The kids and I made chocolate covered pretzel treats for our friends and spent an afternoon delivering them for Valentine's Day (a few days before). Daniel took charge of Valentine's Day this year. I got some cheap decorations, and got the house all done up the night before. And I made and decorated special cookies for the kids' surprise (which no one appreciated this year; I don't blame them -- I wasn't feeling well, and I'm pregnant, and my decorating skills leave something to be desired). But Daniel made a special Valentine's dinner for the kids, and then one for us for when they were in bed. And he bought each of the kids a little Valentine's present: little lego sets for the girls, and a Blippi toy for Jack. They LOVED it. Usually, holidays are my thing -- I think of things to make them special and then do them, and I usually do a fun, festive dinner. But with my headache that day, and everything Daniel did, he was definitely the hero of Valentine's Day.
February passed, and March came. I started doing Singing Time in Primary again. We a couple of normal weeks as we watched Washington State, New York City and California get hit hard by Covid-19. Then in middle March, everything in Utah started shutting down. Everything all over the country started shutting down. Travel started being restricted. Sports seasons cancelled all events for the rest of the year. Universities cancelled classes and started online schooling. Our school district instated a "soft close" for 2 weeks, meaning no going to school -- after a couple of days the teachers set up school packets and online learning for all of their students. But when the 2 weeks were almost up, they announced that school was out until May 1st. And a few weeks after that, the Governor announced that school should not resume this school year at all. School will (hopefully) start again at the new school year.
So for half of March and this whole month of April, I've been helping Brooke with her schooling. Every Monday, I get on the school's website, click on her teacher's link, and print off the weekly schedule. Brooke is expected to get all of her basic things done, which includes reading and an online reading program, spelling, writing and math. It usually takes her an hour or 2, depending on how distracted she gets while she does it. Some days she starts all by herself and gets done in 45 minutes. Other days, she can't seem to buckle down. She gets distracted playing with her siblings, and I have to remind her several times that day to get her work done. Most of the time, she's pretty good about just sitting down to her work and completing it. We've gotten into a good rhythm.
One fun thing we did before the world closed down was the kids and I went to Aunt Emily's house one morning when there was a holiday from school, and we played with clay and made little clay creations. The girls made bowls and little shapes, Emily made Jack a dino, and I made clay handprints of the kids. She even fired up some of the things we made in her kiln, and we got them a month later. It was a really fun morning!
Church was cancelled halfway through March as well. Which means I haven't done hardly any singing time this year so far. My calling basically got cancelled with church. There are some wards that do some lessons on Zoom (a conferencing website that has exploded during this Coronavirus quarantine -- along with Marco Polo), and I suppose that I could do a little singing time for the primary kids on Zoom. But I just don't think that would go super well -- I would be able to teach a song and lead in singing; but we wouldn't be able to do activities very well.
We've done our church meetings at home with our family, which has been very different, but actually pretty special. Normally, we have a short Sacrament meeting in the late morning on a Sunday, which consists of taking the Sacrament (Daniel blesses and passes), singing some hymns and praying, and Daniel and/or myself giving some kind of short lesson. What's been nice is that we choose what we're teaching the kids for our meetings. We've done lessons on Family History, the Restoration, the Atonement and Resurrection, and the first principles of the gospel. Then after Jack's nap, we usually do a Sunday School lesson from that week's Come Follow Me reading. And sometimes I'll do a mini singing time. We only have mishaps every once in a while, with tantrums and irreverence. But mostly, the kids listen well and seem to be taking everything in.
Divvy closed the office at about the same time everything else closed down, and Daniel's been working from home since then. He has a love-hate relationship with it. I think he likes being able to see me and the kids throughout the day. But his setup isn't ideal -- he has his desk set up down in the basement in Brooke's room. He can lock the door when he has calls, but the kids can still be loud and bug him down there. It's in such close proximity to the playroom. Plus, when does work end and family life begin when you work from home? It's just all at home, so it's hard to find that separation. There hasn't been much separation these days, anyway, because it's been so busy for him at work. Things are happening, due to this coronavirus thing, and he's expected to work a ton. So he'll stop for dinner and FHE, and sometimes he'll put the kids to bed. But then he goes right back into work. It's not been easy for either of us. He gets stressed and burnt out, and I miss hanging out with him. Although, him being so busy DOES give me plenty of time in the evenings to get some reading done!
