With The Dads Must Be Crazy podcast going on temporary hiatus, we decided to keep a blog of how our days are going under this new, relative isolation from the rest of the world. This will not be posted every day, but often enough that our home-bound stories about parenting in this "new normal." We will probably post it 3 or 4 days a week. Stay tuned for updates on the podcast. In the meantime, you can check out old episodes at https://niagaraswatercooler.podbean.com/
Day 3:
Howie:
This was the first day since everything basically hit pause that my wife didn’t have to go to work. With her home, our 5-year-old felt the need to show her absolutely everything, as 5-year-olds do. Around lunchtime, Rayna had convinced my wife to begin posting make-up tutorials on YouTube. Seriously. Go here:
Doing so will allow you the ability to properly apply makeup to look like a kitten, as instructed by a kindergartner. (It’s as adorable as you can probably imagine, and I’m totally biased here but I don’t care. There are craft videos, too.)
One of the things we were curious about was the school lunches being distributed to district kids. My wife took our daughters to one of the locations today and came home impressed with the bagged lunch of a sandwich, fruit, vegetable, milk pint, and pre-wrapped breakfast to eat in the morning. We’ll be doing that again, because it gets us out of the house, we’re keeping contact at an almost nonexistent level, and it provides menu variety. Also, I’m not a stockholder in Kraft and don’t have an endless supply of macaroni and cheese, ya know?
Today we also managed to get some technical problems solved and Rayna worked on some distance learning activities. These were accessible through the Medina C.S.D. website and were set up by her teacher (who, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, also saw the aforementioned makeup tutorial). We also set aside a few reading times later in the day. We read two more chapters of Charlotte’s Web and uploaded them to the Facebook group as separate entries, and before she went to bed we read the next chapter of a different book with which we’re two-thirds done.
What did I do to alleviate my fear? Rayna, and Teagan, and I baked muffins! Yup! We baked a dozen banana bread muffins with chocolate chips, and had enough dough left for a mini loaf. Elsewhere on this page you can see them helping make the batter and then, later, taste-testing their handiwork. I even threw in a pic of me making sure they were edible. (Newsflash: only six muffins and the loaf remain for the morning, so they are!)
I suppose it was a good day. Here’s hoping that when you read this, Thursday is going as swimmingly.
Bobby:
Yesterday went better than expected. My wife and I had to make a run to the hardware store because we are starting a small home improvement project. It was not as crazy outside as I thought it would be. We even got the kids to help out.
The kids are completing their schoolwork in a timely fashion. They are complaining about it just as much too. I find myself getting my coffee in the morning and sitting with my kids for the few hours it takes to complete their assignments. This is quickly becoming the new normal in our house.
The part that really bothers me is the weather is not cooperating. I would love to take the kids for a bike ride, walk, or even play some cornhole in the backyard. I would settle for the sun to come out and dry up all of this rain we just got. The next chance we get to be outside, we will be prepping the garden boxes for this year's home vegetable garden though. We have already started growing in the house. Not sure how long our current situation will last, but we had a garden last year and will have one this year too.
Thursday I will be making smoked chicken for dinner. I like to cook when I get anxious. I am sure I will find more things to do like repair the gate on my fence.