March and the COVID (including Wren's Fifth Birthday)

On March 2, before I went to Coco's, Ever had dress-like-a-book-character day at school. For lack of a better last-second idea, we did Pippi again. She was very annoyed that everyone thought she was Cindy Lou Who. I'm pretty sure none of her classmates have ever read or seen Pippi. I took the littles to school to read with Ever outside that morning.

Tiny is the funniest, most expressive little creature. She makes dance-type hand motions when she talks, and it's amazing. She told me "I want to do ballet" with such dramatic movements that I had to ask her to do it again for the camera.

The fam drove me to the airport to catch my flight to Coco's, and I rode in the middle row by Tiny. I think I had promised to read to the girls as we drove. When I looked over and saw Tiny, going on four years old, still rear-facing, with her legs all the way up the seat in front of her, I had to laugh. 

It wasn't too long after my trip that Jim removed all the seats from the car to pick up lumber and when we reinstalled everything, we decided to put Tiny's car seat back in forward-facing. I consulted the manual, and it seemed that she'd be too tall for rear-facing soon. I love that our girls are perfectly fine rear-facing forever, and we didn't flip any of them until they were nearly four. I think Wren was the earliest at around three-and-a-half, and we only flipped her because we had to move her car seat to the back row and it wouldn't fit rear-facing.

When I got back from Coco's, California schools were shut down, and we were supposed to be social distancing to slow the spread of COVID and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. Later that week, Governor Newsom issued the full stay-at-home order, under which we were supposed to go out only for essential jobs, grocery shopping, etc. So that Monday, March 16, the homeschooling began. Jim made schedules for all three girls. For a brief moment, Tiny was interested in working on her letters.

In my absence, Rebecca and Anna had decided that our three families could "go steady" - we'd only hang out with one another, so we wouldn't really be at risk of spreading the virus. This was an imperfect plan, especially since George and Jim were still going to work at the time. (George's work went remote when the stay-at-home order was issued; Jim, of course, has continued to work.) Anyway, the kids had played together a lot the week I was gone while Jim worked on our master bathroom. Ever spent a lot of time at Leela's. Anna told me that she asked Jim once if he would watch Leela and Rafi while she ran an errand. He replied, "Yeah, they can play here, but I'm not going to watch them." Anna and Rebecca were laughing about his Lord of the Flies parenting approach. They said they'd see the girls running around outside and no sign of Jim. But all the little people survived, and Jim got lots of good work done on the master bathroom. He got the counter in, and he tiled around the entrance to the shower.

Back to Monday the 16th. In the late morning, during "recess," I witnessed the outside play with Leela, Rafi, Nathan, and Noah that had been going on the week I was gone. The kids had so much fun driving the cars. They were going through a big car phase. The Barbie car got a lot of play for a couple of weeks.

That afternoon, turf installation began in the backyard.

That night, after Jim got home from work, I went to Target for groceries. He had bought a few staples while I was gone, but I had a list of stuff I wanted to get. Alas, the panic-buying had left Target's shelves bare. No milk. No eggs. No sour cream. No bread. No tortillas. No pasta. Basically no food. I couldn't get anything on my list. It was really disconcerting to see this: 

A couple of days later, I made it to Trader Joe's and was able to find some things. They had milk and eggs and stuff.  I went to Sprouts for produce at one point. They had signs up warning that they might be out of some things, and they were, but for the most part I could get what I wanted. But as I looked around at the other shoppers and saw people in masks, I got choked up. It felt so surreal and bizarre and futuristic/apocalyptic.

For a while, Jim was frequently stopping at the store on the way home from work and grabbing a couple of items. He was helping me, but also he just really wanted to see if they had flour, milk, toilet paper, etc. I get the 25-lb bags of flour from Costco and somehow managed to be running low right when COVID happened. So Jim made it his mission to find flour. He checked every chance he could. He also always checked for toilet paper because it was impossible to find. Crazy, crazy times.

Back to the chronological recap. On Tuesday morning, the 17th, we caught a lovely rainbow beyond our brand-new deck:

Ever came into our bedroom when she woke up and jumped immediately onto Jim's laptop for a half hour of Duolingo (Spanish). After that (and breakfast in there somewhere), she did some multiplication and long division in her fourth-grade math workbook. Then, after being hard at work for at least an hour, she asked, "Mom, can we start school yet?" while looking like this:

A little while later, she was reading and taking tests on the AR (reading program) website. I walked into the room and said, "Goose, you making prog?" ("Prog" = progress.) She said, "I'm making two kinds of prog." I laughed when I saw her. Effective multi-tasking:

Piano has been on Ever's to-do list every day. While she was practicing, Wren went and stood next to her and played with her hair.

Then she sat and put her arm around her.

