ROTFL

I woke up to my alarm this morning (and a text from my dentist's office saying they didn't actually have an appointment until later this afternoon (so scheduling online works...not so well)) and then just stayed there reading the news. Every day is simultaneously gripping and monotonous.

We've had to add on to our family motto, which began with ROT: Respect, Obedience, Tolerance. We've since had to add an F: Flexibility (Rachel was having a fit because she was all set up to do her playing test but then Zoë and Alexander went downstairs to play blocks and wouldn't be quiet enough to suit her standards (even though her teacher had said she fully expected some background noise) and started screaming at them to leave and they started screaming right back so I asked her what would be easier for the household—to move the babies to a new place and get them involved in a new game or to have her move to a new place and get set up again (a thing I'd help her to accomplish); clearly the second option would be easier on everyone if she could suck it up and do it but she resolved to stick out her stinky attitude (though she did move upstairs)). And since we added an F I figured we might as well add an L: Love.

So now we're over here ROTFL (rolling on the floor laughing (because we'll definitely need a sense of humour to get through this)) instead of just ROTing.

Respect, obedience, tolerance, flexibility, love (and laughter).

ROTFL.

We've got this.

Unlucky Day

The children were a little unruly today, which...those days happen, right? 

I'm reading them The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in the mornings, a book Grandpa began alluding to a lot when we lived with him, but a story my kids were somewhat unfamiliar with. We came across an interesting quote, all the way in chapter two (which is where we are).

Tom Sawyer learns that "in order to make [someone] covet a thing it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain."

We discussed that quote in light of Rachel foisting her jobs on her younger siblings (she is very good at this, which is why Grandpa started calling her Tom Sawyer in the first place), as well as how it's making people behave somewhat crazy during this pandemic, as well as how it made me need peanut butter when I lived abroad even though I can go months without touching it in the States, and how if I ask my children to play upstairs they will contrarily say, "OR downstairs!" but if I ask them to play downstairs they will, of course, say, "OR upstairs!" (And we also discussed Tom's little tricks to convince his little friends that doing his jobs was a privilege).

After this lengthy discussion, I told the kids to write a response. Benjamin was having a particularly unfocused day and this is what he wrote:

This does not really go into my life even though I am in a pandemic and toilet paper, hand sanitizer.

And that is...just it. That's what he wrote.

Lucky Day

We made some origami shamrocks last night while talking about allegories, such as The Olive Tree and the way St. Patrick is believed to have used three-leafed shamrocks to teach people about the godhead. Each shamrock is really made out of four origami hearts, so we talked about how Heavenly Father, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost work together to get God's work done (and work with other people as the fourth leaf—the prophet, us, etc—to further the work as well). We also talked about how we worked together as a family to put together each shamrock. 

Coronovirus tag

The kids and I went for a walk this afternoon (it was a little chilly (for these parts) so no one else was really out) and the kids found a bunch of dropped fruit balls from a sweetgum tree so they started chucking them around. It's a game we've played for ages (we used to head outside during our North Carolina Christmases to have a fruit ball fights since we weren't ever able to have snowball fights) but today things took a new spin. 

"It's the coronovirus!" Benjamin yelled, hurling a fruit ball at one of his sisters. "I'm going to infect you!"

They started running around, chucking handfuls of fruit balls at each other while screaming made-up statistics about infection rates and so forth. At the end of their game they agreed that social distancing matters; after all, they could only launch those large-scale coronoviruses so far.

Perhaps Coronovirus Tag will be the next Ring Around the Rosy—slightly morbid, somewhat enjoyable (though the connection between that game and the Black Plague (which Benjamin believed was pronounced plag-you until just a few short days ago) is tenuous). 

Social distancing: home church (and stuff)

We did much better with social distancing today. It helped, I think, that it was raining and that it was Sunday. Our neighbourhood children know we go to church on Sundays and so they don't usually come to see if we can play in the mornings (sometimes they are waiting for us when we get home, actually), so our morning was pretty quiet.

Our homeschool church consisted of a lesson on why we are choosing social distance right now. Andrew showed the kids an interactive simulation and they seemed to understand that no socialization right now was much better for the community than other methods of reducing contagion. And then we talked about magnifying our callings (or roles) and then sang some hymns and primary songs. Andrew even let Zoë choose a Christmas song (she loves the song Samuel Tells of the Baby Jesus) even though it's nowhere close to Christmas.

The girls made cookies, which turned out to be excellent when we started getting callers in the afternoon. "No we cannot play. We are practicing social distancing. Have a plate of cookies and remember us in two months?" I'm not sure giving out cookies counts as social distancing...

We're just doing our best.

Andrew made quiche for dinner to celebrate Pi Day (a day late). He also made cheery pie for dessert.

Miriam gave some cookies to the backdoor pool neighbours as well (no, we can't play...have some cookies?) and they passed over a package filled with treats from Japan and some Girl Scout Cookies. Again, poor social distancing. Again, we're trying.

This social distancing thing was easier when we were the only ones home during the day and had the run of the neighbourhood. I mean, we honestly hardly ever see the majority of our neighbours! And now suddenly we can't go play in the cul-de-sac without being bombarded by them...which means that they probably are naturally very friendly just altogether too busy.

Do you think this pandemic will teach us to slow down and be more neighbourly?

Oh, we also played Pandemic with the older girls (while the younger kids watched Daniel Tiger) and we won! So maybe that's a good omen...though the last time we played (on Friday night) we lost within four turns so...like...it probably has no bearing on how this actual pandemic will play out.

Identifying with Contagion and Identifying Colours

Andrew and I watched Contagion tonight, which...I'm not sure I recommend. It was...a little intense. I know COVD-19 is a much less aggressive virus than the one in the movie. But still.

