After 13 months of weird school and/or extended home time, as of last Friday, Carter is now back in school every day except Wednesdays. It's definitely a weight off of Craig's shoulders, to know he can just be dad 6 out of 7 days now, rather than dad and teacher. I'm probably most thrilled that he'll be doing all of his "special" classes at school, including art class, which has been a bit of a challenge to keep up with since projects can take a couple hours each. We actually have one more to catch up on, but knowing there won't be more piling on is a relief. As fun as it was to see his finished products most of the time, it will be good for him to get more formal training and education on that stuff than I had the energy to provide and he had the patience to sit through. While it's going to be a challenge for his teacher to manage twice as many kids each day, especially knowing all the extra direction Carter can need, I'm hoping that maybe seeing more kids hard at work will bring in some of the positive peer pressure he needs to realize that, yes, everyone else is doing the work and you need to suck it up and do it too. He's shed a lot of tears almost every time we've talked about going back, which I think is definitely some anxiety. The odd thing is that whenever you ask him how school was, he usually says it was okay, so why this is giving him so much worry, it's hard to say. I understand it's less phone time, fewer breaks (at least, ones spent to his liking), and probably a bit more disciplining, but I keep reminding him that he should have been in school all this time so he should really just try to be grateful for all the home time he had over the past year. I really hope he finds a friend in the new batch of kids. I'm not sure if he's exaggerating his lack of friends or if his incessant YouTube-Fortnite-Roblox-Minecraft dissertations are turning kids off. The first couple days seem to have gone fine, though no new friends just yet. I do worry about cramming 20 kids in a classroom with these potent variants going around, but I'm trusting the schools and CDC that what they're saying will work will work. The good news is that the other three of us have at least some protection at this point and he's probably the least at risk if he gets it.
Speaking of which, my vaccine got pulled last week. Here I was, all excited to have the one-dose vaccine, and then six reports (out of 7 million vaccinations) of blood clots came out so they put it on hold. While it's not exactly a comforting development since I take birth control and have some odd family history (my grandma had a minor stroke in her 30s and my mom had weird things happening with her carotid arteries for a while, which I swear I might have on one side now based on frequent blood pumping thumps in my right ear like she used to have), I figure it's still less of a chance than clotting seems to be if you actually get COVID. When we need to get boosters I will likely opt for Pfizer if I can, but I'll definitely be on high alert as I finish off the highest risk period over the next few days. I give blood Friday so I'll be interested to see if anything crops up on my blood antibody test by then. Cases continue to rise among young people here--even worse around Buffalo--which is concerning and frustrating. It's hard to tell how much is the variants, how much is the open bars and restaurants, how much is people letting up because some in their group are vaccinated, how much is school (supposedly not much), or more likely school-related activities where people get lax with masking, or how much is people just plain giving up. It's depressing.
The weather has come back down to earth, which made for a tough week or two. Last week was mostly in the 40s and 50s with pretty much all but one day of rain and clouds. The last two days were better, but now there's accumulating snow in the forecast for Wednesday. I knew this would happen when we had 70s in March, but it's still frustrating. Oddly, it was so nice prior to this stretch that all of the trees and flowers are blooming like crazy. So it looks like spring but doesn't feel like it.
The good news is that the cold is likely preserving a lot of the blooms, but I noticed the other day that our pear tree was starting to lose petals despite half the buds not even being open yet. It looked fuller after two sunny days, but today petals were really starting to blow off for real, and tomorrow they'll be weighed down by super heavy snow. I will say that all of the flowers and leaves made it a little extra challenging to strip my hanging Easter eggs off the tree and bushes this year!
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| Different kind of egg hunt! |
Ironically, all of the spring flowers aren't perking me up like I thought they would, and I decided yesterday morning that maybe it's a bit of a carry-over from last year where spring seemed like such a welcome relief, but ended up giving way to a mediocre summer. Yes, we got outside time, and yes, we were able to finally gather with family outside, but it was a far cry from what we usually do. I looked at the trees yesterday and almost felt like they were bringing false hope for a better summer. Sad, isn't it?
