March madness. A term once reserved for College basketball, now applied to pretty much everybody. As much as we wish it were otherwise, this month has been an unprecedented whirlwind of chaos. Church, lifegroup, work, kids activities, everything has changed with the COVID19 pandemic and associated shutdowns. We’ve been keeping our shopping runs to once a week max – when the milk runs out! Aside from that we have been laying low.
With schools and activities closing down, a lot of the load has unfortunately fallen on Julieta. She went from just having Lydia 3 days a week (and only all 3 kids on Fridays) to a house full of kids with cabin fever. She’s been doing a great job; we’ve begun having a little bit of home school combined with long walks and gymnastics/yoga in the house, and she’s serving as headmistress.
Cordelia’s been flourishing even under house arrest. She celebrated her 6th birthday this March, and enjoyed a pizza party in the front yard with our neighbors, Grandma, Grandpa and Aunt Kelly, and even a friend from school! She’s been sprinting towards independence, and we have been amazed at her helpfulness and maturity this month (taking care of Lydia, picking up the back yard toys without being told, etc.). She has been working on her piano playing as well; she’s getting better at playing through her intro book and has been working on figuring out quarter/half/whole notes. She’s also been working on reading her first chapter books.
Anthony has also been doing pretty well at home. He was at school for just two weeks before everything shut down, but he seemed to enjoy it while it lasted. It helps that he’s pretty good at playing quietly by himself. He’s been able to settle down and do a lot of that. He has also been working on learning to read. He’s about a fifth of the way through the same teaching book we used to teach Cordelia how to read and he’s making great progress. He’s very enthusiastic about it. We bought a small trampoline for the kids to use; he’s spent almost an hour a day jumping on it, so when gymnastics starts back up he’s going to be ready.
Lydia continues to grow and develop. She’s getting more verbal every day. She’s speaking in 4-5 word sentences now and definitely expressing a willful personality. While she doesn’t have the same type of meltdown tantrums that Cordelia did at that age, she is certainly insistent on what she wants. She enjoys “walking” Strider (grabbing his collar and dragging him around the room with her) and stealing her siblings’ toys whenever she can. She recently began sitting at the dinner table with the rest of us (graduating from a high chair with a tray) and she’s been very pleased with herself. Just this evening, she also figured out how to open the door between her “side” of the house and the office with her siblings, so that promises to be interesting.
This has been a very very busy month for Alicia. In addition to her normal workload (full time engineer, wife, mother, etc.) she has been in charge of transitioning the entire AWANA Sparks organization to an online-only entity. She’s been organizing leaders to video-chat with all 150 of her kids, and fielding emails and questions for hours every day. It’s been an immense drain on her; basically every evening is at least partially devoted to that. She’s also been working from home; another thing we bought before we settled in was a folding table that serves as a desk in our bedroom-cum-office. Tim was able to get a powerline adapter set up to get a direct connection for her work computer so she has been able to stay productive.
Tim has also been working from home for the second half of the month. He’s been supporting a demo that was originally scheduled for early April, but (obviously) has been pushed back until sometime in July. He has been trying to stay active by interspersing his work day with mini-workouts. He continues to maintain the house and yard; the birds have eaten the first round of veggies he planted so we’ll be doing round 2 this weekend and hoping for a better result. The grape vines are surviving. In theory his transfer to the new division is still on for April 18th, so we shall see what happens there.
One blessing of the shutdown is that we have had more evenings at home with the kids (and fewer out and about at swim class / gymnastics / lifegroup) so our family time has been good. We are all healthy and settled in for the long haul. Our prayer is for safety for the medical community and for a quick resolution to this crisis. We are grateful to be sustained by jobs and have childcare that enables us to both continue working full time.
