Quarantine Days 12-17

J has been asking, ever since we missed the Daddy Daughter Dance at her school (it happened before the school shutdown, we just couldn't make it) to have a time when she could dress up in fancy clothes, "tappy shoes" and lipstick, eat cake and drink "sweet beer" (soda), and dance with her Dad.  This past weekend, we made it happen.

We used Ro's unicorn cake recipe for the cake, with store-bought frosting.

The big girls made all the decorations!

When it came to the moment, J decided she was "too shy to dance" and so they just played Mario instead.  Still super fun!!!

Because this was the girls' first real experience with soda everyone was up until about 9:30 that night.

We love this crazy girl!!!

This is what comes of doing all your teaching, communicating, and homeschooling online:

Screen time up 10%!  Actually less than I would have guessed...

We have discovered a lot of new walks in the woods close by to our house.  We can walk to this trail head by way of the cemetery across the street from our development, and we probably never would have taken the time to discover it if it hadn't been for this quarantine.

The weather here has been cold and gray, but we've been walking anyway, with chilly cheeks and red noses.

The girls spent a lot of last week working on a joint project about coyotes.  Here they are working together one gray afternoon:

They were inspired to do this project after hearing coyotes howling in the night near our house.  They looked up all kinds of information about coyotes and put together a slide show, then presented it to me and M this afternoon-- it was wonderful!

Our school is transitioning this week to "required" rather than "suggested" schoolwork, because our school closure has now been extended beyond the original three weeks until May 4.  We will have a little less freedom now to do things like the coyote project, with the girls teachers now sending out assignments daily, but we've been told the girls will have an average of two hours of schoolwork per day.  So, we won't be doing any more work than we've already been doing, but the difference is that the girls (and Mom and Dad) will have less choice about what we do.  In one way that's relieving, since I won't have to organize/assign their work, but it's also a little sad that we won't be able to be quite so creative going forward.  We have had some emotionally charged mornings this week while the girls have been getting used to that idea.  We have also had a learning curve deciphering the teachers' different methods of communicating assignments, some of them a little unclear or overwhelming.  Everyone is doing the best they can, but it has been an adjustment.  I feel confident that once everyone gets into a routine and gets more comfortable with the (mostly online) tools, things will improve.  This includes both us and the teachers-- I think we'll all get used to the new normal after a few more days.

After one such emotionally charged morning this week, I ordered my tearful, frustrated, overwhelmed children outside.  I made myself this lovely snack

and enjoyed a wonderful half-hour of pure, uninterrupted silence while I got caught up on email.

When I was ready to face my children again, I went outside to see that they had not had their creativity stomped out of them by the morning's events.  No indeed.  They had constructed "pools" for their Lego minifigures using sidewalk chalk on our front steps:

...and what they called a "Lego-nado"

I am super glad that my girls are still my awesome, creative, resourceful girls, no matter how we're doing school.

Little J has been keeping up with her preschool work so well!  Very proud of her-- it has been so fun for me to watch her being a total pro at all the skills she needs.

She had her first live ballet class over Zoom tonight, and although I wondered how she would do, she was the model of attentiveness and effort, and afterwards said she had a lot of fun!

We used a chair for the barre!

N did her hip-hop class earlier this week in the same way, and I'm so happy that their teacher has decided to continue with them.  Just one more way we can continue a sense of normalcy and allow them to keep doing the things that they love.

That's it for this update... again, we send all our love and hugs from a distance!  More updates soon.