We're in the midst of what should be a busy stretch of weekends--although it turns out to be a little less busy than expected. Two weeks ago when it was still super warm, Jacob had a local tournament (three games) and Carter and I got some playground time. It was one we've passed by a few times not too far from home but never gone to. We picked it because it was supposed to have two full playsets, but it turns out one had been removed to be replaced sometime soon. But the one that was left was pretty good.
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| At one point he lost his grip on this one and gave himself quite the brushburn down his arm. :( |
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| Monkey bar master! |
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| Hard to see, but he's climbing in the middle there. At least you can see more of the structure. |
This past weekend we took a quick trip to Buffalo on Saturday. Jacob got a couple community service hours at my parents' church packing lunches for homeless people and cleaning up the property (which helps Grandpa's landscaping work there), and then all of us went to the outlets (yes, it was a bribe). Jacob still has some Confirmation work to do, but we've been trying to cram in community service hours in between nagging him to do the rest of the tasks. He has one week to get one more big thing done.
I spent the rest of last weekend getting things ready for my mom's garage sale. She's been dying to have one to get rid of a lot of extra stuff she has sitting around--either her stuff, or stuff from my grandmas' houses, or now even stuff from my late uncle's house that just got cleaned out. What might have seemed like a good idea to keep at the time might not have been, or might have just been too good to donate. I am all for her cleaning out what she can before it's me doing it one day alone after she's gone. I realized when she first mentioned it that I had a LOT of stuff around my house that I could try to sell, too. The big stuff includes the small table and chairs that were once in the boys' rooms, and a whole slew of outdoor ride-on toys. But there's also a lot of random toys and decor items, too. Originally we thought the sale would be this coming weekend until Jacob's schedule changed, so I panicked two Sundays ago and gathered and priced a ton of it. I did a ton more this past weekend, including a massive cleanout of our giant linen closet (on the heels of the life-changing cleaning of one super-cluttered shelf a few weeks ago). Over the course of the day on Sunday I gathered up a full giant garbage bag of stuffed animals, set aside a ton of extra tote bags, and pulled out even more toys. I have cleaned out entire drawers and bins, and now have a full office again despite taking a big box and bag to my parents' on Saturday. It's crazy. I still have more pricing to do but I feel like I've gotten into most nooks and crannies in the house now. It will be nice to get rid of some things and make a bit more space here and there. I wrote a Facebook post after we moved here saying that if I ever wanted a bigger house, just tell me to get rid of stuff! While I have legitimate issues with the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom closet space, that still holds mostly true. We packed a ton of stuff in here with one growing kid plus an extra kid that didn't exist when we moved here. We each inherited stuff from our parents' houses, which filled up the crawl space even more. The kids have gone through phase after phase. We've gotten gifts, packed away older stuff just in case, and collected lots of extras. We simply have too much stuff. And I do believe it will be a more comfortable house if we can get some of that stuff under control. This sale might not do it entirely, but it will help. After 11 years here and knowing the kids have officially passed certain phases, I've actually gotten much better about making decisions to donate, sell, or toss things we simply won't use. My hesitance to get rid of things for years was always a fear of wasting things or needing something later, but it turns out that most of the time it ends up not getting used, and it's probably worse to waste the space than waste the item. The guilt from staring at something unused is far worse than the one-time guilt of just getting rid of it. That was a big deal with the linen closet. It's about 10 times the size of the one we had at our old house, and I couldn't imagine filling it when we moved here! Yet it was completely overstuffed! My quality of life is shockingly better now that things aren't falling out every time I open it.
One of the tougher toys to prepare to part with was Carter's collection of LeapFrog electronics. We had a hand-me-down Tag Reader and Leapster video game console, but also had his LeapPad, which was a surprise Christmas gift from a rogue family Secret Santa when he was very little. That same Secret Santa was the one who got Jacob the reconditioned Wii, which while shocking when he received it has thankfully paid many dividends! We got a number of games for the LeapPad over the years and Carter loved playing on it. Before I did a factory reset, I took pictures of some of the random pics that ended up on it over the years.
