Life at home continued as usual in June. We continued home school until June 10, Oceanside Unified's last official day. I still haven't been into my office since the first week of March or possibly the last week of February. The office tried to start opening up after being shut for a while because of the pandemic (we technically are an "essential business" and could have stayed open, but the partners voted to close). Then it promptly shut down again because of the protests and unrest caused by the horrific killing of George Floyd (a black man) in Minneapolis by a white police officer. Such a crazy time right now for so many reasons.
The girls spent hours upon hours planning Tiny's birthday. I told her she could pick two types of candy to add to the piñata; I already had really old Dum-Dums and some Andes mints I wanted to get rid of in it. Ever laboriously went through the options with Tiny and narrowed it down.
Marin kept doing the weekly Girl Scout snack chats on Zoom. Anna arranged for a teenage family friend to do a lesson on bullet journaling. Ever was very excited about bullet journaling for a second afterward. She also participated in a Girl Scout webcast about coding.
Tiny made a map necklace. Anna called it a "statement necklace," and that it was.
I registered Ever for a Girl Scout thing where the girls camped at home and tuned into Zoom for various portions of the evening. Most of the Zoom stuff was pretty painful, and we skipped some of it. We ate s'mores outside.
We (Jim) set up a tent outside for the girls and me. Jim opted out of the tent sleeping, but he did read to the girls before we turned in.
We Zoomed from the tent for a little bit of astronomy before bed, too.
I had a terrible, terrible night's sleep. Somehow Bear Bear ended up sleeping on my pillow, so that didn't work out for me.
Ever, having already read the first three Harry Potter books in the last month, decided she had to read the fourth one in two days so she could get the AR points for it before AR closed for the school year. She is a crazy determined little lady when she wants to be. I didn't think it could be done, but she started it on Saturday and then read all day Sunday. When I say all day, I mean all day. She started at 6:30 A.M. and finished it at 8:30 P.M. She broke only for a quick breakfast, home church, and dinner.
Toward the end of the year, she kept increasing her AR point goal. Ultimately, she said that if she passed 615 points, she'd get on the school championship board. She ended up at 618, which made her no. 1 in second grade (by far - Leela had a little over 100 points and got third place) and no. 2 in the entire elementary school. She is amazing.
Tiny decided each button on our My First Piano is for a different "show," and the shows are activities we do at home. She walked me through each button. My favorites are "just plainly sitting on the couch," "playing with Mama and loving her," and "snuggle-festing with Daddy."
After her successful creation of banana chocolate chip muffins all by her lonesome, Ever wanted to make the chocolate chip cookies out of her cookbook.
I explained how she should skip mixing the dry ingredients separately and just start with the wet ingredients and then add all the dry ingredients at one time. She did not understand, and she mixed all the dry ingredients and then tried to add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. It was a disaster. Mixing was nigh unto impossible. She and Jim voted to forge ahead, though, and Jim kneaded the dough by hand. The cookies turned out a little different-looking but quite delicious.
Ever desperately wanted to sleep in the tent again before we took it down. She was even willing to sleep out there all by herself. I agreed to let all three girls try to sleep out there by themselves while Jim and I slept inside. I thought there was virtually no chance they'd make it. I was sure Tiny would cause problems, and they'd be in within the hour. Also, after I agreed, I became concerned about their safety. I imagined them waking up at 6:00 A.M. and playing in the yard and having a coyote jump in. The new fence did give me some peace of mind, even though a coyote could easily jump it. I also realized that while the fence may deter animals, a crazy person could just open the side gate or hop over the fence and come right in. Anyway, nothing crazy happened. The girls were quiet. Wrenzy came in after about an hour to get a drink of water. She said Ever was asleep, but Tiny was still up. There was no sign of them again, and I couldn't believe they were really doing it.
When I awoke in the morning, I went quickly out onto our deck to check on them. Wrenzy was no longer visible through the tent window, so I thought maybe they were inside quietly having breakfast. Instead, I found them all passed out on the couch.
They said they had come in at 4:00 A.M. because they were cold (I'd left the tent windows down), and they went right to sleep on the couch. So close to totally nailing it.
More baking happened. These two are quite the dream team in the kitchen.
Schools now take pictures multiple times a year and try to sell them to you. At least ours does. I bought a small package of the first pics, but I had to take a picture of a later proof to memorialize the fact that my eight-year-old started borrowing my clothes. This is my flannel:
We made it a tradition to make pancakes (or sometimes waffles or french toast) every Sunday (or Saturday if Sunday is fast Sunday). I felt good about feeding the girls pancakes even more frequently than that when I was using a recipe that used whole wheat flour. But Jim started researching pancake recipes and trying new ones, and then the pancakes were all white flour, with whipped cream and other junk. One day he got really wild and made cinnamon and sugar swirled pancakes with a sugary glaze. They were quite exciting.