Social distancing life hasn't been easy for any of us. We've been advised to keep group gatherings to less than 10 people, to stay 6 ft away from others in public, and not to gather with a lot of different people. Basically, stay at home with your family; don't get together with others; practice good hygiene. It's been especially interesting when I've gone shopping and to medical appointments. People really get shifty when you get too close to them. Lately, everyone has been wearing face masks and gloves when they go out. Some stores only let in a certain number of people at a time, so there's a queue outside of the stores. They've put up plastic guards at checkout counters, and stickers on the floor, indicating to stay 6 ft away from the person in front of you. People have been stocking up on things, trying to be prepared, which means that certain items are VERY hard to find right now. Toilet paper has been the one that's gotten the most attention and been made the biggest deal. For MONTHS you could not find toilet paper in the stores. People just kept buying it up to store it, which left shortages everywhere. We were fortunate because Daniel got a big Costco pack of TP a month or so before all this happened. And also, a friend from Medford who was passing through, Cindy Cannon, dropped off a 9-pack about a month ago. I made the joke that this was the 2020 version of toilet papering someone's house -- leaving a pack on the doorstep! The other things that are so hard to find right now are flour and sugar, rice and pasta. It seems every time I go to a big Walmart, those items are always missing. It's pretty crazy to see shelves completely empty!
Medical appointments have been different too. My OB appointment in March was a phone call! They told me not to come in, and when I talked to the doctor on the phone, he said that if I had any concerns I could come in, but otherwise to stay home. Camille had an appointment with an Endocrinologist a few weeks ago, and they changed her appointment to a video conference. (Camille's appointment is a whole other story for another day) Jack had a video appointment when he got a cold, and the doctor had us go test him for coronavirus. We drove out to one of the drive-thru testing centers, waited for our turn, and then drove up for Jack's test. They shoved this little q-tip type brush way up his nose on each side, dug around for a few seconds (all the while, he's screaming and crying, and I'm turned around from the front seat trying to hold his head and arms down... it was awful, and only like a minute total), and then told us we'd get the results in a few days. He didn't have it. (*major eye roll*) When Camille and I went to the hospital to get some labs done for her (order from the endocrinologist -- again, another story), we entered the hospital, and there was a table set up for check in. The woman at the table told us to sanitize our hands with their hand sanitizer and gave us both face masks and instructions for checking in at the lab. When we checked in with a receptionist, she told us to stay back behind some tape they'd put on the floor. There was no passing of cards or anything. And when I went in last week for a doctor's appointment (I hadn't had an appointment in a month, and I hadn't seen a doctor in person for at least 2 months), there was a check-in table at the entrance to the medical center there as well. I didn't have to put on a mask, but they did ask for my name and reason for being there, and they asked me to sanitize. There was another check point outside of the doc's office; a medical assistant there asking if I had an appointment, and checking a list for my name. It's just been so interesting how things have changed so quickly, and how cautious everyone is being about it all.
The kids really miss hanging out with their friends, and Brooke misses going to school. Jack has even started asking if he can play with the little boy next door. Daniel doesn't get out of the house as much as he needs to, and he doesn't get to associate with people every day like he used to. And I have been missing meeting up with my friends and getting together for things. Despite this, we've still managed to do SOME things. A few weeks ago, the Smiths next door invited us to a "quarantine BBQ", which basically meant that they took some of the fencing out and put chicken wire up instead, so that we could eat outside with each other, while still maintaining proper distance. It was so weird, and yet also really fun. We shared food over the fence and chatted, and Jack and Pepper kept looking at each other and poking their fingers at each other through the fence.
Some of our friends in the neighborhood (the kids) have made little mailboxes out of cardboard boxes for friends to put little notes and things in. Brooke made one, and a few times in the last month, we wrote little notes and delivered them to our friends. We even pulled out some of our rubber stamping things to make little cards, and then we took a walk around the neighborhood and dropped them in friends little mailboxes. I did some, too, for the adult friends. I figured they needed some extra love right now too.
I still go on a walk a week with DeAnna Christensen in the morning, although walking is getting continually harder each week. It's nice to have that one thing where I see someone outside of my family and get to have a conversation with a friend.
Last weekend, Harvey Smith had a birthday party over Zoom. He invited Brooke and Camille to "attend". Gina and Preston dropped off birthday kits on our doorstep before the party, consisting of a couple of cupcakes, a bingo card with some skittles for markers, and another activity card. After everyone was hooked up to the conference call birthday party, they played a couple of games of bingo, chatted a little bit, sang Happy Birthday to Harvey, and then ate their cupcakes. It was probably 45 minutes total that the girls were on the video call. Brooke even won a bingo game, and after a few minutes, Preston said, "Hey, Brooke! Go look on your doorstep and see if you got a prize!" There was a fun new game on the doorstep! Someone had run the prize and dropped it on our doorstep. It was a cute and fun birthday party idea, considering that we can't get together with our friends right now.
