It had to stay there until evening when Jim got home from work. I wasn't sure what it was but thought maybe a small rat. The girls were very interested in it. Wrenzy wrote a story about it. She dictated, I wrote, and then she copied it. Here's the story in my handwriting:
Here's her version, which she stapled and made into a book:
Then Tiny put herself to bed for her nap, and I found her like this, with her feet tucked into the hood of our bear blanket:
Meanwhile Ever joined Wrenzy in the parent bed and led her in obscene noises. We may not have as much potty talk/play as a family of boys, but we certainly have some.
The littles did some good dancing that night. The first video is equal parts hugging and dancing.
Wrenzy gave Ever a lift on her bike.
Ever started reading the A-Z Mysteries series to Wren. I think they actually made it through a couple of them.
Wrenzy also did pages and pages of writing practice by copying from books. These are unrelated pages:
We tuned in to general conference. This was Ever after the Saturday afternoon session:
And Ever and Jim after the Sunday afternoon session:
We were all way too sleep-deprived to do conference justice this time around. Good thing we can watch or read it after the fact. Sunday afternoon I was laughing with Jim about the napping during conference, and he said of Ever, "She's one of us now."
Wrenzy did her preschool workbook (previously ordered by Jim), and I printed out a math worksheet for her from dadsworksheets.com, which I was also using for supplemental math worksheets for Ever. Wrenzy did a great job with addition.
She and I also did reading lessons, and she worked in a pre-k workbook that Nathan and Noah gave her for her birthday. Somewhere along, she started resisting reading lessons (possibly that was not until May), so I told her she could watch a show every time she completed five reading lessons. After that, if she did one reading lesson, she wanted to do five because she was all about the show. Mostly Wren and Tiny just played. I didn't make them do school work. Sometimes, though, Wrenzy would say, "What should I do right now?" I'd say, "You could do a reading lesson, color, play with Tiny..." And she'd say, "No, but what am I supposed to be doing right now?" - as in, what does the schedule say I should be doing right now? We never stuck to the schedule Jim created for the littles, but I guess Wrenzy wanted to be like Ever sometimes. And I really would like her to finish these reading lessons before she starts kindergarten, so I have continued to encourage those.
Ever's school curriculum (created by us) included typing, Spanish (on Duolingo), cursive, writing (she wrote stories or letters), math (her fourth-grade math workbook, supplemented by worksheets I printed from the web, plus the online math programs they use at school, ST Math and iReady), English (I printed grammar and punctuation worksheets for her for weeks until, toward the end, we finally got a grammar/punctuation/etc. workbook and a reading comprehension workbook), reading (on AR and/or in her own books), sometimes science, once in a while art, and whatever assignments her teacher gave the class from their Go Math or Benchmark workbooks. Sometimes, especially on Fridays, I let them watch a show in Spanish. I also tried to work piano and chores in during the day. Obviously we didn't do everything every day, but there was so much good stuff to do! Ever and I were very confused when people asked if she were bored during quarantine.
Jim had the idea of giving Ever quizzes every Friday. Sometimes I spent an exorbitant amount of time on Thursday night making a ten-question quiz. I included one or two questions on Spanish, a few math questions, some English, and maybe a question on science or another topic she covered that week. Generally my quizzes were really hard, but she liked them. We put the girls to bed and came downstairs one Thursday night, and Ever called down, "Mom, don't forget to do my quiz!"
The girls earned a movie and decided to watch The Sound of Music.
Ever had told the littles all about it. They were totally into it.
I love showing them classic movies!
Art was on the school schedule, but I failed to do it most of the time. A few times they did a Mo Willems "lunch doodle." (The children's book author, Mo Willems, did about 15 or so episodes of these lunch doodles where he taught kids how to draw the characters from his books and other things.) The girls enjoyed them. I just felt bad about having art be done via the screen, especially when there had been lots of other screen time that day. Once I let them paint.
Wrenzy wrote a letter to the Easter Bunny.
Although she said in that video that she asked for "dresses," plural, she really asked for "a dress" in the letter.
Inspired by Wren, Ever wrote a letter. She had to add the candy thing after the fact, when she realized she hadn't asked for any.
Much of the time, the girls played so well together for hours and hours. One morning they were outside playing "family," making breakfast with flower petals and rubber chips.
Ever got really embarrassed and upset when I first started filming; apparently her friends make fun of her for playing "family" and say it's babyish, which makes me sad. I tried to explain why their imaginative play is the absolute best. Finally she conceded to do an explanation for the camera (and memorialize our family theme song, "Kringel Ladies" by Beyonce).
More Frozen singing. When Tiny stopped, Wrenzy whispered the rest of the words.
We tried to go for a family bike ride but didn't make it very far because Wrenzy spotted roly-poly bugs. She wanted to hold them but was really nervous. She finally got brave. Tiny exclaimed, "She has a real creature on her hand! Like Wild Kratts!" Touching critters is a really big deal in this family. Clearly we're a family of creature-phobic girls.
Ever and Tiny worked up the courage, too, although Ever got freaked out when it was crawling on her and dropped it. But she tried again and did better.
Easter was super late this year - April 12. The female portion of the Easter Bunny got a very reasonable amount of candy ahead of time. The male portion of the Easter Bunny went nuts right before Easter and got the girls a ton of clothes and other items, turning Easter into Christmas Part Deux.
We went on a walk that afternoon. Tiny pooped out down Summer Set Way, and the biggers kept her company while Jim and I walked around the last cul de sac at the end of the street.
Becca Theurer had said The Mysterious Benedict Society books were great. Jim had already bought them for Ever, so I told her she should read them. She read and enjoyed the first one. It is a big fat book, but she flew through it.