Jim has a running gag that he does at the beginning of home church each week. Early on, when he went up front to begin the "meeting," he left his fly down. He said he did it on purpose and was disappointed when he discovered that his white shirt wasn't visible, as he had intended. The next week, he pulled his shirt out of his fly. The girls just cracked up. Since then, he has shoved various items through his fly every week.
He escalates each week. This was at the end of the month:
In a related video in June, Tiny conducted hymns for home church.
Bear can be elusive and hard to get. Often she pushes Jim and me away when we try to love on her. Once when I was trying to give her hugs and kisses, she pushed me away in the throat, which was a little painful. But then one morning, she lay and snuggled with me for so long. It was the sweetest, most amazing time for me. She would have stayed even longer, but I thought we had to get up and do things.
Unfortunately before I wrapped it up, I took a picture so I could remember the experience, and that made her want to play with the phone. She made up a fun little ditty, though.
The littles were engaging in their favorite pastime - looking at pictures in our books - when I caught a Wrenzy showing a picture to Tiny and explaining that she wanted to marry a boy in the picture because he was so handsome.
We continued with reading lessons, and I'm so incredibly proud of how Bear is doing. She's made so much progress during quarantine. She totally reads.
Miss Paula had a graduation day, when she sat outside on her driveway for a couple hours and we could stop by, get their Little Bugs graduation/end-of-year stuff, and say goodbye.
Ever and Leela had been hanging onto the supplies to make sorbet since a Girl Scout activity months before. We finally had Leela and Rafi over and successfully made sorbet in a ziploc bag by shaking it with ice and salt! Couldn't get a good pic with all the kids looking at me.
Leela and Rafi were talking about celebrating sibling's day or something by giving each other presents, and that made Ever want to do the same thing. She and Wren brainstormed for days what they might get Tiny. I cannot put into words how seriously they took this thing and how they agonized over the decision. Ultimately, they settled on matching white nightgowns for all of them. Ever and Wren bought nightgowns for each other, and then they chipped in for Tiny's. I had to supplement a bit because Wren didn't have enough cash to cover her share. Once all the nightgowns had arrived (thank you, Amazon), they couldn't wait to present Tiny with her surprise.
Then they went to grab theirs to show her that they would all match.
Bear's outfit that evening was highly unusual. She was somehow wearing her romper around her waist and between her legs.
All three girls in their new nightgowns:
In early May, Gwen Holm asked if I wanted to make eight dozen cookies for the sack lunches she puts together for distribution at the interfaith community center in Escondido (48 lunches with two cookies each). I said yes, and it has turned into a regular gig. I spend hours baking and packaging cookies each week. I make them ahead of time and freeze them, as I believe most cookies age better frozen than at room temp. Once I made brownies because I had a couple new recipes I wanted to try. That was a complete disaster. Crackly tops made cutting and packaging a real problem. I have decided that making giant cookies, so each person gets just one, is ideal, but figuring out how big to make them has proved difficult. Last time I used the 1/4 cup to measure the dough balls, as had worked perfectly the time before that, but because it was a different recipe, the cookies turned out kind of measly. So I thought I had to give two cookies, which was way too much, and I had to make a fourth batch because I didn't have enough. Some bags ended up with two big cookies (definitely more than a serving); some ended up with a big mama cookie and a little baby cookie, which was weird. I've figured some things out over the last couple months, but I clearly do not have the process down yet. Anyway, Deb recommended Joanna Gaines's chocolate chip cookie recipe, so I felt obligated to try it. This is what they are supposed to look like:
This is what mine looked like:
Those were not given away because how embarrassing. It's sad that after all these years, I still have so many kitchen fiascoes.
Ever really wanted her hair curled. I told her I'd do it sometime for a special occasion and put her off. One Sunday morning she took matters into her own hands and tried to curl her hair by wrapping it around a comb. I told her when she started not to, that it would not work and would get stuck in her hair, but she didn't listen. I didn't stop her, and she learned a lesson. Jim cut the comb in pieces and also cut a bunch of hair her to get it out. "No one listens to Mommy" is what I always say.
We went for a walk that afternoon. Tiny did Jim's hair before we left, telling him, "I'm gonna make your hair look like a dad going on a walk."