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| My baby! |
On top of the garage sale stuff, I fully changed out Carter's clothes for summer and his growing body. I filled nearly an entire bin with the stuff he's outgrown across all seasons. I also took down the Easter decorations, which added a bit more chaos to all the other organizing I was doing. Craig's new dresser arrived over the weekend, too, but I haven't had the time or energy to get it together yet. I also ordered some new lamps for our living room (since one was partly broken for a long time and I wanted to sell the non-broken partner), and the first one arrived today. Little by little we're sprucing this place up!
This coming weekend was supposed to be our first big travel weekend for basketball, but after countless changes, they said tonight that we're not playing at all this weekend. It's disappointing as one of the options was Erie, where Craig went to college, and it would have been nice to get a change of scenery. But it's safer to wait a few more weeks until we're fully vaccinated, and admittedly Jacob and I could both use the time to get more stuff done.
Next Thursday night I plan to drive to my parents' to help my mom set up for the sale, then sit with her on Friday and Saturday while it's running. After the sale is over, I need to rush home and start prepping for the next day, which is Jacob's Confirmation. The service is in the early afternoon and I figure whatever family comes for it can come back for a small gathering afterward. Most of us will be vaccinated by then, so hopefully it will be safe enough. I need to figure out food, but hopefully nothing too fancy since I won't have a lot of time. I also want to make Carter's birthday cake so we can finally sing to him, but obviously that will take a bit of work, too. I think with some good planning, between that evening and the morning (if we choose to do online church) I can probably get a lot done, but I have a lot of decisions to make in the meantime. Oh, and then that Monday I go back to work full blast toward our big Day of Giving on Wednesday. Usually it's a long but fun day in the "war room" but I can't say I want to work that same 12-hour day at home. It'll probably involve a lot of checking in after hours, if nothing else. I would gladly go sit masked in a room at the office if I could. Work has been hard lately, in part because I think people are burned out and busy and less likely to do fun Slack chatter than in the past. Those connections have frayed a bit and it takes some of the fun and camaraderie out of it, which makes it all just a little more isolating and boring. Sigh.
With some of our weekends ramping up, it shouldn't surprise me that we've begun to have busy weeks, too. We had at least one appointment per day last week--community service, allergy shot, chiropractor, dentist, pediatrician, therapy, confirmation pre-meeting, plus two basketball practices. It was a lot to keep track of under normal circumstances, let alone when we have been used to next to nothing for months. This week we have more community service, Carter's first therapy appointment, another chiropractor appointment, our mortgage refinance closing, and a blood donation. All of that is on top of Carter's first four day week. Sometimes all of these appointments make me wonder how I will ever go back to the office, which will often necessitate an extra 40 minutes of driving back and forth for appointments. It's all a far cry from leaving the house literally once or twice a week for months a year ago. It's still pretty mind-boggling that this has been our life for so long. On one hand I find our resilience admirable, but on the other it makes me grateful we had no idea this is what was coming. Mentally I'd have never survived if I knew how long things would be weird. Of course, unlike some people that want normalcy come hell or high water, I'm perfectly fine understanding that this is all a process and it's not some assault on my rights. I'm happy to do what I can to protect others, let alone myself. I actually almost think I need the gradual return because we have all of these new learned behaviors from a year of being extra careful, and going out into large crowds or having even more activities on a regular basis might be quite an assault on the senses after a full year. It's funny how sometimes activities feel really good--energizing and the good version of normal--and sometimes they're harder than they were before. It's such a weird time, but slowly but surely we'll readjust.
I guess that's the bulk of the happenings for now. I was looking forward to having a trip to write about, but apparently that will have to wait! For now we brace for a day of snow tomorrow and look toward a weekend full of garage sale pricing, Confirmation tasks, cleaning and planning for next weekend! Yay?
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