We got out on bikes (Wren and Ever) and scooter (Tiny) often. Tiny always wanted to ride her scooter but never actually lasted very long on it. She'd end up walking, and we'd either ditch the scooter, or I'd have to carry it. She also lagged even worse doing things like this:

I loved the hand-holding.

Tiny walking her scooter:

Back in November, our roof was removed.

We were roofless for a while, which was concerning given the rain. We had the house re-stuccoed. We got the new deck. Finally, in March, we got our outdoor furniture.

And we got our new garage doors.

The aesthetics are a hundred thousand times better. Also we've been living without functioning garage doors for so many years. A guy up the street (Jared) said he always felt bad for me. He'd see me, pregnant, getting out of the car and pushing up the garage door, and he'd think, "Get her a garage door!" I hated getting in and out of the car to open and close the garage. I also hated that we couldn't open the trunk of the van while it was parked in the garage without hitting it on the open garage door and chipping the paint (because the garage door wouldn't go all the way up when it was on the manual setting). Hooray for our new house! 

Wren's friend Briggs from preschool wrote her a letter. He was missing her in quarantine. She wrote him back, all in her own hand.   

Wren turned five on the 21st. Fortunately I haven't done much with birthdays in the past, so expectations were low. This mellow quarantine birthday was just dandy. We painted nails.  

Wren requested a whopper cake (recipe from a library book) with pink frosting. It's hard to tell in the picture, but the frosting was a nice, light pink. She applied sprinkles to her liking.

The girls played outside a bit and found a new way to use the little car.

Since we'd been seeing them anyway, we invited the Subrebosts and Cikaneks to join us for pizza and cake in he backyard. Anna begged out because George worried that the kids would get on the tramp and play equipment and play too close together if we were in the backyard, and he also worried that someone would hear us and call the cops on us for not social distancing. So Rebecca suggested we do it out front. This was all in a text exchange. Anna gave that a thumbs-up sign. It somehow still wasn't clear to me that Subrebosts were coming, so I did not order nearly enough pizza. Also the kids were all up on one another just as much on the street as they would have been in the backyard. Rebecca attempted a group picture. It didn't go well, and it also put the kids right next to one another.

We sang, and Wren blew out candles. 

The whopper cake wasn't really great, and my attempt at a new frosting also wasn't all that I wanted it to be. Better luck next birthday.

Anna said she was going to walk back to the house with her kids on the trail. Ever and Tiny went with them. I thought my girls would just walk to the trail at the end of our street and say goodbye, but they never came back. George, Wren and I walked up the street to Subrebosts' house to try to meet Anna and the kids. We hung out by the tennis courts and waited and waited for them to come out, but they never did. I didn't know what was happening. We had a movie to watch, and it was getting late. Finally George, Wren, and I went down to the trail from the tennis courts. I told Wren it was cold and she needed more clothes, but she said it was a party so she would only wear her party dress.

We found Anna and the kids at the rope swing that the Rondos had installed below their house.

Finally I got my people home, and we put on the planned movie.

I love how they get confused when I take videos and try to pose as if I'm taking still pictures, even while they're talking. Ever had told Wren all about The Parent Trap (the 1961 Hayley Mills version), so that's what Wren chose for her birthday viewing.

They all loved it, and I love that they love really old movies. Jim says they love old movies because I don't show them new ones. That's not entirely true; they have seen plenty of new movies, especially Ever. But they don't see a lot of movies, so they love whatever they get. They also just have way better attention spans than most of their peers, so they're not bored by things that would bore their peers. 

Wren at five: She still loves pesto noodles and fruit (especially raspberries and blackberries). Her favorite uniform is undies only, and she wears it frequently. She is extremely sensitive and pouts when reprimanded. She adores her big sister but can also play amazingly well for hours and hours with Tiny. She is mind-blowingly loud. Not all the time, thank heavens, but when she yells, the volume is shocking and the tone so grating. She still has a tongue thrust on her s's and has a hard time saying r's. She is the most independent little person I've ever known and does not like to be helped. She is the least snuggly of the bunch and can be sort of aloof. She would push Jim away so much when he tried to love on her that she made him feel like Pepe Le Pew trying to love the cat. They have an ongoing bit where he tries to hug and kiss her while going, "Ma cherie, let me take you to the kasbah" and she pushes and struggles to get away. She can also, however, be so sweet and affectionate. When she wants to be, she is an absolutely amazing snuggler. Sometimes she just rubs my arm or back or hair something as she walks by. Once she had to give herself a name at preschool, and she chose "Shining Butterfly." When he heard about it, Jim said, "You are a shining butterfly!" Her face is luminous, and she flits around and can be hard to pin down. So he tells her she is his shining butterfly, and she protests every time: "I am not a shining butterfly!" She loves being read to. Her favorite thing to do is swim, and she is a little fish. Her nicknames are still Wrenzy, Bear, and variations thereon, such as Wrenzypoolavee, Zozie, Zozaphone, Bearbaloot, Bearba, Bearby (pronounced "bear-bee"), Beary (pronounced like "Barry"), etc. She's a really good climber and might be part monkey. And she's smart, too. I'm regularly amazed at all she understands and remembers from things we've read. When I first started doing reading lessons with her long ago, I was a little worried she might have a learning disability. She'd sound something out, like "rrrrooooood." Then I'd ask her to say it fast, and she'd say, "Mat." Turns out maybe she was just a little young for reading at that point because now she's doing incredibly well and learning quickly. 