While we were out, she found a big piece of wood that had broken off of something. She picked it up and carried it all the way home like a tray, putting flowers and other treasures on it.
Ever and I read most of Where the Red Fern Grows at least a year ago, probably more. We were really far into it when she decided she didn't want to finish because the dogs were going to die - or at least one of them. We didn't know the details, but we knew there'd be death. I told Mel we were reading it way back when, and she said it was her favorite book when she was a kid. Early this year she said we had inspired her, and she was reading with her kids. I convinced Ever to finish it with me because the Karner kids were reading it. We picked it up again in May. I think we just read one night and then read all the next morning (for hours) until we finished it. That whole last part of the book was agonizing because we knew something terrible was going to happen, but we didn't know when. It was so intense and nerve-wracking for so long. We thought the dogs were going to die. Then they survived. Then we thought the dogs were going to die again. And we thought the grandpa was going to die. Then the dogs survived. And the grandpa survived. And then we thought the dogs were going to die. And so on. I cried so much through the last, I don't know, 50 pages. That last morning when we finished it, Wrenzy joined us on the couch, and then Tiny joined us, too. Wrenzy hadn't listened to the rest of the book, but she was riveted nonetheless. Tiny was, too, although she was less emotional. I blubbered through, and Wren and Ever cried with me - like tears streaming down their faces and a little bit of sobbing by Ever. At one point, I wondered if it were wrong to read it. But I persevered, and we just cried and cried together. It was a beautiful book. I passionately loved it, and I loved experiencing it with my tender-hearted girls. After we recovered, Ever balanced the book on her belt for a photo so I could remember the occasion.
Jim let the littles play on his phone while he worked on the garage loft. They looked so cute, while also being in danger.
The girls swam at Leela and Rafi's. Tiny officially became an amazing swimmer this spring. She is totally independent and has no problem swimming all over a pool by herself.. Deep end? No problem. Here she swam across the pool and then swam back while pulling a basket.
Tiny, hanging out on the wall peeping at Nathan. (She stacks the chair on the table and climbs up from there.)
Rebecca brought home some color from the salon and dyed my hair at home. She made it more chocolate, less orange. It really wants to be orange.
According to a reward schedule created pre-Covid, Ever and Wren both earned playdates. Since those couldn't really happen, they chose to bake instead. Ever asked to make banana bread all by herself. She used the recipe in her cookbook and did everything solo, except I think maybe I helped pour the oil and I put it in and took it out of the oven. She did a perfect job, and it turned out delicious. It's our new favorite banana bread recipe.
Bear chose to make chocolate mint cookies. The dough had to chill, so we made the dough and saved the baking for the following day. Wren is nearly as independent as Ever and accepted minimal help.
The girls went through Ever's cookbook and one other cookbook and tabbed 20 recipes that Tiny chose for her birthday. Tiny has been planning her fourth birthday for months.
This must have been laundry day. Somehow Wren ended up in Jim's shirt, with her undies hanging from her arm and a toothpick from her mouth, browsing our books.
I caught an amazing snuggle fest in the kitchen and came to understand that Wrenzy was comforting Tiny because Tiny was sad about Wrenzy's starting school in the fall.
Wrenzy got super blinged out for home church.
Sam Hawkins brought Tess and Rue down for a Saturday. They wanted to go to the beach, but technically our beaches were only open for swimming, surfing, walking, and running - no loitering. We hung out for a while, got introduced to Circle Round (podcast with stories for kids) by Sam, had lunch, and then ended up asking Scott and Rebecca if we could use their pool. We swam and then barbecued hamburgers and fed Cikaneks, too. Jim had gotten two Coldstone ice cream cakes to celebrate Sam's birthday, which had been a few days before. So that was festive. The girls love Tess and Rue. Everyone was begging for a sleepover that night, but Sam said they had to get back.
A couple weeks after that, Jim took the girls up to spend Saturday with Sam and the girls at his place in Redondo Beach. He's in a new fun house now, which the Kringel ladies loved, and they went to the beach and had a grand time. I stayed home to get some work done. Jim texted me these wonderful pictures:
Tiny and Noah Cikanek are little buddies. Sometimes she lets herself down into their yard by climbing up the wall and over onto the playset in their yard.
Apparently kids these days are using an app called Messenger Kids. A parent with a Facebook account sets it up, and then the parent can control when it's available for use and with whom the kid can connect, and the parent is notified of the kid's use and can see everything that's sent. Anna got Leela on it, and Leela was using it to video chat and otherwise communicate with friends. Anna pitched it to me, and then Marin asked about getting the Girl Scouts on it. I discussed it with Jim, and we decided to let Ever use it. I really want her to have nothing to do with anything social media-related, but Jim figured we're going to say "no" to so much that we should try to say "yes" when we can. So I bit the bullet and set up the account. Ever was in the office on the computer, and I was in the living room when she started messaging me.
