I almost titled this post “Trying to be Thankful”, but writing this post on Thanksgiving day, with a full stomach, in my warm house, with my healthy family, I certainly have a lot to be thankful about in the midst of a pretty relentless 2020. I’m glad the pandemic has given us pause to slow down and consider the things that really matter the most and to me that’s my little tribe of turkeys. It goes without saying though that the current situation sucks. It won’t last forever, but man these next couple months look rather bleak.
Let’s jump into what we’ve been up to. Thankfully the kids are still attending school in person. It has been really good for them and they are mask wearing pros. Their biggest fear is going back to online school and they are willing to do whatever is asked of them to keep going in person. Our elementary school has so far escaped relatively unscathed while the high schools and middle schools in our district have been fluctuated between online and in person depending on case counts. At the elementary school there are a number of safeguards in place to try to keep everyone healthy and allow for contact tracing if need be. This year each grade enters the school at a separate entrance and has their own designated route to get to their classrooms. Mask wearing is required in the building at all times except for lunch. At lunch the kids have assigned seats, and assigned spots in line for going to/from their classroom. They keep their backpacks with them and have assigned desks they sanitize when switching from their English to Spanish classrooms midday. Overall I’ve been really impressed with the amount of thought our Elementary School has put in to all of this. Figured I should document this someplace even though I spend a lot of time trying not to obsess about the details. I will honestly be surprised if we make it all the way to Christmas break without being online for at least a while. We have 3 school weeks until Christmas break so fingers crossed.
We are very lucky that Jason and I can both work from home. Our real coronavirus exposure risk comes from the kids being in school. School cut back to 4 days a week a couple of months back so the kids have essentially have Fridays off. We decided the risk currently outweighs the reward of sending them to daycare on Fridays. It’s difficult to trust a 4, 6, and 8-year-old to be “safe” out in the world during a pandemic when I’m not there. It’s a lot of responsibility for kids to take on. It’s been mentally draining for me. Jason and I talk about the “mental load” that we carry and admittedly mine averages about a 7/10 on a good day. Adding in a global pandemic has jacked that up a bit so it doesn’t take much for my cup to runneth over, in a bad way.
Before COVID got crazy out of hand again we had 2 ‘events’ worth writing about. On September 18th we celebrated William’s half birthday by throwing him a surprise party in the back yard, with only classmates, as safely as possible. All of his friends managed to keep the party a secret until it was time to walk to our house after school. Needless to say William was surprised and his brothers spent the next few weeks wondering when their surprise half birthday party was going to occur. We chose a Minecraft theme and I finally made him the birthday cake we had planned in March. We made a piñata, played bingo, and generally let the boys run around the yard being boys for a couple hours. The weather was great and fun was had by all.
We also did manage one socially distanced trip out of town to visit “Sheep Creek Cave” with the boys. It was beautiful fall weather and the boys were brave enough to go a bit back into the cave. The hike up to the cave was about as much as we would want to tackle with 2 adults and the ages of our 3 kids. A little more scrambling was involved than Jason had originally intended. On the second day, we ran them through “Fantasy Canyon” a very off the beaten path attraction out by Vernal, Utah. (26 miles from “Bonanza, Utah” population 1 as of the 2010 census.)
Let’s chat about the boys. Andrew has settled into the preschool routine and has made a few friends. Those first few weeks were sort of rough and he had to be peeled off of me like velcro, but for the 
most part, he now goes willingly. He is a super demanding dude. I don’t know if it’s just a case of the 3rd child needing attention, but he’s seemingly unable to do much on his own these days. I think he enjoys seeing how much he can get us to do for him. “Can you get my water cup?” (when it’s sitting 6 feet away), “Put on my shoes?” (although he is completely capable). “Help me buckle?” (even though he’s been capable of doing it alone since he was 3). My least favorite is that he is currently “scared” to use the bathroom alone. We have already discussed that in kindergarten he’s going to need to figure it out as holding it all day is not going to be a good solution. He’s also in a phase where he wakes up a few nights per week with bad dreams. It’s a phase we went through with Christopher and I’m ready for it to end. He’s still particularly obsessed with a certain small stuffed panda, and has asked for a bigger one for Christmas. He has a hard time falling asleep if “number 1 panda” is not available. He also demands daddy watch “animal videos” with him before bed each night. Essentially they pick an animal and Jason finds YouTube videos they watch together. It’s a challenge to come up with new animals these days. He is beyond excited for Christmas. I may have made the mistake of mentioning decorating a few days ago and I haven’t heard the end of it. He let his preschool teachers know they could get him a fire truck for Christmas. Thank goodness he’s cute…it’s also why we are likely enablers.
Christopher is the cutest sweetest guy. He is loving and animated and thoughtful. His teachers report he is awesome at wearing his mask at school and a super patient classmate. They are pretty much in love with him. I can’t blame them. He recently lost his 2nd top tooth so he would officially like
his two front teeth for Christmas this year. I set the lost tooth in a safe place on the counter and 3 hours later he let us know he had put it on his bed and couldn’t find it. In the meantime, he and his brother had wrestled on said bed and the tooth was nowhere to be found. (Trust me, we turned that room upside down looking for it!). I wonder if Theo drug it off somewhere…or ate it. Literally vanished. Luckily the tooth fairy was understanding and left him some money anyways. It is worth noting Christopher has only lost 4 teeth, and this is the 2nd one to get lost before the tooth fairy could collect it. In other news, Christopher has blossomed into an amazing reader. I have never been so thankful as the day I found out our library was letting us come in to pick out books in person again. We have trucked home A LOT of books lately.
