Owen decided to play his sax on the front porch. There was no one out to listen to him but he didn’t care.
The next thing I know I hear an electric guitar…and look out to see this. I was at once happy (that they figured out how to play together safety) and sad (that they had to).
They played for probably two hours. Katie was sitting with a sign asking for donations to buy sanitizer for people who don’t have any. (So later we had a talk about that being a wonderful idea but how could we make it better. We landed on donating to the school’s food drive.)
I am so tried of every single little issue that I have to take care of or referee. Poor Tom gets an earful every time he ventures up for a bathroom or coffee break.
Katie’s videos don’t have sound on the desktop
Owen can’t login to his google meet
such and such google doc is missing
Katie can’t figure out 9+4 even though she knows how
Owen makes so much noise while he works (feet tapping, humming, singing, gum chewing, etc.) and it drives me and Katie crazy (which then causes them to argue)
they are both watching videos on their separate devices and can’t hear because they’re loud so we have to hunt down headphones
a friend calls their device to chat so they both jump up (its now muted)
I get asked all morning long if it’s time to watch science videos (we do have a schedule for this reason)
the doorbell rings and they both jump up to answer it
Katie’s website doesn’t have sound again
if one is watching a video the other one migrates over
Schoology is down then up then down then up
I have to keep track of emails and texts and websites and assignments
and on and on and on while also trying to do my job…and I can’t seem to get anything done.
I know it’s just the start and we’ll get into a rhythm, but for now, it’s exhausting. I don’t know how parents with more kids or a full-time job are doing if I’m this much of a stressball.
But I did get the kids with this today! (I also got their friends, since they were on a video call with them. But the friends called me out within a minute or so.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Owen told me this is how he gets around using (limited) screentime game minutes—he makes his own game on the calculator since those are free minutes. He just does +1 or +.5 and then just hits = over and over and over and over (seen here in a brief snippet).
REALLY?! You’re that desperate to look at a damn screen?! 臘♀️路♀️藍 Creative for sure but damn annoying as well. This is what I have to fight on a daily basis. This is why I take technology away. This is why I hate them having to use it every day for everything.
I’ve created a pretty good schedule—learning in the morning (broken up into subject blocks) with all afternoon for creative play and outside time. With time planned to check media and chat with friends. And I do know that the schedule isn’t hard and fast so I’m trying to be lenient.
But I just can’t deal with Katie arguing that 11-3=2 (she knows better, she’s just really stubborn and refuses to admit she’s wrong) and that you can make the word CAME from CAMPING. She’s arguing that her workbook isn’t school (no, technically it’s not from school but it IS schoolwork). And she’s lost her laminated login/password sheet which we obviously need…and she’s “looking” for it by sitting at the computer and staring at the monitor… Until I tell her to keep looking until she finds it…and 2 minutes later she’s doing something else. 😒
Owen is better overall…but once he got online for his Google class meeting, all was lost. I let him finish his blocked time and let him know he needed to wrap it up… But almost 45 minutes later he was still chatting PLUS he decided to play his recorder and sax for his friend (there’s that noise I posted about earlier). I know he’s excited to talk to his friends, but it makes me stabby when he’s just ignores me.
I know everyone has different schedules so I’m trying to be forgiving but I’m losing my mind…on Day 2, hour 2. 😭 This is something I didn’t even think about as going to be challenging.
I know this is new for ALL of us and it will likely get better but until then… Sigh.
I did a daily schedule the first week we were out of school. It worked pretty well. The kids knew what time blocks came next and pretty much stuck to it on their own.
Then came the week of spring break and we got off the rails a little. I revised the schedule a little in preparation of the anticipated actual distance learning… Only to have the teacher’s schedule sent out after I had finished so I had to revise a little. After a day of no one really even following it…I came up with a new schedule that put all academics in the morning so when it was lunchtime, that was the end of school. I had been trying to break it up throughout the day but I kind of think it made it harder, so…we’ll see. I actually hate having a schedule at all, but if we didn’t have it, every day would be a dumpster fire as no one would do any schoolwork but they’d beg for tech all day.
I already see some minor changes I want to make, and I’m sure this will get edited a few more times before we get settled into our new learning routine. We have at least a month ahead of us…
I’m appreciative that we are able to do distance learning and that I am actually able to be here for the kids and it’s not a hardship for us…but it is frustrating that ALL the hard work I did to get the kids detoxed from tech has all been wiped away within two weeks.
I gave Katie some new face paints awhile back and she’s been begging to use them but she didn’t want to do it herself—and Owen wouldn’t let her paint on him—so today Tom promised he would paint her face. And they decided on a poop emoji.
She was so excited when it was done and she loved it so much she could barely stand still.
After this she did get Owen to paint on her arms…and eventually it led to getting paint all over the couch so that wasn’t fun. But I got it mostly cleaned up so all was well.
They turned out okay and everybody liked them but I would probably do it differently the next time. We had to lay the hotdogs down because they were too tall to stand upright but it was a little weird just having a hotdog in the middle so I would probably actually cut up discs instead. I might also make them more bite-size and use smaller tins.
I gave Owen and Katie a small Lego project to work on together and they managed to do it without much argument or fighting. Katie really liked playing with it, too.
At one point the kids left the box of pieces open and Maggie stepped in it, dumping them. I finished and had this. 🤦🏻♀️ We had to pull apart the couch to find the pieces (which we did).
It was nice today (57°!) so we took a walk to do a photo scavenger hunt and leave chalk notes on people’s driveways!