I know partly she was just experimenting with the platform, but it was really sweet. Since then, I've had some grave concerns about the app and regretted allowing it. As I write this, though, her use of it is minimal, and it's actually pretty handy that she can call or message me on it.
The Messenger app got me back on Facebook, unfortunately. I'm trying not to check it because it's the absolute worst thing in the history of the world, but I did see that Coach Mike (my old gymnastics coach) posted this modeling picture of me, tan, freckled, and orange-haired.
Quarantine life continued through May. Ever did homeschool and weekly virtual Girl Scout "snack chats," dance classes, and piano lessons on Zoom. We saw our neighbors and Subrebosts and no one else. Jim worked on the garage loft project, and we pretty much never left the house.
Avery Walker turned nine, and they had a puppy-themed party. Attendees drove by the Walkers' house during a certain window of time to drop presents and pick up party kits (little stuffed puppies and various related items and treats) and then went home and tuned into a Zoom party. People really go all out with birthdays, even when we're supposed to be quarantining. Avery and Ever, not quite six feet apart, at the drop-off/pickup:
The girls' hair had gotten so long. Rebecca had given Ever and Tiny trims a few months before, but Wrenzy's hadn't been touched in way too long. Rebecca noticed and offered everyone a haircut. She cut us really quickly on the street first thing one morning. I was worried that people might report us for not social distancing; then I became worried that other people were going to try to finagle haircuts, too. (One lady walked by with her husband and said she might have to get Rebecca to do her, too.) Days later, after she'd picked up some other scissors from her salon, Rebecca quickly thinned the ends of Ever's and my hair, but even before that, we were all vastly improved and grateful.
Wrenzy and Tiny followed Ever onto the bandanna train. I could not get a normal picture of them. Wrenzy not infrequently makes a fight face like this and growls:
Wrenzy as a chunky cholo:
We made homemade popsicles that day by blending berries and grapes, separately, with a teeny bit of fruit juice and layering it in ice trays. We didn't have popsicle sticks, so we inserted toothpicks, which mostly just fell over but worked well enough.
Wrenzy added sunglasses to her bandanna ensemble.
We usually pull the chairs away from the playroom table and up onto the rug before we run Roomba at night. The girls never bother to pull the chairs back to the table during the day. I find the children perched precariously like this:
For a Girl Scout project, Ever scheduled a day and executed it.
We had to document certain steps by posting photos on her troop's app. Apparently her version of making her bed is displaying all of the books she's reading and the next book in all the series she's reading. That made five books:
School time:
Ever chatted with Leela while she snacked. (Anna lent Ever one of their walkie talkies so that she and Leela could talk from home. Anna started letting Leela and Rafi go for walks with their walkie talkies while she kept one on at home so she could monitor their goings-on. Pretty quickly, Ever and Leela started using their walkies to meet up, rather than just to chat at home. They'd turn on their walkies and talk to each other as they walked to the tennis court to meet up, or Ever would just talk to Leela as she walked to her house. It's been exciting having an independent kid who can walk up the street to her friend's house by herself.)
Ever helped make pizza that night for dinner.
She did a good job with her "great day," as the Girl Scout project called it. She was crazy about staying on schedule - to the point of tears when we got behind a teensy bit - but it went well. She had to do one portion of it - organizing a space - the following day. She organized the playroom and used the label-maker to label all the cubbies.
Ever had been asking if she could start reading Harry Potter. I thought maybe she was still a little too young, but on Friday, May 8, about 6:45 P.M., she took it upstairs and got about a half hour of reading in before bed. Saturday morning, she woke up just before 6:00 A.M. and read in bed all morning, breaking only briefly for sustenance. She finished the book at 10:30 A.M. She passionately loved it, of course, and was excited to watch the movie (which she did at her next movie night) and go on to the next book.
Ever went out to play with Leela and Rafi one day. I think this was right on the heels of Harry Potter. Anna was confused when they spent the afternoon reading and testing on the AR website. She sent me this picture of the kids in her garage:
Eventually a little game-playing took place. Like two old men playing chess.
Jim piled all sorts of debris by our front door again.
He cut a whole in the side of the house so he could figure out where to build the little alcove that will lead from the top of our stairs inside into the new room (the garage loft). The children spied on him working. Tiny:
Wrenzy:
Ever:
And Tiny again, this time with binoculars:
After he built the structure of the new alcove, he cut this door-sized hole in the wall at the top of the stairs. For my benefit, he sealed it off with plastic to help contain the dust.