In an effort to purge the house, we went through all the books in the crib room (the middle bedroom where Tiny naps) and took out all the board books that we don't need anymore. We're keeping the classics, but there were plenty to give away. The girls - especially Tiny - like to take all the books off the shelves and leave them all over the beds and floors, so I was excited about getting rid of any extras. Unfortunately neither the library nor Goodwill was accepting donations during the quarantine, so these books and a bunch more have been sitting in the trunk of the van or on the floor of the office this whole time.
At some point, I showed the girls the movie Annie that I loved as a kid. That was a mistake. Miss Hannigan, who is constantly drunk, wearing lingerie, and hitting on any man in her vicinity, is totally inappropriate. I'm so confused about why they put that in a children's movie. I hope most of that stuff went over the girls' heads. They thoroughly enjoyed the movie, of course, and they are very cute when they sing "It's a Hard-Knock Life."
Tiny temporarily started to morph into "Shoo, fly, don't bother me" in this one:
Goose performed in her first virtual piano recital. The theme was "pajama jam." She did not wear pajamas, but she did wear a bandanna because she was in a serious bandanna phase; she wore them all the time.
I went to Costco for the first time in a really long time. There were markings every six feet for social distancing all the way around the far side of the store. This is a whole new world.
The girls did a fun Cosmic Yoga episode that they reenacted for Jim.
Tiny, wearing some fancy earrings, presented her "church copies" during home church.
We went for a another Sunday walk, and Bear found a fun purplish plant doohickey.
I started trying to run in the mornings three times a week before Jim left for work. It finally occurred to me that since I didn't have to get anyone ready to go anywhere, I could get a run in without having to get up very early. At first I was getting up around 6:15, but I soon pushed that back a little. Something happened on one of my first runs; my phone would not stop taking pictures. I was holding it in my hand, and I was sometimes aware that it was taking photos but couldn't figure out how to make it stop. I ended up with a million shots like this:
On my third run, Ever joined me on her bike. Is this really how I look?
We stayed on our side of the neighborhood and went up and down side streets. She led me all over the place. The initial goal was four miles. We hit that just a little bit up the street from the house, and when we did, she changed the goal to five miles. When we got to five, she said we had to go to five and a half. At that point, she dumped her bike at the house and insisted we walk until we got to six and a half miles. I was so impressed with her. She wanted to go with me every time. But then really she only went one more time, and she tired out a lot earlier on that run/ride. She was waking up early enough but couldn't tear herself away from other pressing endeavors: a book, a sewing project, or her schoolwork. I taught her how to sew on a button (after she nagged me for days or weeks), and the following morning I found her on the couch sewing buttons on the rag we'd been using for practice. She said she was too tired to go with me and opted to stay home and sew. Sometimes she woke up around 6:00 and started reading and wouldn't stop. And sometimes she just got up and started her schoolwork at 6:00, trying to get it done early so that she could move on to play time. I started making the list of what I wanted her to do each day the night before and leaving it on the table or counter so she could get cracking at 6:00 or 6:30 or whenever she got up.
Ever did a multi-phase Girl Scout project called My Family Tree or something like that. She talked about our family traditions for her favorite holiday.
She helped make her favorite dinner (pizza). I forgot to take pictures during the process, so she reenacted sauce-making for purposes of the Girl Scout app (where I was supposed to post all her stuff).
She filled out a family tree with a detail about each person (nickname, talent, something he likes, etc.).
She created a new snack and shared it with someone in the family.
She had to share an item that has been passed down in the family or that has special significance to the family. She chose this picture of Tutu that belonged to Grandpa Throssell.
She completed a COVID time capsule.
Meanwhile, Tiny and Wrenzy started taking all our books off the shelves and looking for pictures of fancy ladies. They discussed which ladies they wanted to be. This has been their favorite pastime for weeks, and they spend hours looking at books. One day Wrenzy brought a bunch of her dresses and laid them out for me.
Then she showed me this picture of Mary from Little House and asked which dress I thought was most like Mary's:
We had to debate the question for a while. She finally just picked the one she thought was most similar, regardless of my opinion.
Ever invented the cutest happy dance.
Wrenzy brought Arthur Miller's All My Sons to me and asked me to read it to her. I brushed her off, told her it was too grown-up for her. So she propped it open and started copying it.
"When Arthur Miller began writing All My Sons..."
She finished a couple pages and then took a break, saying she'd finish it later. Surprisingly, she never got back to it.
Sometimes Bear combines her food in weird ways. She put her {blue) scrambled eggs on her peanut butter toast.
Ever practiced piano while Wren accompanied on the kazoo and Tiny provided the vocal stylings.
More of Bear's writing:
"What is this? Some kinda trick? We want [part I can't make out]! There is a crowd waiting! Waiting for you! [Unclear] there she is!" I have no idea what book she got that from.
Wrenzy's shawl routine again. Could she be any cuter?
We got some hot weather in April, and swimming season began. We love Scott and Rebecca and are so grateful for the open invitation to use their pool!
Tiny and Wrenzy wanted to join me for my morning exercise. Since they can't keep up on bikes, I took all the girls for an early walk on an off day (when I wasn't scheduled to run). They took breakfast to go.
Jim found on his phone about 100 pictures of the girls' dolls lined up like this:
He worked like mad on the new room (garage loft). The girls peeked through a hole at the top of the stairs inside to watch him working outside in the new little alcove he was building.
The littles did some building. Wrenzy's structure was quite impressive (and by this point, she had jumped on the bandanna bandwagon).
Tiny tried.
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