William is slowly getting the importance of helping out around the house and being a team/family player. The great thing is he is now actually old enough to be helpful! I have a goal of never unloading the dishwasher myself again. The motivation (at least to start) was that 
he wanted to buy a kid’s Fitbit. He had some birthday money, and some rewards points from the orthodontist but still needed a bit more money. We made a deal that I would pay him a small allowance as long as he was helpful throughout the week and didn’t argue about doing jobs when asked. Now for $2 a week I have a pretty reliable helper. Speaking of the orthodontist, William’s teeth are looking AMAZING! We saw the dentist and the orthodontist last week and not only did he have zero cavities, he is on pace to get his braces off in about 6 months. Just another reason we are looking forward to the end of the school year. Will is doing great in school this year. He has an awesome group of friends and really seems to like his teachers. I get the impression that he does what is asked of him and stays under the radar for the most part. He doesn’t like to be the center of attention and is not as animated as Christopher but he’s a pretty great student. He’s also a pretty crazy reader recently finishing the Harry Potter series, A Wrinkle in Time series, and really enjoying Fablehaven.
William was Harry Potter for Halloween this year. I had really mixed feelings about what to do (or not do) for Halloween. We settled on letting the boys go to daycare for the Halloween party and then some very VERY careful supervised trick-or-treating with Jason. Meanwhile I pre-bagged candy several days in advance and set it out on a table on our sidewalk a few bags at a time while monitoring from a safe distance on our porch. I don’t know if my safety precautions were quite good enough though, as the boys brought home a cold (we think) from the daycare Halloween party. That was the final straw in our decision to take some time away from daycare once again.
I have busied myself with a load of projects to stay occupied. We canned grape juice. I raked leaves. I acquired another recliner to reupholster. I sewed baby Yoda masks for the kids’ friends at school. We got flu shots. I raked leaves again. I’m working on teacher Christmas gifts. We voted. The boys went on bike rides (I just bought a bike so now I can go with them!) I shopped online for Christmas. I bought way too many bow ties for Theo. I am sewing half a dozen various other Christmas presents. We decorated a gingerbread house. I raked the last of the leaves. I continued organizing my sewing/craft area.
Like many people, spending all this time at our home has made us think about ways to improve our space. After careful consideration, we decided it was time to part with the red basement carpet. I understand if some of you are shocked and/or saddened but after finishing the new family room this spring, and painting the cabinets and walls this summer it was the logical next step. We went with a much more neutral shade (grey) and it made the space look much more polished and finished. I also hung a curtain to block off what I will lovingly call “Jason’s room”, which is essentially where we pile tools, toys, camping equipment, and any other junk we don’t have a place for. If the winter gets long enough we just might take another shot at organizing that space again.
It goes without saying that Jason spoils me. He humored one of my Christmas requests early this year and we bought a Roomba on Amazon Prime Day. Our Roomba’s name is Norm and Norm does a great job keeping a small piece of my sanity intact by vacuuming up kid crumbs and stray cat litter on the daily. I previously would have never even considered getting a robot vacuum, but adding a cat (and litterbox) to the main floor this summer certainly changed that. Norm can sometimes seem a bit lost and occasionally gets wedged under the edge of the dishwasher, but for the most part is pretty awesome. It’s great that I can tell him to start when I walk the boys to school and by the time I’m home the majority if the crumbs etc are gone. A first world problem and solution I’m pretty thankful for these days!
Speaking of Jason, he turned 40 (!?!) in October. How? Well, I haven’t killed him yet, and he’s really old, that’s how. My turn will come soon enough. I would have thrown him a surprise party but he’s a lot harder to surprise. As we’ve been joking about during quarantine, he “Never f*cking leaves”. Seriously love him though, even after all of the semi-forced together time. When I get tired of him I just tell him to go back to his office. It’s all in good humor. 
The newest boy in our house (Theo) is the perfect fit! He is silly and snuggly (and sometimes a little bitey) but overall very patient with the boys. William LOVES that he will come snuggle with him while he reads before bed. Andrew enjoys collecting boxes for him to play in. Christopher loves to hand out treats. While Kiki and Theo are not friends, they mostly tolerate one another. Theo sometimes gets a little too friendly or gets caught stealing her food and she gives him a good thumping. The unexpected benefit of having Theo is that he has helped the boys also be more comfortable around Kiki. Kiki is a “sit on your lap” cat whereas Theo is a “curl up in a puddle on your lap” cat. Theo’s very forward friendliness has in turn made the boys more likely to give Kiki pets when she comes looking for loves, even though she is generally a more hands off cat.
That’s a rather lengthy update from here. I look forward to seeing all of you sometime in 2021 when things settle down again. Luckily vaccine news looks promising and we’re most of the way there. God Bless the Healthcare Workers! Seriously props to all those who have been working in high stress breakneck conditions since this whole thing started. It reminds me my life could be much more difficult and complicated and that I really do have a lot to be thankful for during this less than ideal 2020. Take care everyone!
S.~
