At age 11, Lauren has finally decided that she wants to get her ears pierced. Up until now, she hasn’t wanted to and just a few weeks ago started talking about it. I waited a few weeks just to make sure that she was serious and she was, so we headed to the mall and did the deed. She was brave and it was quick. And I think she already owns more earrings than I do!
Lauren has continued to play the clarinet with the school band. She’s waffled a little on whether she still likes it, but we’ll have her do it as long as she wants to. The Middle School has a strong music program, with a full concert band and orchestra for each of the four grades, in addition to two jazz bands.
In mid-January the 5th grade concert band had their winter concert, after 2 cancelled days of school because of snow. They were great! I’m continually impressed with what one music teacher can do with so many beginner musicians.
The week before Thanksgiving we welcomed a new family member. Meet Buddy! I’ve been considering getting another dog for a while. Lauren was definitely on board, Dave and Sophie, not so much. Petunia definitely needs a companion that isn’t me. When I saw Buddy in the rescue I feel in love. He’s about 10 months old, a rescue from Georgia. We don’t know his story, but he is absolutely the sweetest dog ever and super well behaved. Petunia wasn’t thrilled at first, but has warmed up and now they’re pretty good buds.
We celebrated Dave’s 43rd birthday a few times throughout the week – as one should! First, the weekend before with dinner at the Guard House, on his actually birthday with a family dinner at home, and again the next weekend at the ULYC fall regatta with the Townsends, Joe, and ULYC friends.
Happy Birthday, Dave!
On January 12th Sophie got braces. In preparation, back in December she had 4 teeth pulled, 2 on the top and 2 on the bottom, to make room to push the front teeth back. The appointment was quicker than we expected – it only took about 30 minutes. She was excited for about 10 minutes afterward and since then has hated every minute of having them. Her mouth hurts and she keeps cutting the inside of her cheeks. On the upside, we’ve started including smoothies as a food group at home and both kids are happy about that. Only 18 months or so to go!
Over Memorial Day weekend my family came up from Virginia and we hosted a party – a PARTY! – to celebrate Doug’s 60th birthday and Julia’s graduation from Bryn Mawr college with a Masters in Social Work. We were maskless and it was wonderful!
Quinn was in town from Arizona for Doug’s birthday and she brought her boyfriend, Gabe, whom the family was meeting for the first time. We had full on “Rainer” fun, and he was a good sport!
Unfortunately the weather was terrible, so despite the BBQ theme, we were all inside.
This weekend we decided it was time to adopt a new dog. Over the last few weeks we’ve been checking out adoptable dogs through a local rescue, Savedme.org, and knowing that we have months of time at home still ahead of us, we finally decided it was time. We made appointments to meet three dogs on Saturday, and the second one we met ended up being our dog.
She’s a 2-year-old mixed breed who looks a lot like Benson. Since she’s a Philly rescue she’s definitely a little Pit, maybe a little American Bulldog, maybe Boxer. Who knows? We like to refer to them as the “Philly Special.”
She’s a sweet girl who has a lot of energy. We don’t think she’s had a lot of time with grass because when she went into our backyard she completely lost it and ran around like a mad dog for about 15 minutes. She’s already figured out how to escape the one small spot in our fence, so we’re going to have to get that taken care of.
We’ve got some training work ahead of us, but she’s already a part of the family and we all love her!
I don’t even know what title to give this blog post because it encompasses so much. But I think “weird times” is at least accurate.
On March 12th we were informed that schools would be closed for two weeks because of the Coronavirus, which they’re now calling COVID-19. Rebecca and I decided that we should also close our officer for two weeks because it seemed to be spreading pretty quickly. At that point maybe half of the professional service businesses in Philadelphia decided to have their staff work remotely, if possible. Within a week we were looking at more closures, and recommendations of social distancing, and two weeks after that we were living in statewide shutdown, schools were closed indefinitely, restaurants were closed, and we were all living under a stay-at-home order.
I’m writing this blog post about a month into it and here’s what our new normal looks like.
