Staying home, staying safe – week 6

This is a little diary of our sixth week in social isolation, home learning, and with both himself and me working from home. I’m going to try writing this differently this week, just talking about the highlights and low lights. A full diary takes a lot of writing and I can’t imagine anyone’s really interested in all the detail.

See what happened in week 5.

What will week 7 bring?

Stay home and stay safe folks. Xxx

Highlights

Delicious penne al salmone for Monday’s dinner, prepared by himself so doubly good that I didn’t cook.

Large boy used a Scratch tutorial for the first time and wrote a game. Ridiculous, but brilliant.

I had a message from one of the children (now fully grown adult working in GP2) I au paired for 20 years ago. Lovely to hear from them and how everyone’s doing.

A meeting with the arsehole went surprisingly well. He said all the proper things, as usual. I’ll wait and see whether his actions reflect his words but the chat went as well as could be expected.

My lovely flat mate from PhD days 14 years ago phoned me on WhatsApp to talk working with kids underfoot and potty training. I do not miss those days.

Large boy’s teacher sent him some extra maths on Wednesday. I thought it looked a bit hard and, after a day of interruptions, expected lots of questions. Instead he flew through with one mistake. Same again on Thursday.

At work, a team lead and I managed to navigate the treacherous realm of SharePoint workflows without causing errors or needing to ask the support team for help! Whoop, some sort of miracle.

Lazy Thursday pizza tea, the boys convinced us to eat in front of the TV as a treat. So we put on Four Children and It and proper slobbed out.

On Friday, we tried a different approach to RWI with small boy. In the kitchen instead of my office and I let him pause to think. He did so much better!

The weather was a bit better at the weekend. I ventured out for a walk on Saturday, firmly supported by my new knee strap and it felt ok. The boys helped himself put the scalextric away, so the playroom has space again – to play in.

I had a tidying week, reorganised my kitchen that my mother in law unpacked almost 5 years ago and tidying out the piles of old shoes in the porch and in a cupboard, finding a couple of size 11s that small boy can wear.

The weather really improved on Sunday. A bit of sunshine and blue skies, even with few clouds, can work wonders. On our walk a caterpillar hitchhiked on himself’s jumper, we’ll try and raise it to a butterfly but the boys have been warned it might not like the pot and it could die.

Lowlights

On Monday I went to start small boys maths, number bonds to 10 activity. Only to find that the 100 2×2 lego blocks I’d amassed last week had been broken up and thrown back in the lego box. The box was in the cupboard behind the scalextric barriers and rows of cars arranged on track. So before we could start I had to move the cars, carefully get the box out and re-find ten different coloured bricks. Brilliant start to the week. (Please go heavy on the sarcasm when you read that last sentence.)

Monday again, both boys cried during the morning. Three lots of tears, I nearly joined them. Frustrated about everything in general.

My knee. I twisted my knee or something last Saturday and it’s still sore. Not too bad in the morning, but sitting with my knee bent or out dead straight makes it very painful when I stand up. Walking or turning on it isn’t great either.

On Wednesday my fantastic lover of learning large boy decided he couldn’t complete any task without asking questions every 3 minutes. Thus interrupting small boy’s learning or, once he was done, my attempts to work. Exhausting switching my thoughts in three different directions within a 5 minute period. We really need to establish that if my door is closed it means I’m in a call and they need to wait unless it’s an emergency. Building a cool thing on Scratch and wanting to show me is not an emergency.

On Friday I went to the supermarket. This wasn’t a problem in itself. I drove there and my sore knee was ok. However, an hour of pushing a trolley and steering round corners left me in much more pain. I’m getting impatient already for it to heal.

We cancelled our summer holiday Eurocamping in France. So sad.

Meal times! Oh they’re driving me nuts. Sometimes the boys eat nicely, mostly one or the other or both moans about whatever we’ve prepared – they don’t like carrots, or soup with bits, or bolognese sauce or whatever. Small boy often eats at a glacial rate, even breakfast when he’s theoretically hungry. If he finishes meals at roughly the same time as everyone else, himself now does a chicken dance to celebrate. Its painful trying to get them both to eat a good meal, that takes less than an hour and is healthyish.

I had a couple of “I’m not good enough” moments this week. First because it feels like my son is the only one not camping at home. Then when I picked up their school work, the reception teacher made a joke about how the year 3 teacher had commented that I’m sending him feedback on large boy’s progress every day. Huh? He sends extra work, am I not meant to let him know whether large boy managed it or how he got on? School said only to email photos on a Friday, so that’s what I’ve done. Then how come their Facebook feed is full of photos of my son’s classmates the whole week? Surely that means all the other parents are emailing regularly too? I’m confused and now feel like we’re being a drain on the teachers.