The Luckiest No Matter What!

Dear Baby of the Family, I miss you terribly right now.  As a parent, when you know your littlest is also your last, you hold onto everything with a firm love grip. You know it's the last crawl, the last middle of the night feedings, the last first smile or laugh or word. Babyhood and toddler life slip farther away with every passing day. There is no next time around.  The last baby gets a few perks that maybe other siblings don't get- more alone time, more one-on-one, and the attention from a parent who is watching everything with eyes wide open as if not to miss a single thing. Oldest children get all the shock and awe- everything is new, often times surprising. With the youngest, you anticipate, you get ready, you don't want anything to pass by without you taking in every part of it.  If things were BC (before Covid), my littlest would have his mama to himself for some blocks of time- while one older brother was at preschool for a couple of hours and other two brothe...

Dear Preston, HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY! In some ways it feels like I just brought you home from the hospital, our final boy, our littlest little guy. In others, I don’t remember a single second without you. You fit so seamlessly well into the family that I can’t imagine a time when you weren’t there. I need you to know, right now, that things are super weird around here. There is a virus in our country and in our world called the Corona Virus and it is so contagious and dangerous and new that we’ve had to drastically change our daily life. All six of us have been at home, together, for the last 7 weeks. Schools are closed, we have to go grocery shopping with a mask and gloves on, and we are not allowed to see our family. Daddy is working upstairs and the rest of us have been together. This has been very hard for everyone. You though, my sweet boy, will have no recollection of this at all- you won’t remember anything about it and that is so strange. I’d say you love this quarantine th...

I didn't really know what to write about this week. Other weeks, I've had epiphanies or meltdowns or rocking successes or some real thoughtful reflections... This one was, honestly, much of the same... teaching, learning, playing, fighting monotony, fighting anarchy, some days good, some days not.  The weather has really been getting to me here in Michigan. It's been mostly crap and that makes everything that is already hard even harder. I'm to the point now where I am sick of being cold, sick of blizzard-feeling winds, sick of clouds to the point where I don't even want to go outside if it's below my expectations.  All four of my boys have birthdays the first week of May. Back when the first stay at home order went through, in mid March, I was certain beyond belief that we'd be back at it by their birthdays. I never questioned their family birthday party having to be postponed. As the weeks have went by, it's sunk in more and more, for me and for...

Admitting you need help is hard.  Asking for help is hard.  Accepting help is hard.  This week I cracked. I was impatient, snappy, and on the brink of tears throughout most of the beginning of the week. I tried to fix it by making sure I went to bed a bit earlier, by trying to start each day with a fresh clean slate, by trying to look for positives where I could, but by Wednesday I was feeling like none of it was helping enough to pull myself out. I had lost my temper multiple times and everything was annoying me and frustrating me. I clearly needed some help.   I went and told Josh, through tears, that I needed him to look at his calendar over the next few weeks and clear some hours or take a day off if possible so that I could not be with the kids. I had been wearing this mom, teacher, and United Nations Peacekeeper hat for almost five weeks straight every minute of every day with no escape, with no break, with no end in sight. I wasn't expecti...

Is it really true that we've been staying home for four weeks?!  In most regards, this has felt vvvveeerrryyy long, but the days do go by fast and we are busy. Part of my surprise is the fact that I'm still standing. I remember when the stay home, stay safe order went in to effect on March 14th. I told myself I could totally do this for two weeks and then I would probably fall apart. Then, as time continues to go on, I think I can make it another week or two before I'll really lose it.  I'm still here.  What I've realized is that this whole experience is more of a roller coaster than a run to a finish line. Sometimes I'm feeling successful, positive, and able to handle everything one minute and then the next I feel like I'm completely undone. So instead of trying to make it to some arbitrary date before losing all my marbles, I lose them periodically on any given day at any given moment ;) The positive side of this is that I am making it, day by ...

Thursday. A day I won't soon forget. I began the day as I have been lately, journaling and watching the news. I happened to catch a story of a 30 year old teacher and coach from New Jersey who died of the Corona Virus. The journalist was speaking with his wife and tears were just streaming down my face. This person had already been treated at the hospital and was responding well to oxygen treatments and meds. He was sick and uncomfortable, but managing. He went to bed and never woke up. He had no preexisting conditions and was healthy. There are stories like these as well as stories about the population this is affecting the most, but this story stuck with me huge. Our 'school' or whatever you want to call it started at 8:30 with our usual community meeting where we greet each other, talk about the upcoming day, and read a picture book together. Even though I maintained my composure despite my shook-ness from earlier, I knew this day was going to be a memorable one. How...

My family has been staying home and staying safe for 16 days. My kids are into this new routine we've built, people are doing some learning, things are getting done. We are reading, we are doing math, we are journaling, we are doing art, we are doing science, we are learning about the world. We are going outside, a lot.  None of these things are without struggle and frustration, fun and accomplishment.  All of these things are consuming my entire day and most evenings.  This week, week two, was hard. For whatever reason, I was quite manic in my mental state.  There were a couple of days were I was really in the moment, really enjoying the time with my sons, feeling like we were grooving, feeling like I was being successful. We did a science experiment with soap that was a huge hit, built an awesome snowman, wrote cards to family members, spent a Free-Write Friday writing super silly stories, played some games that we loved, clapped as Preston learned new word...

Last Thursday night, March 12th, I was reading Ann Arbor Public School's thoughtful letter to their community letting parents and students know they were closing school. Only minutes after that, I happened to catch the governor speaking live as she announced that, starting that Monday March 16th, ALL K-12 schools in Michigan would be closed. It's crazy that it's only been a little over a week and somehow I am living a completely different life. I now have four children at home with me full time. When I say 'at home with me,' it's not like the summer 'at home with me' where we go swimming, play on playgrounds, take day trips, visit museums and trampoline parks and spend countless hours playing with neighbors and family. I mean the 'at home with me' where we stay at our home... like all the time. Sure, we still spend a lot of time outside, but it's in our backyard, on our driveway, sadly waving at neighbors as they walk by or play in their ...

My boys celebrated all their half birthdays in November. This halfway point makes me pause and reflect on each of them. It's almost February so clearly my reflection is a bit delayed ;)  Here's what's going on with each of my boys... NOLAN, 6.5: Nolan is the biggest fan of all sports. He wakes up every morning just to look at scores and see teams' records. He just is a sport enthusiast. Currently, he's started playing basketball for the first time and has loved playing soccer and t-ball. Nolan is a reader and I love it. He reads in the car, he reads to calm down, he reads to learn, and he reads for enjoyment. We feel very lucky this love of reading is already inside of him. Recently, he's been big on atlases and just informational text on countries, populations, weather, etc. He also likes chapter books. We've been reading The Princess in Black, Nate the Great, Notebook of Doom, and Magic Tree House series. This kid needs to be kept busy. If left to ...