Staying home, staying safe – week 12

This is a little diary of our twelfth week in social isolation, back to home learning after half term, me working from home, and himself in work a few days. Here are the highlights and low lights.

See what happened in week 11.

What will week 13 bring?

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

Highlights

Himself’s big ridiculous Ebay Scalextric purchase arrived on Monday. It’s a highlight for him even if I lose my kitchen table for several evenings while he cleans out all the fluff and dirt.

Small boy read a purple RWI book on the Oxford Owl on Tuesday. That’s two levels up from when we started home learning. He had to sound out lots of words but then read the full sentences too. Amazing progress. Large boy finished his book (its lasted a whole week which is excellent) and I managed to avoid bedtime dramatics by helping him choose what to read next from a list we’d made a few weeks ago.

Wednesday was another meh day, just like last week. The best bit was reading The Secret Garden to large boy at bedtime, he’s loving it and had lots of questions and ideas.

Come pre-bedtime TV on Thursday, small boy told me to choose what to watch. I suggested David Attenborough’s Our Planet and he agreed. We had a lovely snuggle on the sofa watching the ocean episode.

We had loads of fab moments on Friday; adding to school’s rock snake, making fruit kebabs and a vinegar and bicarbonate balloon, finding an old video of large boy reading when he was the same age small boy is now, a brilliant conversation with large boy about racism, and small boy volunteering to put the washing on.

I braved another run on Saturday, this time much shorter at just 1km and with large boy for company to prevent me from going further or faster than sensible. It was fine, no pain! Whoop! After lunch we went for a loooong walk. It was a beautiful day and we spotted lots of bees feasting on thistles, hopped over rocks across a stream, had a snack by a reservoir and generally exhausted the boys. Back home, large boy had a lovely cuddle with me while trying to decide how to amuse himself. I made pan-fried salmon with veggies and roast potato cubes for dinner, the boys wolfed it down.

Wow Saturday night’s cocktail bought me a 9am lie in on Sunday morning. Bliss. Then breakfast and coffee to the tune of Radcliffe and Maconie on BBC 6Music. We had a short bike ride at a country park and then played outside when we got home, badminton, some water play and large boy almost learning to skip with a rope.

Lowlights

Eugh Monday! Himself was off to work and the boys weren’t very enthusiastic about their school work. I was just feeling really low and weepy all day. I didn’t want to work or support home learning. I just wanted to cuddle on the sofa and have a cry. By the end of the afternoon I had a raging headache too.

I ended up still being at my desk after 8pm on Tuesday. I can’t stand a mystery and really wanted to understand what was going on. An extra hour poking around didn’t get me anywhere though, even more frustrating.

Wednesday’s are meh days apparently. Work was chaos and fraught at times, I didn’t feel I’d achieved anything.

Our team meeting on Thursday featured a bit of a blow up and argument between my boss and two other people on the team. I hate conflict so I kept my mouth shut. I also realised I hadn’t done any laundry in 4 days.

A week of regular screen time and games was making itself felt on Friday. The boys were playing some Mario fighting game and they were so loud and over excited, shouting a running commentary with himself working in the next room despite repeated reminders. I think a screen or gaming ban is needed for the weekend. Time to reset.

We had a normal (well normal for us at the moment) day on Saturday. The boys declared themselves bored upon returning from our walk and my screen ban was circumvented by them watching himself play Xbox while I made dinner. Hmmm. After bedtime, bath and shower, large boy weighed himself, he seems to have gained half a stone in however long it is. He’s always been a rake and on the lower end of the weight scale. So this reflects the lack of exercise during the week and surfeit of treats. Think we’d better try more balanced eating and more running around or he’ll find himself unfit when rugby goes back.

I think the boys are getting stir crazy. They spent Sunday morning arguing and grumping about anything and everything. Large boy cried about trying to learn to skip and small boy got hit in the head with a rugby ball. They both protested that the other didn’t want to play their game. Small boy got a proper splinter and almost deafened me with his shrieks when I extracted it with tweezers. Oh well onwards and upwards.

Things I wrote

First blogiversary

Ma deuxième langue – 3ème étape

Making stuff 14: cocktails