Ostensibly in honor of Wren's birthday, the Karners dropped off a bag with instructions and supplies for some crafts. We made bunnies out of cups, but I didn't take a picture of the finished product. The girls were so excited. Ever said to me, "Finally we're crafting! Maybe this will make you crafty." She wishes.

I can't get enough of sweet Tiny Tot.

(As I write this, on June 7, the bag from the Karners is still sitting on the bench in the family room waiting for us to do the rest of the crafts. Grrr.)

Sometimes Bear sits cross-legged like a little grown-up, and I find it so endearing.

The girls still sleep sideways much of the time. I went in and found Ever on her back, with her feet out the side of her bunk like this:

After I took that picture, she rolled onto her belly, leaving one leg sticking out: 

The littles went through a cape phase. I don't know what Wren reminds me of here - an Ewok? Something adorable.

Ever and I had some alone time, and she chose to look for golf balls and then hit the Rondos' swing. The HOA subsequently made the Rondos take the swing down because of liability concerns. So incredibly lame.

Ever got crazy into the Nancy Drew series and read tons of them. She was averaging one a day. While waiting for Leela to meet her for a bike ride, she ran in to get her book and read like this on the driveway:

Tiny detoured from a bike ride to go up these stairs and do some intense posing.

As another step toward getting our backyard equipped for outdoor living, we got a grill. We made burgers for its maiden voyage. 

(After a couple more uses, we noticed that the window behind the grill was seriously cracked. It was really expensive to replace, and the guy who came to do it said he'd pretty much guarantee that it was the heat from the BBQ that did it. Whoops. Live and learn.)

Bear earned some special activity time and chose to bake.

We discovered that the turf is fun to lie on, and the trampoline provides great shade. Tiny called this her "Daddy bed."

This was the scene as I walked into the kitchen on the morning of March 31:

Ever said, "Hi, Mom Wren taught me how to make oatmeal. I'm making oatmeal." I told them that part of cooking is cleaning up after yourself, and they did a good job.

When I put them to bed that night, Ever asked, "May we go straight downstairs in the morning and make oatmeal?" I said yes, as long as they tried not to make a big mess. Jim and I heard them get to work before we got out of bed. When I came down, they were done, the counter was cleaned up, two oatmeal bowls were in the sink, and one (Tiny's) was in the fridge with some leftovers in it. Not bad.

Thus began the great COVID oatmeal era, during which the girls made oatmeal almost every day. Having independent kids who make their own breakfasts is kind of life-changing, especially when they clean up after themselves.

JoAnn said she wouldn't watch the kids during COVID, so I had Madison Sorenson come over a couple of Tuesdays so I could work from home. Then Anna sort of guilt-tripped me about having Maddie babysit when she was also babysitting for lots of other people and was therefore a potential virus spreader. So I stopped having Maddie over and only squeezed in work when I really had to.

Ever and Leela were bike riding together, but then somehow the bike riding seemed always to turn into playdates outside Leela's house. Once Anna set them up on an impressionist painting project, which was fabulous but also really not social distancing.

Anna finally realized that her attempts at social distancing were very inconsistent, and we made a wheels-only rule: the girls could bike or skateboard together (keeping space between them), but that was it. 

Gammy McEwan texted me this old picture, which she found on her phone and thought was so cute. Three little Kringels loving on the bishop. 

Cadence Dance Project posted another super-cute picture with Ever front and center.

Speaking of, Ever's dance classes and piano lessons moved to Zoom, a virtual meeting app that no one had ever heard of until COVID. She generally has done tap in the garage and ballet and jazz in the master bedroom (but she sometimes moves into the office when they do turns because it's hard to turn on carpet). We set the laptop on an end table and pillows for her piano lessons so Miss Violetta can see her play. Her Girl Scout troop started doing weekly "snack chats" on Zoom. Miss Cueva started holding weekly Zoom meetings that mostly seem like a waste of time. None of it is ideal, but I guess it's generally better than nothing.