SCHOOL
Dave and I are homeschooling the girls for the remainder of the year. They both have time during the day where they Zoom with their classes, as well as Zoom into their “specials,” like French, art, gym, music, etc. We’ve set up a schedule for the girls to keep things consistent and predictable. Right now we’re doing math in the morning and reading/language arts in the afternoon. This is all between juggling our work schedules. Challenging doesn’t even begin to describe it.
SOCIALIZING
Since we can’t see anyone in person anymore, we’ve been setting up Zoom get togethers with friends and family. Although not quite the same as seeing people in person, they’re actually a lot of fun and still fulfills that need to interact with people! Not seeing friends has been pretty tough on the kids. Sophie has been FaceTiming with a few friends who have devices, and Lauren has a friend in the neighborhood that she visits with from across the street. Last week one of Sophie’s classmates had a birthday and the family arranged a birthday “parade” where people decorate their car and slowly drive by the house to wish Happy Birthday to the birthday person. We’re all just trying to make it work.
ACTIVITIES
Sophie’s choir and Lauren’s ballet have both moved to virtual classes. Definitely not the same, but it works. Both of their spring recitals have been cancelled already (although I haven’t told them yet, because they’ll both be really disappointed). They’ve stopped taking piano lessons because their teacher said it’s a little hard teaching kids so young virtually. I’ve kept them up with it though, having them practice each day and working with them on new songs. It’s been a very long time since I’ve really sat down to play the piano, so I’m not going to say it’s been seamless. I have kept up with my violin lessons, still taking them every other week via FaceTime with my teacher. It actually works pretty well. The only real snafu is that we can’t play together because there is a slight time delay.
We leave the house every day to walk or to ride bikes, but haven’t been to a store in over three weeks. Fortunately there are a lot of delivery options for us. Restaurants are all closed for dining in, but a lot of them are doing take out and delivery. Grocery story delivery is pretty hard to get now because of demand, but we’ve found some commercial food distributors who are now doing home delivery. We have to order in the bulk size that restaurants get, but at least we have no shortage of food. We’ve been doing a lot of cooking and baking, which is actually one of the upsides of this whole situation. Since Dave is home now he cooks dinner almost every night, which has been amazing. That’s another upside, having Dave home. He hasn’t not traveled for this extended amount of time ever. It’s actually the longest consecutive amount of time we’ve spent together since college!
Right now we’re not sure when things will start to go back to normal. The PA Governor just extended our stay at home order until May 8, but I’m pretty sure it’ll go beyond that. Right now we’re just taking it one day at a time!
On April 1 we celebrated Benson’s 13th birthday! While he’s slowed down a bit in the last few months, he’s still got some spunk in him. He got a bone that made him do his new bone dance and a cake shaped cookie that he devoured.
He spent most of the weekend doing what he does best…
The Friday before the holiday vacation Dave and I went to Bala House Montessori to celebrate Lauren’s birthday with a traditional Montessori birthday walk. Students hold a globe and walk around a candle that represents the sun the number of times that they are years old.
She also made a poster of her first five years of life that she shared with the class, and then she read everyone a story before Dave and I read everyone a story.
In our house, on December 26th all of the Christmas decorations come down and we move right into birthday mode. This year was no exception. By the afternoon of the 26th all decorations were taken down and put away (in the newly organized basement, which was one of the many staycation projects we did over the break).
Unfortunately it rained all day on her birthday so we made the most of it and went to Jump, an indoor trampoline park. Lauren, Sophie, Lina and I all jumped. It was really fun. That night we did a family birthday dinner with the Sharps.
The next day was her friends birthday party at Kids at Play, an indoor playground. About eight of her classmates came as well as Ava and Emma Devine and Kishore. We had the place to ourselves and the kids had a blast.
After Kids at Play her friend Teagan and Norah came back to the house. Sophie’s present to Lauren was giving her and her friends a makeover. I have to say, she did a very tasteful job.
With three separate birthday celebrations she is now officially a six year old!