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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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!