Some fun highlights during the past month of COVID-19

It's been a little over a month since my last blog post. Part of that is that I have less free time with the kids at home 24/7 and still working, but I also had problems accessing the blog to make a new entry, so I apologize for the delay.

As many of us feel, we're taking things one day at a time and most days feel the same as the one before. It doesn't feel like we've been great about providing positive experiences for the kids, but gathering these photos reminded me of some of the fun things we've been doing as a family.

Some businesses started opening up just before school ended, so after the kids had finished their virtual school work one day, we took a weekday trip to our local miniature golf establishment and had a great time. We brought masks, but there were very few people there so they weren't necessary. It was great to get back to one of the kids' favorite activities.

 

The school year ended a few days early, probably because all end-of-year testing was cancelled. We were asked to drive through the school parking lot to pick up items from the kids' desks, which we did for Ronan. But for Brielle, the school had something special prepared because they wanted to celebrate the 5th-graders' graduation. A school bus drove the teachers to the kids' homes to drop off their materials, and Brielle got to say "hi" to her teacher outside our front door.

  

Mrs. Rawitt also dropped off a nice graduation sign, which we displayed in the front yard.

  

To our surprise, gifts for Brielle from neighbors started appearing at the front door! We have a lot of wonderful grandparent-age neighbors who probably missed their grandchildrens' graduation celebrations and decided they wanted to do something nice for our kids. 

Mother's Day also happened during this time, and I was SUPER excited to receive this gorgeous hibiscus tree from the kids. You can't see in the photo, but it's a ball of large red blooming flowers atop a braided stalk. We planted it in the front yard so everyone could see it. A couple of weeks later the deer ate all the leaves and flowers, but it's recovering.

  

Grammy also sent me a cute kitty mask for Mother's Day. Who knew that some day we'd all be putting "face masks" on our hint lists?!

And we actually accomplished something that we weren't planning to do until the end of summer...Ronan has moved into his own room! I gave him the option of repainting the walls to make it "his own", and he chose beautiful teal and blue colors (the staff at Lowe's were very impressed that a 7-year-old boy made such nice choices). The kids helped with painting the former "play room". We bought a new bed with useful drawers, shelves, and a pull-out work table underneath and Kraig worked hard to put it all together. The kids were thrilled with the final result. More amazingly, there have been NO complaints from the kids about sleeping apart.

 

During the last month we also played outside (especially in the pool) and made easy trips to our neighborhood pier.

 

While walking back home from our last pier visit, Ronan noticed a tiny baby tortoise on the sidewalk. It was so small that it couldn't crawl over the wall of grass on either side of the sidewalk. It walked right up to me in an effort to be in my shade on that sunny day.

The kids named the turtle "Michael", after Ronan's middle name, since he found him (or her). The sidewalk was right across the street from a nature preserve, so we assumed he belonged there. Kraig picked him up and placed in him the forested preserve area. On a later walk we saw several adult tortoises in that area, so we're pretty sure we returned him to his home.

  

Both before and after I received a new camera for my birthday, Brielle and I took short walks to natural areas in our neighborhood to take photos. We visited the tadpoles (now tiny frogs). 

May 29th was my 50th birthday. I didn't have any huge plans (although the original plan was to be celebrating my birthday on our cancelled Bahamas cruise...). Still, we had a nice day opening gifts and playing with them. We got Thai take-out from one of my favorite local restaurants and enjoyed eating outside.

  

Last week I got a phone call from Jessica saying she was on the island and wondering if we could get together. Yes! She drove over with Kai and we all met her in the front yard to talk at a distance while he continued his car nap. When he woke up, the kids and I met them at our neighborhood park and interacted at a distance outside. The kids noticed that Kai was fascinated with his tennis ball, so they ran home to grab their own toddler balls (which we apparently still have) and brought them to the park so they could all play with balls. They couldn't touch the same balls, but we made it work. Kai would call out "ball!" and try to throw his ball to the kids. They'd gently kick it back to him with their shoes, and he'd watch in fascination as they bounced and threw their own balls in the air. The kids (especially Brielle) love seeing Kai and think he's amazingly cute and fun (which he is). There was some frustration that Jessica had to pick him up when he tried to walk towards the kids. "Why can't coronavirus be over?!" Brielle would exclaim. It was a sweet and heartbreaking experience at the same time. But we could also tell it was exciting for Kai to actually see and interact with other kids, so that was really special.

 


































This next entry may be unexpected. When school ended in May, Ronan's teacher forwarded everyone a birthday party invitation from one of Ronan's friends. What? A birthday party...now? It was going to be on June 13th, and I was going to wait until close to the last minute to RSVP. A few days before the party, the mom texted me, stressed that no one had responded to the invitation and worried that no one would come to the party. I explained that in our case doing it would be making the decision to end social distancing after doing it for over 3 months. However, we decided that we would go. We knew we couldn't expect the kids to socially distance, but at least it was at the beach with lower risk. Plus there had only been one new reported case on the island in the past two months, and these were all local families.

  

We brought our own food and own chairs, so the grownups were able to sit at a distance, but of course the kids were so excited to be together again that they played as usual. They had a great time. This was 3 1/2 days ago and so far so good...hopefully we got away with this. I think we're open at this point to allowing the kids to do outdoor-only playdates, although nothing is planned yet.

 

Finally, today we had another special visit with friends. We went to Jessica and Jimmy's backyard to give Kai his 1st birthday gifts (his birthday is on the 19th). We wrapped the gifts several days ago and put them in a bag that we didn't touch then only handled with gloves. That made them comfortable enough to allow Kai to open the gifts while we were there. We sat in a socially-distanced space or stood far from each other as we explored different areas of their backyard.

  

 Kai apparently wasn't used to opening wrapped gifts, so Jimmy had to help him. The kids gave him their beloved "Potty" book that I held onto for sentimental reasons long after they needed it.

We also gave him a bubble blower. I figured all babies like bubbles, however I don't think he's experienced them before. He was definitely interested in them, walking over to the bubble formula container and pointing in the air (like he was saying, "Make this work to put those things in the air"). When the bubbles blew, we tended to shut his eyes out of worry they'd hit his face, but I managed to catch this photo of him with his tongue sticking out for some reason. Super cute.

The coronavirus numbers are going up drastically here, but in Florida it seems to be tied to the increased testing capability, given the low percentage testing positive. Still, we'll continue to keep our eyes on things. But moving forward we'd like to continue making efforts to do safer, socially distanced outdoor visits with friends and family. We've been planning a Gainesville trip to see Dad and Sujata and hopefully will figure that out this week. But the past couple of weeks the tropical storm in the gulf has created thunder storms that have gotten in the way (given that we'd be planning to stand outside to say "hi"). The storms have prevented some outdoor adventures and my ability to try out my new camera outside, but the skies are clearing up now, so hopefully more photos will be coming soon.