Dustin came to pick me up Saturday morning while Coco tried to get a little more sleep. She had e-mailed him in the middle of the night while she was up with Eleanor to tell him to come get me. He said she was lucky he checked his e-mail in the morning and was confused about why she didn't text. She said it made perfect sense in the middle of the night.
Dustin and Coco tried to make me nap when I arrived, but I refused. I almost never can fall asleep when I try to nap - conditions have to be just right - and I didn't feel that bad. I did rest a bit on the couch with little Eleanor, who since birth insisted on being held all the time.
Coco and I spent hours planning what food we were going to make while I was there. We had to plan meals to eat, meals to freeze, and treats, of course. So Saturday was just hanging out and planning.
Sunday morning I had the pleasure of making Anson his "magic toast." I believe Dustin invented it, and now Anson always has to have his toast this way: cut into four pieces, each smeared with a specific topping (two different types of jam, peanut butter, and Nutella). Oh, the things we do for our cute kids!
That evening we went for a walk at Scott's Run. It was an unusually fair day, so everyone else had the same idea. But we managed to find a parking spot off the road and enjoyed being outdoors.
Monday morning, Anson had his swim class. I got to hold a peacefully sleeping babe.
At home, I made Eleanor do a little tummy time. She did OK for a couple minutes but, like all kids I know, wasn't a huge fan overall.
She's such a good snuggler.
Coco and Dustin had signed up for a Tough Mudder at the end of May, and Coco wanted me to help her start training. She found a program that starts with intervals in short distances (like walk for three minutes, run for one), so we used that and got Coco her first postpartum exercise. We went three days that week and persevered through some incontinence-caused setbacks. Childbirth is the worst.
While baking, we discovered eggs with double yolks - something neither Coco nor I had ever seen before. That carton of eggs had a few double-yolked eggs, which seemed miraculous. Baking endeavors included delicious chocolate mint cookies and some marshmallow brownies. We got to hang out with Lucy a couple times during the week and managed to save a few treats for her.
Coco has had a hard time getting anything done since little E arrived. It is not easy to cook while holding a baby, and this cute girl usually got angry if left for more than a few minutes.
When held, however, she was dreamy.
While I was there, Bags wanted to organize the kitchen and some stuff they'd thrown in one of the bedrooms, and she wanted to freeze a bunch of burritos. We succeeded at two of those three things; the kitchen did not get tackled, which made me feel like a failure. We got burritos and a couple other little meals in her freezer. I would have felt bad about not leaving them more food, but the freezer was pretty packed.
We got together with Becca Theurer one night, and that was fun. Becca is Bags's best friend there, and I knew her brother at BYU and her (to a lesser degree) in L.A. We chatted and ate treats and watched a movie.
Dustin was going to be gone the whole week I was there but ended up only traveling on Tuesday and Wednesday (to San Diego, no less). The rest of his trip was canceled on account of the novel coronavirus named COVID-19 that was taking over the world. It started in Wuhan, China in late December. The first confirmed case in the U.S. was in January in Washington state - a guy who had traveled to Wuhan. At the end of January, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency, and Trump restricted travel from China. Through February, we watched more and more places confirm cases, and we watched reports of local transmissions in the U.S. Some people claimed it was like the flu; others said it was incredibly serious and could kill millions of people. Things in the U.S. really started intensifying the week I was in Virginia. Coco and I were looking at the news on our phones constantly. People were panic buying food, water, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, wipes, etc. The guidance at that point was that masks don't help and we shouldn't wear them (although medical professionals should), but people started wearing them anyway. Coco and I went to Costco once that week, and workers were sanitizing shopping carts and checkout belts. Some people were in masks. Almost everyone was buying bottled water (why, I do not know). The lines were so long that as soon as we entered the store, I got in line with Eleanor in the stroller, and Coco and Anson took the cart to do the shopping. Then they met me at the front of the line.
At first, as all the insanity started happening that week, it seemed totally surreal, and I didn't really have feelings about it. As the week went on, it got kind of freaky. President Nelson announced that church and activities were suspended indefinitely. Lucy went home for spring break on Friday, and she packed up her dorm room at GW because she'd heard school might not reconvene after spring break. That turned out to be a smart move. Anna and Courtney were on the phone trying to coordinate things for Lucy, and Anna mentioned that I should maybe head home early so I didn't get stuck there. I thought there was no way they'd shut down domestic travel and told Courtney the only reason I'd need to rush home is if they shut down schools. California announced on Friday that schools would be shut down as of Monday. My timing could not have been better, as my flight home was on Saturday.
Friday night we got takeout pupusas. Coco and I went to Coldstone, where I ordered the wrong thing and was a little sad. Back at home, we debated what movie to watch. Contagion - a 2011 movie that basically predicted this whole pandemic-originating-in-China thing - was the most-watched movie at that point, but Dustin thought it seemed a little depressing. We settled on The Meg, an entertaining and rather terrible movie about a gigantic shark. No regrets. Coco and I stayed up really late that night chatting and waiting for Eleanor to wake up so Coco could feed her one more time before bed.
Saturday morning, at Dustin's urging, Coco and I decided to go to the movie theater to watch Emma. It was highly recommended by Lucy, who had already gone to see it twice. We weren't sure if we were supposed to go, as "social distancing" guidance was coming out, advising us to stay six feet away from one another. We forged ahead anyway. The mall was rather ghost-towny, and there was no one working by the ticket/concession area to help us buy tickets. We finally found a worker who could tell us that my ancient gift card was no good and we had to get tickets from one of the machines. There were only a couple other people in the theater (social distancing achieved!), and we absolutely loved the movie. I was very glad we went. Theaters closed the next week, so that was an excellent last hurrah.
Back at home, we had lunch and said our goodbyes. Anson is not affectionate, at least with me, but he graciously agreed to a goodbye hug.
I was so very glad I got that trip in, and just in the nick of time!
Back at home, Jim worked three half-days that week; he had two more half-days than normal because he was supposed to work the Saturday I traveled home (but that shift ended up getting picked up by someone else). JoAnn took the girls a couple of extra mornings, Jim took one vacation day, and it was covered. He took the littles to their dentist appointment and sent me the cutest pics of them. They are so cute and such good patients.
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