Staying home, staying safe – week 8

This is a little diary of our eighth week in social isolation, home learning, and with both himself and me working from home. I’m going to just talk 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 7.

Stay safe everyone, I hope you’re doing ok. xxx

What will week 9 bring?

Highlights

I was off on another forced vacation day on Monday. We switched around some creative school stuff and made yogurt pot frogs. They’re pretty funny and proved popular for the rest of the week, they ate hot wheels cars and sang silly songs. We had a long walk in the cold wind and I challenged small boy to learn a set 3 as well as a set 2 sound for his phonics – he did brilliantly.

Tuesday brought the weekly maths challenge from school, large boy did them for all the KS2 year groups with just two mistakes out of maybe 30 questions. His brain does love the logic of maths.

It was one of large boy’s best friend’s birthday on Tuesday. I totally forgot until 4pm when an alarm on my phone reminded me we were meant to be video chatting. Only it hadn’t been organized, so I hastily got a Zoom meeting together and we sang to the birthday boy with 4 other friends.

Wednesday was a huge blogging milestone for me – 200 lovely people! Thank you all for reading! I celebrated with a rather potent martini (or maybe two).

The award for most unusual meeting interruption goes to next door’s two dogs and the hedgehog they chased into our garden. Twice. It did its hedgehog thing and successfully spiked the dogs. The second time the neighbour came to fetch them, we suggested they keep the dogs in for the afternoon. I wrapped the hedgehog in towel and took him to the hedge we share with a different neighbour to hide. Drama over.

On our Friday walk down to school to pick up next week’s work, we met one of large boy’s best friends out on his bike. They greeted each other with such joy, the first time large boy’s seen one of his friends face to face in 8 weeks.

Ikea lolly moulds and 5 minutes preparation last weekend paid off after Saturday’s walk. Ice lollies in the garden for warm boys.

My grandma called on Saturday afternoon and had a lovely chat with the boys. We also made cards to send to my other gran who’s turning 94 this week.

Sunday was a lovely chilled out, moochy day. We did nothing all morning, had simply yummy scrambled eggs for lunch, then a walk and home for more nothing doing.

Just as I was about to post this, while the boys were in the bath on Sunday night, small boy asked to read the bath book. This was the first time he’s ever volunteered to read! The bath book hasn’t been out in months and months, so he wasn’t reciting from memory, and its not designed for early readers but he tried hard and sounding out words that would have totally alienated him a couple of weeks ago. I’m so pleased he’s feeling confident and capable.

Lowlights

Monday’s long cold walk apparently had a very negative effect on my knee. It was suddenly much more uncomfortable on Tuesday, either it was the walk or an attempt at some physio recommended by my dad. Totally fed up with this now.

School emailed a letter out, doubtless intent on reassuring us. However, speaking to a friend whose son is at a different school made ours seem totally unprepared. They talked about waiting for guidance and more information where my friend’s school was gathering opinions on options and seem to have a full plan in place. On Friday they sent out a questionnaire and I felt less worried about their preparation. Though we still don’t know whether small boy will go back to school or not.

Eric the caterpillar may be more of a larva. Facebook hivemind and his colour change as he’s grown indicate he’s a sawfly larva. They don’t look very nice but we’re going to keep him alive and learn about expectations and prejudice, as well as insect lifecycles.

I hate those meetings where the other person is late, doesn’t apologise and is totally uninterested. Also those where you have to explain the same thing for the fifth time and then end up with an extra hour of work. Oh and the ones where you end up as an agony aunt and listen to someone rant for 30 minutes. Well Wednesday featured all three.

Thursday its usual horrid self. Way too many meetings, almost impossible to get any work done and we skipped various bits of school work because I didn’t have time between meetings to support the boys. Oh and large boy stood on top of the toddler slide (only 1m off the ground) looking at a buzzard and managed to fall off and hurt his bum.

My weekly trip to the supermarket on Friday was marred by a checkout lady who ignored my request that she pause while I loaded the conveyor resulting in a huge pile of shopping and nowhere to put my bags after she scanned things. Then she tried to tell me how to organize my shopping. It wasn’t lockdown rudeness, just good old fashioned rudeness.

We had Indian takeaway for tea on Friday, relatively unusual but not unheard of. Large boy complained of a sore ear and itchy mouth – we thought he was just trying to avoid the sauce as he has a famous aversion to sauce that isn’t ketchup or mayo. However, after tea he decided he was going straight to bed with no reading at 6pm. Cue mum and dad suspecting there’s something really wrong. Calpol and piriton in case he’s reacting to something in the pakoras. The medicine worked its magic and half an hour later he called down that he wanted to read for a bit after all. Saturday morning he was out of sorts again but another dose of calpol fixed that. Nothing hurts and he says nothing’s wrong but evidently something isn’t quite right.

Our ambitious steak pancake dinner on Saturday was disastrous as well as delicious. Small boy screamed at the first mouthful – it turns out that the chipotle paste in the marinade was rather hot. Two unhappy boys got emergency tortellini instead.