The littles danced and sang outside Jim's workspace. Not sure why they were repeating "what we've been waiting for" here while Jim seemingly talked to a visitor out front.
Wrenzy did her own hair that day, and it was really something.
The solar company dug a giant trench in front of our house and piled up all the dirt on our driveway one Thursday. They said the City would come inspect it on Friday, and the solar people would come back on Saturday to fill it. At this point, months have passed, and still we have an open trench and a huge mountain range of dirt on our driveway. I am extremely displeased. Anyway, for the first bit, the children stayed out of the dirt. Then one afternoon, I was busy in the house and let the littles play out front unsupervised. Rebecca came to knock on the garage door after a while to point out the piles of dirt they had made inside the garage and make sure I was OK with what was going on. Nathan had just joined in the festivities. Water got involved. It was not ideal, but they had fun.
On Mother's Day, I requested a walk. Ever wanted to detour down by Ella Rondo's house, and our walk turned into children playing in the tree. Wrenzy fearlessly climbed way out on a limb.
She asked me to take a video of her. I started it right after Tiny said something funny that I don't remember. Listen for when Jim whispers, "I'm so scared." Right after this, he told me to turn off the video and Wrenzy to come back.
We enjoyed ice cream sandwiches.
The girls gave me presents. In the morning, Ever gave me the pretty paper on the left (with coupons) and the tissue paper rose. That night, I found the note on the right inside the pink envelope on my bed.
Close-up of the note since it's hard to see:
Tiny gave me a present containing a bunch of crumpled paper, an old necklace of the girls that no one ever wears, a new bead necklace she made, and her Hawaii painting.
Tutu sent a most adorable homemade card.
We made cards for Tutu's birthday on the 15th, and Ever decided she wanted to copy the one Tutu gave me for Mother's Day because she loved it so much. It was very cute. She did it all by herself.
This was Wrenzy's card:
Tiny's was very interesting.
She used the letter stencils on the back.
Wrenzonamous built a castle, and Jim found it picture-worthy.
Dottie Murray, who is in Wren's Primary class, had a drive-by birthday. I asked Rachel (Dottie's mom) for ideas of what to get her, and she said not to get her anything or just to give her an old toy or something. I appreciated that answer very much because I do not want my kids to get tons of presents from friends on their birthdays, I like recycling, and I do not think it is appropriate to require people to shop for birthday gifts during quarantine. So I told Rachel I was going to take her response at face value, and maybe we could give Dottie a book or two since we were cleaning out our shelves. She said that would be great; Dottie loves books. Ever got wind of this, and she was absolutely mortified at the prospect of giving Dottie a hand-me-down for her birthday. I began finding notes like these in my planner:
Ever was very upset by the whole thing. I promised her that I would explain when we dropped our gift that she had nothing to do with it. We ended up giving Dottie a book and a tutu. Probably they were a bomb, but most likely anything I bought would have been, too. Anyway, on the day of the party; we were supposed to drive by, get a doughnut, and wish Dottie a happy birthday. When we got there, some people were milling about and totally not socially distancing. I was lame and pulled up, took doughnuts that were handed to me through the car window, gave Dottie our hand-me-down present, told Rachel that Ever was mortified and wanted it to be known that she washed her hands of it, and drove away. Later I found this note:
Wrenzy and Tiny brought down lots of books and went through all the pictures looking for fancy girls. (Where do they get this?) Wrenzy dressed herself to match a girl on the cover of Never Talk to Strangers.
See the girl on the bottom with the pink bow and pink socks. Bearby nailed it!
One night I caught Tiny cuddling with an old picture of me standing by a lake in Canada. She said it was a picture of her best girl, and she likes it because she can remember me when she can't see me. Here's the explanation she gave for the camera:
As part of a Bingo challenge from Cadence Dance Project, Ever and Leela made up a dance. I documented it, and they wanted me to post a video on social media. I was not comfortable with that, however, because it showed a lack of social distancing and I hate social media.
Wrenzy decided she wanted to learn to ride a bike without training wheels. Jim removed her training wheels, and we went out back, full of hope.
I tried to help her, and she got mad at me for helping her and said to let go, so I let go and she fell and got upset and the practice was over. Didn't work out.
I fear the sun so much that I try to get the girls to wear hats and/or get sunscreen on whenever they go outside. One day Tiny did her own sunscreen. She went for the white stuff, and it was intense.
