Social distancing visit with Joan and Stu--Happy Birthday Joan!

On Joan's birthday we met Joan and Stu for a great visit at the Cornell Plantations. The boys helped us discover all kinds of awesome things at the park, such as trees that double as loungers; sculptures that are also playgrounds; hills that can be sledded down wearing jackets; cattails that look like corndogs and can be rubbed until the seeds blow away; and many other delights. We saw horses in the barn. Theo and Beckett tested my firm conviction that no one would fall into the pond. Jeff surprised us with his bird viewing prowess (though what was initially identified as a yellow crowned night heron was discovered to be a great blue heron with bad posture). It was one of the coldest Earth Days in my memory but it sure was nice to be together, even if from six feet away.

Exploring Elmwood Park

We take a lot of walks to Elmwood Park, the city park that is just to the south of us. We can walk to the dead end of our road and then take a little trail down the hill to the creek. We've spent time in the park before, to play in the playground or eat from the berry bushes and trees, but never as much as we've spent in the last six weeks.

On this visit we discovered a number of new things. We brought a bunch of old hard clementines that we had forgotten about, so we had a clementine battle in the middle of the woods (chucking old squishy clementines at each other). We also found a great lookout point where we could see across the valley and toward the university. It was cold but sunny and clear. We also discovered the end of one of the paths, which stopped in someone's backyard, and then followed a couple roads to find another staircase back into the park from another entry point. 

Easter

Some things are better in quarantine. For example, my kids don't enjoy any traditional holiday meals. They usually come to the table and say, "what are we having?" and when we tell them, they groan and moan and then eat fruit salad and bread. So why do we do this??? This Easter we could just have the foods we can all agree on. We had a big brunch of our favorite foods--cinnamon buns (made by Mama), fruit salad (made by Theo and Reed!), scrambled eggs (made by Daddy and Beckett), and bacon (made by Theo and Mama). It was excellent. Then we went out for a walk. We ate leftovers of brunch for dinner, plus whatever other leftovers anyone could find. It was a great day.

Easter Egg Hunt

Minor head wound Harry at the ER.

Social distancing visit with Grandma Joanie. We also went on a social distancing walk with Grandma Joanie and Grandpa Stu around the lake.

Our friend Colleen dropped out some beautiful costume jewelry that Reed has been enjoying.

Online typing class

Good old fashioned dry beans and noodles sensory play

We bike even in the snow, in this mid-April cold snap.

Today's accomplishments:

Theo and Beckett worked on their typing on a program through their school. I would love for them to leave quarantine with good typing skills.

I told Beckett there was a clean load of clothes in the dryer. Without me touching said clothes, they were emptied from the dryer, brought upstairs, sorted and folded and put away.

I asked Theo to take out the recycling and garbage, and went outside to find everything brought to the curb for pickup tomorrow morning.

Yesterday Beckett and I cleaned the gutters on the back of the house. He especially liked the climbing out on the roof part.

Beckett and Theo and I dug up and divided the hosta in the backyard and rehomed them to a new spot along the garage in the backyard.

The emergency room? Yes, that's exactly the outing I was missing most during quarantine

Friday night we were all a little cagey after a week of remote learning and working. It snowed that day and was pretty cold, so we didn't go outside as much as we usually do. After dinner the boys were roughhousing a lot and Beckett seemed especially exhausted and extra loosey-goosey with his body, which is his sign that he's tired. He was scolded for hurting one of his brothers and so he went upstairs to the playroom, our padded romper room where it's ALMOST impossible to hurt yourself. Pretty soon we heard a thump and screaming. Apparently Beckett had been walking backwards in the playroom, which is always messy with pillows and blankets that have been thrown around, and he tripped and fell backwards on the only remotely dangerous thing in the room, the metal drawer pull. There was blood and a cut but we couldn't see it well because he didn't like us rooting around by it, which was in his hair at the back of his head. We sent pictures to Mama Sara and Nitsan, our on-call medical experts, and their consensus was that we should probably go to the ER to have it glued or sutured. I called ahead to the pediatric after hours clinic at Upstate, and they said there was no wait, so we put on our masks and left.

We could not have had a better experience at the clinic. We walked through without seeing anyone until we got to the admissions area, where someone took our temperature and gave us a mask to put on over our homemade masks. We walked straight back to triage, where I gave our insurance information ("Oh, it's Beckett! Wow, you've been here a lot!") and before we were even done with the three minute long process, the doctor and nurse came out to meet us. The waiting room was empty and there weren't any other patients there. They ended up cleaning out the wound, discovering it was smaller than we had feared, and just dressed it and got us out of there. I think we were gone for a total of about 55 minutes, back home and in bed by 9:15.

Do I wish we had NOT had to go to the emergency room? YES! But we had just about the best experience we could possibly have had, and Beckett's not seriously injured, which is great.

Sometimes we all read at the table at meals. There's only so many lines of conversation when we are all together all day.

During week one of quarantine we dug up Christmas presents that Aunt Debby and Uncle Rich sent the boys for Christmas that we put away for a rainy day. It's like she could foresee the quarantine--three awesome board games!