Marking found and photographed scavenger hunt items by punching a hole with a stick—making do because we forgot a pencil.There was quite a bit of chalk art around the neighborhood.It was so nice seeing friends on our walk today and being able to chat, even if it was from a distance. ❤️❤️
The kids went across the street to decorate the driveway of a single older lady. Owen also told me her brought her trash up to the house. ❤️
As far as for social distancing? Every single person that we saw and had to pass kept the right distance. Sometimes we moved out of the way, sometimes they moved out of the way. Thankfully we didn’t see any kids at the park but I would’ve lost my mind.
I was really happy about all this because I keep hearing stories about how parks are FULL of kids with and without parents around?!?! GRRR. I just think a lot of people are in the “it’s not going to happen to me” camp. And, of course, in the best case scenario, we won’t see anything happen at all and we will think all of this was for nothing. But that just means that it worked.
Anyway, they really had a lot more fun than I thought they would. Now we just need lots more nice days…
I treated myself when we got back… uncovered my egg chair and had a drink!
So—SURPRISE!—my family has stopped helping. I expected it but it’s still annoying. 😂 🤷🏻♀️ I get it. They only want the easy parts but life isn’t always easy and I’m trying to teach them that sometimes they need to just power through. They’re not having it. #momfail
Anyway. This is how I do puzzles when it’s getting towards the end—all like-shaped pieces together. Am I the only one that does this? It makes it sooo much easier to find what you’re looking for. (I also kinda want to sort by colors but I’m letting that go.)
The kids went outside today…and ignored my instructions about playing with neighbors… SO THAT WAS…FUN.
SETTLE IN, Y’ALL…here’s what happened on our first day of self-distanced shelter-at-home Spring Break.
The day was going as expected with sibling squabbles and whining about iPad time and complaining about little chores and me not getting to the taxes because work stuff popped up. So I finally sent them outside…and that was the beginning of the fall.
What happened you ask? Well, I might have gone a little crazy bonkers yelling at the kids when they ignored my instructions about playing with neighbors…
Granted it wasn’t one of my better parenting moments but we have just been stressing the importance of staying away from EVERYONE—learning how quickly germs travel and talking about it all the time and why it’s important and how we’re sorry you can’t play with friends now…and then to see them wilfully disobey me? Not good.
Yes, I know they’re kids. Yes, I know they forget—SQUIRREL!!—which is exactly why I said just talk across yards. But then it became “we’ll stay apart” in the driveway and I said no because you’re kids and we can’t trust that you will STAY apart even though you think you will. Heads hanging they went back outside. And the next thing I know I hear screams of kids having fun in our yard so I went to look—really hoping they were being good—and I saw five of them all too close.
Now am I really and truly worried that something bad is going to happen? No. I’m practically the farthest thing from a germaphobe you might find—but I’m trying to be proactive here because too many people think it’s no big deal and look where that got us?
So I was THAT mom who opened the front door and screamed to her children to get their butts inside and for the neighbor kids to GO HOME. I might have been loud enough for long enough that Tom came up from the office downstairs to see what was going on. And then we both proceeded to let the kids know why we were upset with them—for probably a good 10 minutes. Again, not terribly proud of how we handled it but I was just shaking I was so mad. Like I was kind of scared at how mad I was. We then made the kids strip and put their clothes in the wash and take showers (total overkill even for me but we wanted to prove a point).
After they showered and I had calmed down a bit, I hugged them both and apologized for losing my cool but explained that I just wanted to keep them and us and everyone around us safe so they need to trust us when we tell them what they can and can’t do. And emphasized yet again that we are also missing our friends—we’re not punishing them.
The whole thing was rough. And it totally sucked. But tomorrow is a new day and I’ll give myself some grace and we’ll move on. And keep a closer eye on the kids.
So use this post to prepare yourself for if and when this happens in your house so you can avoid acting like a crazy person to your kids.
I started the kids on the Lego challenge calendar because we’ve been watching Lego Masters and they love it—so figured this would be a big treat.
Ha. Hahaha. Katie didn’t want to do the first one I picked (rockets) and Owen didn’t want to do the second (pizza) do they did Rock Paper Scissors and tied like six times. Owen finally won which sent Katie into a fit because she “didn’t know how to build a rocket and she’s stupid.”
Sigh. No good deed goes unpunished.
So after some counseling, they both worked on rockets. Katie eventually gave up but Owen did finish.
I’m not sure when we’re going to attempt this again.
Tom and Owen don’t enjoy puzzles but here they are because it’s a Michigan State Puzzle. 🧩🏈 Needless to say I did most of what you see here and no one lasted long.
Extrapolate this to similar events happening ALL DAY LONG and you can see why it’s mentally EXHAUSTING.
As of 9:30 we were already off schedule because Katie “forgot to eat” so her reading time is taken up with eating. She asked if she could finish reading during creative time (the next block). I said yes. (Also, if her normal body clock has her hungry at 9:30, school starts WAAAY TOO EARLY but I digress.)
When it finally is time to read, do you think she picks up either of the two books she has been reading? Of course not. Plus we are still working on being able to tell us what happens in a story because we recently figured out that she hasn’t actually been reading to comprehend. 🤦🏻♀️
And Owen… he has been asking for the next Harry Potter book forever and so we finally were able to check it out online so he can read it on the Kindle and what does he grab? The same Captain Underpants books he’s read four times already. 🤦🏻♀️
So Owen is reading as scheduled and humming while he reads. Katie of course has sat down RIGHT next to him so asks him to stop. He doesn’t—nd honestly shouldn’t have to because she has a whole house she can read in. She refuses to move to her “book nook” she created in the other room AND ASKED TO LEAVE OUT. Owen then starts humming even crazier JUST to annoy her. Mad props to him but I can’t say that so I tell him that isn’t nice but she does move to another room. When the official reading block is up I remind her she was going you finish and she flat out refuses to continue reading even though SHE JUST ASKED to finish her reading.
