Staying At Home

During Minnesota's Stay-At-Home period, I have been thankful to have a large family. While it means a lot of extra work (we've been running the dishwasher twice a day + a daily load of hand-washed dishes), it also means a lot of options for a variety of social interactions during the day.

We have been playing lots of games together. Olivia's favorite is This Little Piggy (she grabs her toes to let us know she wants to keep playing if we stop). Spot-It is a favorite of Frankie's, but he can't play with Charlie or it ends in a fight. If we can get the 2 littlest ones asleep early, the rest of us can play games like Telsestrations and Catan. 

We haven't found too many activities the entire family can do. About the only thing we can do all together (well, almost...Olivia sits in her Bumbo at a distance and watches) is wrestle. 

The last time all 4 kids were attempting to pin Seth. They couldn't get close so I joined in to help. I am sad to say that it ended with Seth having all 5 of us at his mercy, pinned into one giant pig-pile. Several times. To be fair, Frankie and Charlie got in the way more than they helped. And Seth was a wrestler in high school, while I kept busy with things like Mock Trial and theater. 

Still pretty pathetic, though. 

If you watch to the end, you can see him pinning all the kids.

Social distancing

As coronavirus spreads, we are taking things day by day around here.

The exhausting part for me has just been making decisions. How much to limit contact with others; letting the kids play outside, but then suddenly having 5-10 neighborhood kids show up to join them (all boys, of course. Poor Elena!); whether Seth should go out to meetings at all; whether Frankie should still go to daycare, etc. 

I think I finally have a plan figured out for teaching Spanish online. I am so grateful that I just have the one class to plan for this year. I am learning that I really dislike recording myself, but I guess it's something I will have to get used to. 

Frankie just doesn't understand how everything can suddenly be closed because of this illness that he can't see. He keeps asking to go to the Thrift Store. I told him it might be closed for a few months, and he asked about 30 minutes later, "Has it been a few months? Is the Thrift Store open now?" 

It's looking like we will likely finish out the school year at home with "Distance Learning." We have survived the first 2 days. The older kids are pretty independent, although I am learning that I need to double check on them. 

Me: "Did you do everything?"

Sam: "Yep."

Me: "Even this?"

Sam: "Well, I couldn't figure it out."

Me: "That doesn't count as done, bub."

Quote of the day comes from Charlie when I told him we had to get started doing his school work:

"But I did it all yesterday."

Apparently we neglected to explain this sufficiently to Charlie.

On the bright side, we found a way to turn reviewing math facts from his most dreaded task to his favorite:

The Latest

We made it through our first day of "distance learning." It went well, but I was kept on my toes NON-STOP between helping all 3 school aged kids and keeping the baby and Frankie happy. There was really no time for anything else.At one point, Elena said, "Yeah, I see why you decided not to homeschool now..."

I've been mistaken for a homeschooling mom on more than one occasion, and I was determined to do it when we first became parents, but life had other plans....and now I guess life has decided to give us a taste of it after all :)

I am expecting our success to spiral downwards as the weeks drag on. As Olivia gets more mobile, that will add an extra challenge. But for today, the kids did great and got to spend a good 5-6 hours playing outside in the sun.

Seth's grandparents are back from Texas and isolated in their homes to protect them from coronavirus. Seth got their groceries & mail today while the kids and I each popped over to wave at them through their living room window a few times.

And now for a few of Frankie's recent quotes:

Frankie: Yep! I can tell that Olivia is a girl!
Me: How can you tell?
Frankie: Her hair is getting longer.
This conversation might not have been very funny if it hadn't been for where it took place: they were taking a bath.

And Frank's description of a scab: "It's bloody, but it's not....like....moving."

Also, Frank found a creative way to use his bulldozer toy today:

He pushed her all the way across the kitchen floor several times, and she loved it! 

Scooching

None of our previous babies have much liked being on their bellies when they were little, but they all eventually got used to it and started crawling. It looks like Livi might be an exception here. She was sitting without help early and has continued to prefer that position to any other when she is on the floor. We are still doing tummy time and encouraging her to crawl, but she is determined to get around in other ways. This week she started scooching around the room on her bottom. She does it in a way that almost looks like she's not moving, but then suddenly she is several feet away from where she started.

Her biggest motivators to scooch: messing with Charlie's toys and grabbing all the cards when we play Spot It or any other card games.

More from Charlie

During prayers last night, out of the blue, Charlie said, "If someone ever dared me to smash a crucifix...." Here he paused as we waited for him to say that he wouldn't do it.

Instead he finished with, "....I would give up all my chickens."

Huh?

Since Seth and I were not following the logic - and couldn't stop laughing to even ask him what that meant - Elena explained that she had made up a game called Chickens or Dare (as opposed to Truth or Dare). Each player gets 3 chickens and if they don't do a dare, they loose a chicken or something.

I also have to share this text I got from his friend's mom when Charlie and Frankie went over to play. I am just glad she found it funny!

As interesting as Charlie can be, he apparently doesn't realize it. Here is a sample of a recent assignment that Charlie brought home. Thank you, Captain Obvious:

Who doesn't love a good baby belly laugh?