I had a girl's night last week. We each got our own takeout, drove to the church parking lot, circled the cars, and hung out in the back of our own cars while we ate and talked. I brought a camping chair, because there's no way I'm going to try and sit in my trunk right now! It was actually pretty fun to be out and catch up with friends. Only 5 of us went, of our group of friends -- Annette Perkins, Dani Swinyard, Becky Steele, Elise Pearson, and myself. I picked up Thai food and Crumbl cookies to share. And I stayed out later than I'd planned -- I didn't get home until almost 10pm.
I've been Marco Poloing a ton in the last 2 months. I have several groups on Marco Polo that I've been regularly receiving from and sending videos to -- a Fernandez Family group, and Fernandez Women group, one with just Diane and Julie, a Fernandez University group (where the family members just posts videos teaching a skill or something that they've learned while we're all in this weird quarantine -- it's been fun and interesting), and most recently, a Holbrook women group and a Holbrook Family group. I've also been poloing regularly with my friend Alarie. It's been such a nice way to stay in touch with people, while we can't really be around people in person. I think it's helped save my sanity at times, just being able to see and hear from my family and friends.
The kids, aside from school (Camille even likes to do some worksheets about letters and numbers while Brooke's doing school), like to play together. The weather has been up and down for the last couple of months, but getting nicer and warmer, and on the nice days, they love to play outside. We've had our fair share of fighting and tantruming and tattling, but they mostly will play well together. They build with legos and magnatiles, they play with trucks and cars and hatchimals, they do sidewalk chalk and play with water outside. I've been doing more sensory bins with them, too. I bought some cheap bins at the dollar store, and they do water play, or I put dried rice or beans in the bins, and they scoop and pour. I did a fun dino dig sensory bin for preschool in February before everything closed down. I put dried rice in some bins with a bunch of small dino toys, and they had to dig and find them. Then when they found them, I tell them to bury them again and dig them up again. They had a blast! That's the type of thing my kids have been doing lately. Jack likes to put trucks and diggers in his sensory bins. The other week, I did a science bin with baking soda and vinegar and turkey basters. Camille didn't love that one, and did a water bin instead. But Brooke thought it was awesome.
I have been doing my best to keep things running at home -- just keeping up as best I can with my housework rotation and keeping Brooke on task. It's been getting harder and harder the farther along I get in my pregnancy. I'm currently at 37 weeks, and I feel really big. Going up and down the stairs gets me winded, and I can't do everything that the kids want me to do, which frustrates us both. I think if I weren't so pregnant, I would go for more walks with the kids and bike rides, now that the weather is getting nicer. The thing I love about being SO pregnant is feeling so much more of the baby. He's an active one, usually. He does have his slow days, but usually he moves a lot. And feeling more baby lumps and bumps and knobs is so fun. My belly is HUGE though. Every time I walk past a window or mirror and see it, it's shocking!
I've been exercising at least 4 times a week for the past few months. Actually, I've been pretty good about exercising this whole pregnancy, minus those weeks when I got sick with a stomach thing or cold. And some weeks, it only happened a couple of times. But I'm fairly pleased that I was able to keep up a consistent habit of working out, despite the difficulties of pregnancy. Since we've been forced to stay home more, it's been partially for my sanity. I'm a homebody. I like being at home and staying at home, so this quarantine hasn't been a HUGE trial for me, I guess. But I do still miss being able to get out, being able to meet up with friends somewhere or go to Thanksgiving Point or the park. And I've realized that there are a few things that I MUST do, if not every day, then at least regularly, a few times a week, that help me to cope better with the day and with child-related and parenting difficulties. Exercising a few times a week is one of those. Reading my scriptures in the morning is another, and getting dressed and ready (including makeup), another. I don't get dressed every single day, and my makeup only happens about half the time. But I've noticed that it really helps me feel like a real person, and I feel so much better throughout the day. It's funny, I've always known that doing these few things every day helps me to feel better, but I'm not always consistent about doing them. It's also funny how it takes a pandemic quarantine to push me to be more consistent about things.
The other things I've been doing lately are reading a lot, especially when Daniel works late, and doing things to get ready for this baby. Last month, I made his baby scrapbook. And last week, I made his soft baby blanket. Those are always the 2 things I have to do with each baby. This week I need to order some essential baby things and rearrange furniture in our room to accommodate the baby. We're getting so close, and it's time we were ready for him!
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