Safer at Home Order Journal #10

Dear Kids,

It’s been about a month. A month full of distance learning and wildfires.

Yes, the pandemic is still going on. We’re 6 months in, and Mommy is finally starting to lose it. I hope you’re both young enough that, when you read this when you’re older, you have no clue what I’m talking about. The days have been hard, kids. They’re long. I’m ready for you to go to bed by noon. I’m barely making it to bedtime without collapsing most days.

But distance learning isn’t too bad. Brother’s teachers seem to have gotten into a rhythm. It’s interesting that he’s being taught by all 3 of the First Grade teachers, but, apparently, that’s just how they work at his school. They’re all very nice, very firm. Brother has music and library classes, which are fun, but he absolutely hates art. Maybe at this point one or both of you will have learned why it’s so important for a First Grader to draw an amazing person? And maybe you’ve told me? Because it really hurts to watch Brother struggle because he hates drawing so much. But his writing is improving, and he’s doing so well in reading. It’s nice that the kids have a good rotation of teachers so it’s not the same face for 3 or so hours a day. I actually really like how First Grade operates at his school. It took some time for us to settle into the routine, about 5 weeks, but it’s working not like a well-oiled machine, but well enough.

There have been wildfires here, too. All over the West Coast. California actually set a record for the amount of acreage already burned this year alone. Northern California has had it the worst here. Some of the pictures Daddy showed us made it look like San Francisco was burning. Where we are, the big one is the Bobcat Fire. It’s about 10 miles north of your grandparents, but they are in absolutely no danger. Actually, it’s burning north through the mountains, and getting really, really close to Mount Wilson. Then there’s the El Dorado Fire further East, which was started because of a gender reveal gone horribly wrong. For about 2 weeks we woke up to a red sun and brown skies. But the winds must have turned because it’s a lot bluer now. Still, the air quality is awful.

So, it looks like our coronavirus numbers aren’t too bad. We’re under 1500 a day now, so it’s possible our county will move to a less restrictive tier in the coming weeks. Right now, we’re in the most restrictive tier and I think a lot of people are fed up with it, even you two. We see commercials for Disneyland, even though there’s no reopening date yet, and you both get so excited. Sister says it’s not open and we have to wait for the doors to open. But we’re still coping as well as we can. Sister has finally figured out how to play Candy Land and Brother won his first game of Monopoly. The cat tolerates the both of you a little more now, and Brother and Daddy are trying to learn how to play the piano. We’re all missing your grandparents since we used to visit them almost every weekend for the past 5 years, but we see them on Zoom every other week and Sister is really great at demanding to talk to Nana.

In other news, we all got our flu shots over the weekend. The medical center had quite the set up for us to walk through! Strangely, though, I didn’t see any hand sanitizer. Hmmm…. But I’m so proud of both of you! There was some crying, but Daddy held Sister tightly and Brother only tried to escape once.

And life moves on. We’re on week 6 of distance learning. Schools are aiming to reopen in November, though I don’t think that’s terribly likely, at least not for Brother’s class based on the guidelines the state has outlined for schools (there are too many students per teacher), but, if they are, I’m fully prepared to pull him out and homeschool. I’m lucky to have the luxury of being able to protect us all as much as possible and will take advantage. So far, we’ve been very lucky.

Love, Mom