Invisible enemies

I tried sharing this video on Charlie's birthday, but I don't' think it worked. This is a little clip of what was a good 20-minute long fight between Charlie and his 2 invisible friends: Invisible Brad and Monkey-stash. Invisible Brad is a character from a TV show. Monkey-stash appears to be a name he came up with all on his own.

Lesson learned

If you are going to do a trust fall with a 4-year-old - which I don't recommend in the first place - don't neglect to tell him to wait until you tell him you're ready before he falls. Sam was cleaning the library which somehow turned into doing trust falls with Frankie and Charlie while I was making supper in the kitchen.

Not aware of what I was interrupting, I asked Sam a question about his upcoming science fair. He then left the library to come talk to me. Suddenly we heard a huge crash followed by a cry. Not noticing that Sam had left, Frankie climbed up onto the desk and went through with the trust fall with no one there to catch him. Fortunately he was more scared than hurt and got over it pretty quickly.

We also had an interesting time playing Sorry! with Frankie for the first time. It start off a bit rough, of course, because it was taking awhile for him to get a 1 or a 2 to get started. He got a couple of Sorry! cards, though, so he was able to get out that way. Pretty soon he hid under a blanket and said he didn't want to play anymore. He seemed a little upset and we were encouraging him to keep playing. It finally came out that he thought he was getting in trouble every time he got a Sorry! card because we were telling him to "say sorry."

And here's a video of Frankie eating spaghetti through a straw. He did successfully get a few through, surprisingly.

Influenza strikes

Elena came down with influenza on the first day of Catholic Schools week (as did many other students at school). She missed the entire week of school, and was still quarantined the weekend afterwards.

Although we did our best to keep the germs at bay, Charlie came down with it on Saturday. He had friends over and they came down to tell me they couldn't find Charlie. We found him asleep in his bed with a fever. He also missed an entire week of school.

Not surprisingly, Olivia came down with it on Monday. I was happy at least that she and Charlie were nice enough to get sick at the same time. If we had continued to tag team, this thing could have drawn out for 7 weeks. We got Olivia on Tamiflu, which helped tremendously. She was pretty much back to normal by Friday other than a runny nose. Her fever also never went much above 102, while Elena's neared 104.

The two girls in their new matching outfits...one day before the flu hit.

After a full weekend of no one being sick, we thought we might finally be on the mend. But then Sam threw up at school this morning and came home with a stomach bug so we might just be starting all over.
Seth and I so far have managed to get by with sore throats. I felt tired and icky for one day, but fortunately/unfortunately it was a rare free day with nothing going on. Fortunate because we didn't have to cancel or change any plans - unfortunate because we were finally planning to catch up around the house.

Speaking of the house. Holy buckets have I realized how much I depend on Elena to help with Olivia! Having her out of commission for a week and not able to touch Olivia at all set me WAY behind on pretty much everything. It didn't help that any free moments were consumed with nursing the sick and washing anything that was potentially infected. Too bad I couldn't really wash the air which is how influenza travels...
Sam stepped up to help as much as he could, but between sports and cousins right next door he just isn't around as much.

We frequently comment on how patient Olivia is, which is very nice for a 5th child. During her week out, she continued to live up to her reputation. As long as I was holding her, she just laid in my arms and dealt with the sickness. She rarely complained the whole time. Although, I thought I was behind before she got sick! Add to that 4 full days of doing almost nothing other than holding and soothing a baby and yikes! It's a good thing we have developed a high tolerance for destruction and chaos around here.

Still as we watched friends of ours end up in the PICU with their little guy whose influenza turned into pneumonia (he's home today!), all of this really amounts to nothing worth complaining about.

Feeling better! (Photo courtesy of Sam)

Quotable moments

1. Frankie: (playing out some sort of battle with his toys) You're gonna get dead by death!!!

2. For those who haven't spent much time around Minneota, it is extremely flat. Seth's nickname at his job in the cities was "Flatlander." This became quite obvious when I realized how small of a dip in the road we need to make Frankie notice. Driving home from daycare, Frankie sometimes will get excited as we approach "the mountain." "Ooooh! This is going to be fun! Here it comes. WEEEEEE!!"
If you want to see the it, you can find it by clicking here. Just trust me that the "mountain" looks way bigger in person. And by "way bigger" I mean that you can see a barely discernible shift in elevation if you have a 4-year old in the back seat who points it out to you.

3. I overheard Frankie making rhymes the other day. Dig and big. Box and fox. Stuff like that. So I asked him if he could think of a word to rhyme with Boy. I was expecting Toy or Joy. I was not expecting La Croix, which is what he said.

4. This isn't really a quote, but Charlie brought home a card for me today from school. On the inside was a cute picture of me holding Olivia and a child (presumably Charlie) standing next to me. On the front, it said, "Congratulations MOM! You had Olivia. From: Charlie."
I guess they were making cards for expectant mothers today at school and since he couldn't think of anyone, he decided to make one for me.

5. A discussion arose with our kids clarifying the fact that not all people who are Islamic belong to ISIS. We ended up showing the older ones this little clip. Sam thought it was so funny that he showed Charlie. Half-way through, Charlie said (with some difficulty because he was laughing so hard), "I don't even get it, but it's so funny!!!"