that I would have made an appointment with, but they said they couldn't help me since I'm not a patient of theirs. I tried calling my doctor in Michigan and just got a recorded message saying they were closed, so I wasn't sure what I was going to do, especially if these closures go on for awhile longer. With all of the drama of calling doctors, scouring the internet, and not really knowing what to do, I was feeling a little frustrated and discouraged.

I was having a hard time Wednesday night and into Thursday. I felt so done with being stuck at home, to not be able to go anywhere, do anything, or be around people. I so badly just wanted to be able to take the kids to the zoo or a museum or even the local library. Ben was feeling stressed out with work and the kids were tired and not listening that morning. I was feeling like I just needed space from constantly having the kids around. But where would I go and what would I do? Especially with the weather still being on the chilly side, there really is only the outdoors to go to get away, like maybe going for a walk or a bike ride or a hike in the woods or something like that. Some day when it gets nicer, I will definitely need to take the chance to do something like that, or even just to sit outside in the warm air and sunshine, just to be by myself.

That morning during out school time, we watched a video about the penguins from the Cincinnati Zoo, and the activity to go along with it was putting something on your feet, like a penguin would put an egg on their feet, and then walk around trying to keep the egg balanced on the top of their feet. It was a more difficult than they thought it would be!

And here they are all dancing around to the ending song after Aedan answered his questions after reading his stories from Scholastic.

So I have been trying to do a lot of work in our yard on nice days to get it cleaned up, pruned, and weeded for new spring growth. Ben joined me outside on one afternoon last weekend because it was such a nice day, and I appreciated his help to make the job go so much faster. Well, as we were working, the man that lives in the white house in the back corner behind us came into our yard and started yelling at us, saying "Keep your dog out of my yard and stop dumping your (crap) on my property." Ben and I were cleaning up leaves and piling them up in the side of our yard, which was most definitely our property. We have looked up the deed and knew where our property ended. He was wrong in what he thought was his property. We even checked it again after this encounter to be sure we were right. Izzy has been on his property a handful of times over the whole time we have lived here, and we always call her away and back to our house when we see that she has left our yard. Ben told him not to curse at us, and he said he wasn't cursing, even though he was. Ben also told him that he had looked at the deed and he knew where our property line was, and after that the man backed down on that point of his argument. Then, the man said if our dog was in his yard again that he would shoot it. Then, he pointed at both of us again, cursing us both, and then walked away. We had never even met this man before, and he clearly was not a nice man. However, after that encounter I just felt paranoid about Izzy every time we were outside. He would have no right to shoot her, and we could call the cops on him and he would be charged, if he did. We thought about filing a report with the police right away, but we decided it would be better to be more civil about it, and Ben was going to write him a letter and include the map showing where our property line was so there's no question what is ours and what is his. I wondered if maybe we would have to think about getting an invisible fence for Izzy, but I imagine that would be expensive. However, we definitely will be using her bark collar more now to try to train her more about not leaving our yard, particularly not to go into his yard, and then we will have to go from there.

Thursday afternoon we had plans to meet our friends, Andrew and Alysse, at Frances Slocum State Park for a hike and picnic together, while of course keeping our distance from each other. We figured it would be fine for us to meet up with them because they don't have any kids yet, so we wouldn't have to worry about kids being too close in physical proximity to each other.  However, all the kids were just fighting and being mean to each other all day that day, so we made them all lay down to at least rest in the afternoon while Owen napped, even if Samantha and Aedan didn't actually nap.

Once everyone was up and ready, we left about 3:50 to get to the park a little after 4:00. Samantha and Aedan had a blast riding their scooters around, Owen rode his tricycle, and the weather was just beautiful. Once Alysse and Andrew got there we went off on our hike, on our usual path past the stone wall. We took a different turn than usual and found a stream that ran through the park. We stopped there for awhile, watching the boys throw rocks into the water and Samantha hop across from one stone to another. I was able to talk to Alysse, and Ben was able to talk to Andrew, while all of us were staying a safe six feet away from each other. Andrew even raced Aedan on the scooters, which Aedan just loved. After our hike, we ordered some pizza from Tomasino's, that Ben went to pick up and bring back to the park. We ate pizza under one of the shelters as the sun went down and it got a little chilly. The kids went back to riding their scooters and tricycle, and we were having such a good time talking to each other, catching up, and laughing together, that no one wanted to end things and suggest that it was time to go home. After leaving that evening, I didn't realize how much I missed being able to hang out with other people and talk with others. It was such a fun night and definitely something we should do again some day during this season of social distancing.

With this being our second week of social distancing and working/doing school from home, we have fallen into a pretty regular rhythm. Although it's very strange, I think we are adjusting fairly well to our new normal. We keep pretty busy through our normal daily routine of school in the morning, and we keep a pretty normal schedule for eating our three meals a day together and nap time bedtime at pretty much the same time because our kids are always up at the same time regardless of when they go to sleep. Plus, with all this time together at home, Ben and I definitely need some time to ourselves at night when the kids are asleep to hang out, watch TV, and just decompress from the day.

Anyways, here are some sweet little sleepy pictures of my little Owen asleep in my arms at nap time on Friday. I just love how he is snuggled up into my chest with his hand resting peacefully. Then, he readjusted himself and laid in the crook of my elbow with his right arm resting next to head. I love this sweet little boy of mine so much.

Friday afternoon we got the official word that Pennsylvania was issued a stay at home order, too, like many other states already had. We were pretty much doing it anyways, only going out to go grocery shopping or to take hikes or ride bikes in open areas, but now it's just strange having it be official. As I mentioned before, Ben and I were trying to decide what we were going to do about going to Upland, and especially with the stay at home order, we pretty much decided that we were going to stay home because it would be the safer, smarter, more obedient choice. We were sad, but we knew it was the right thing to do.

In looking at the weather for Saturday, I knew it was going to be raining all day, so we wouldn't be able to spend much time outside. So I decided to have it be a family cleaning day. I came up with the idea that the kids could earn letter to spell M-O-V-I-E by helping me do different jobs to clean around the house. Then, when they earned all their letters, we could have a family movie night that night. After eating breakfast we all got to work. Everyone except Owen had jobs to do, and we started upstairs in the Samantha's and Aedan's room. They helped with dusting, wiping down mirrors and counters, doorknobs, light switches, and using the Swiffer Vacuum on the floors. They really worked hard with me all morning, and it made everything go a lot faster. I also think it's important to show the kids how to do jobs around the house, like how to clean things, so that way they know how to do it when they get older and are out on their own as well. They were excited about earning a movie night, so that was a big motivating factor for them. I gave Samantha and Aedan a break in the afternoon while Owen napped and Ben went grocery shopping at Wegmans, and I continued cleaning the other areas we hadn't finished before lunch. I was able to get the house whole cleaned by dinnertime, and it was the fastest I had ever gotten the whole house cleaned before. It felt so good to just sit and relax with my family that night, watching "Frozen 2" all together since Daddy had not had a chance to see it yet.

These videos of Owen running around in circles and singing to the Olaf song and "Lost in the Woods" make me chuckle every time. He is definitely following in his sister's footsteps of being a little performer. I love how in the last video he shakes his bottom back and forth and even does some of the same hand motions as Kristoff. Samantha and Aedan do a good job of ignoring his antics while they sit in "their spots" on the couch: Aedan in the back corner and Samantha on the front side. It was fun actually watching a whole movie together, and it's nice that Owen is getting old enough that we can actually do this now and a movie will hold his attention.

(Blog about March 22-28, 2020)