Things are getting wild out there: Alberta cancelled school. Period. Like, they don't even get out until the end of June and they just cancelled the rest of the school year. They are trying to put together some at-home curriculum, but they've cancelled Provincial Exams (for grades 3, 6, 9). Diploma examinations will still happen, but no classroom instruction beforehand, so...yikes. My friends up there are (rightly) freaking out a little. I mean, it's one thing to decide to homeschool; it's another thing to have it be thrust upon you.

The CDC today said that no "events" with more than 50 people should take place (for the next eight weeks), but they explicitly said that schools are not classified as an "event." So I guess that means school can go on for us? Rachel will be home all of this week ("digital learning days" for her) and they're going to reevaluate after that (I honestly think they will cancel next week as well, and then there's spring break). But I feel like if Canada (and other countries) are closing schools (and for longer) we really ought to be taking this somewhat seriously.

Norway has urged students living abroad in areas with "poorly developed health services...for example in the USA" to return home, which doesn't speak well of our medical system (but, I mean, we all know how I feel about the medical system down here (I understand Americans think it's pretty great but, like, I mean...I dunno)).

So in other news, I was reading the kids some books the other night and If You Give Your Mouse A Cookie was among the titles in the towering stack they brought to me. Sometimes when we're reading I will ask the kids questions either about what they think is going to happen or what they're seeing in the pictures. If I want a younger child to answer I have to prepare my older children like so, "Zoë, I'm going to ask Alexander a question now. It's a question that I know you know the answer to but I want to see if he knows the answer, so when I ask the question you can answer it in your mind but don't say the answer out loud, okay?" Otherwise they just blurt out the answer or point to the correct thing on the page and, really, can one gauge any sort of comprehension from a toddler who's being fed the answer? Not really.

We happened to be on the page where there's an illustration of Mouse just beginning to draw a portrait of his family. His paper is mostly empty but there are crayons strewn about him. He's holding one crayon, ready to draw.

I gave the previously mentioned speech to Zoë and then said, "Alexander, what colour is Mouse using?"

Alexander started scanning the page wildly, stammering, "Umm, ummm, ummmm, ummmm." Then he pointed triumphantly to Mouse holding the green crayon and said, "BIS ONE!"

Translation: "This one!"

Which, I mean...he's not wrong.

Long-distance Socializing

With everyone's schedule somewhat freed up my family was able to do a little long-distance socializing. Usually our schedules don't mesh very well—we cover time zones from EST (Eastern) to HST (Hawaiian) and pretty much everything in between (or, you know, just MST (mountain)...and PST (Pacific)). Add in work schedules and church commitments and so forth and it's very rare that we all have time to just sit around and chat with each other. 

But today we do!

So we started a group chat and that turned into a call with people coming and going. It was fun to see everyone and get caught up. 

Every time I tried to take a screen shot it just would boot me out of the video so clearly I'm doing something wrong

Library closures

This morning after my mom told me that the Orem library had closed (my sister just got a full-time job there, which she has worked all of four days) I decided to not visit our library because we're trying to be good citizens, but I just heard that our library will also be closing after tomorrow.

And now I can't decide whether I should just sit at home or make a panicked visit to the library to check out materials. I'm honestly leaning toward just staying home. We have plenty of things for the older kids to read (and can check out eBooks) and we have a large collection of children's books (and with the anthologies I just ordered we will have 75 new stories to read, which is such a great number because it happens to be our checkout limit and is just such a lovely round number for all the random anthologies to add up to). So I think we're set.

We have plenty to read.

I just...having the library be unaccessible is making me feel nervous.

But, we're fine. We have plenty to read. This will be fine.

On the upside, this pandemic has been quite the boon for me as a newbie homeschooling mom. So many people are sharing so many amazing (and often free) resources! Things that I didn't even know existed! I'm excited to comb through the lists my friends have shared to find some interesting learning activities for the kids!

Isolation

We didn't spend all day outside socializing (from a distance) with our neighbours. Just the afternoon.

We spent the morning hunkering down. 

Andrew broke out an retro (1970s) version of Risk and played that with the girls. 

Un-isolation

Quarantining is more difficult than I thought it would be. We explained to the kids that we'd just be hunkering down for a while—no friends, no outings—in order to do our part to slow the spread of this virus figuring it wouldn't be too hard for us to do because we're not very social people. Unfortunately—or fortunately—it was a beautiful day today and we figured we should go outside to work in the yard.

As part of our pandemic panic-shopping, Andrew picked up a pruning saw which—go figure—makes pruning so much easier. We've been trying to tackle the ivy on our trees with a branch saw, which just hasn't been working very well. You wouldn't think it would make much of a difference (at least, that's what I thought) but it really does. We (and by "we" I mean "Andrew") were able to get the ivy off all our trees this afternoon (except one that is a mix of poison and regular ivy, which we're not quite sure what to do with so just didn't touch it). We also raked up our front garden area and cleaned up Benjamin's junk collection and so forth.

But while the girls and I were working in the front yard, a couple called us over to them. They just bought a house in our cul-de-sac and wanted to introduce themselves. They seem really nice and we're super excited for where they'll be moving in because they're moving into the house our our cul-de-sac nemesis (the one who yelled at us because our moving van was parked in the cul-de-sac, the ones who threatened to call the police because James parked his car in the cul-de-sac (note: it is not illegal to park on the street here), the ones who slammed the door in Miriam's face when she tried to deliver a loaf of freshly made sour dough bread, the ones...who we just can't seem to make friends with...). We're super excited for these new neighbours.

Zoë introduced herself to them like this, "My name is Zoë and I'm four years old and my grandma is dead."

She's really great at breaking the ice.