Big Day

It's been a big day here in Virginia. I got up super early to get to Wegmans for opening. I turned in the parking lot and immediately saw a line just to get in the door. After parking and gathering my personal Clorox wipes and putting on my winter gloves, I realized it was just because the store hadn't opened yet. They let us all in when the doors opened at 7:00.

The shelves were stocked pretty well. They were limiting high demand items (eggs, milk, meat, etc.), but I was able to get what was needed and pretty much everything I wanted, or some OK substitutes. They didn't have much in the way of the regular meat that we get. Chicken is scarce, friends! I was so excited to get done with shopping and take my stupid gloves off. Once I unloaded all the groceries at home, Matt, Quinn, and I wiped down every container/box/bag with a wipe before putting them away.

In addition to my shopping, I had my first virtual workday. We are currently in the process of figuring out virtual learning and how that will look. We also had a staff meeting with 70 people on Zoom. I miss my coworkers! Following our staff meeting the Governor announced that all Virginia schools will be closed for at least the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year. I have felt since midweek that this would eventually be the outcome, but I didn't think we would get here so fast. It's so weird that I walked out of there last week and had no idea I wouldn't be going back. This experience continues to be completely surreal.

Quinn and I spent the afternoon playing Life (Quinn had 7 children, 6 of which were girls...I can only dream), doing a quick workout video (where my form was corrected at least 8 times), and working on reading. I had to deliver some food to a friend this evening, and then we made food on the grill (I forced Matt to get propane yesterday).

Tonight I am working on making sure all our needed prescriptions will be at Target when I go later this week. I am also starting to set up my google classroom. My mom sent me a few pictures of when she and her sisters went to visit my Grandma at her nursing home yesterday. They said she loved it and laughed the whole time.

Elsa

Elsa goes for a walk.

Check on your friends with strong willed daughters. We are not OK. 

Have you all seen that little meme circulating on Facebook? It's about me. I'm your friend. My daughter is strong willed. It is HARD. She will drag out an argument for hours because she thinks she is right. I have no one to blame but myself for this. She is MY kid. And in the long run I will be glad for this...but OMG, LET IT GO, ELSA.

Elsa goes to church.

Quinn was Elsa all day today. Elsa went to church (nice that everyone "at church" didn't have to witness my parenting of the strong will), did chalk in the driveway, walked a lot, and found various other projects around the house (including cleaning out her closet) to do.

Elsa does chalk

During the evening's last battle with her dad, I found myself hiding in the bathroom because I didn't want to get involved. Wish me luck as I brave the grocery store tomorrow and return to work virtually. Should be interesting with my social distancing shadow.

Elsa's mother hiding

Christmas Cookies

That's where we are at. Christmas cookies. We were deciding what to have for dinner since we are running out of our non shelf stable food, and Matt honestly suggested Christmas cookies. So I said sure, why not. I had a jar of dry ingredients that someone made me for Christmas and we never made them. Turns out they are great in March and with ribs (one of the only cuts of meat I could find at Wegmans last Thursday) and brussel sprouts.

We need a trip to the grocery store soon, but the question in my mind is when is the best time to go so that I can find a decent amount of the things we need (mostly fruits, veggies, eggs, meat would also probably be a good idea). We also need a few things from Target as well as extra prescriptions and EpiPens, the current ones expire at the end of this month, but we also can't get them until the 23rd (insurance rules). It would be great to be able to find everything all at one time.

In other news, we were able to get out for a long walk this morning to see the blue bells on the trail near our house. I made Quinn take a few pics in her Easter dress. Matt and Quinn did a few of the Mo Willems drawing videos after we got back, and of course we really just hung around the house all day. It's movie night and we are naturally watching Frozen II for the 2nd time this week. I'm trying not to eat all the cookies before the end of the weekend.

As predicted...

Thursday I was living the dream, minus the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic. Friday - not so much the dream, more the reality. We did get out for a lot of fresh air with lots of walking and talking. We walked 4.1 miles! It was 80 degrees and the cherry blossoms in our neighborhood are in full bloom.

It wasn't a very eventful day. We did have people enter our house...the cleaning people. I am not sure if that's within social distancing rules, but I guess cleaning is a good thing. Matt and I also had a long conference call with a financial planner. Super fun mid pandemic. The day involved a lot of arguing over things such as hair getting wet in the bathtub, the amount of cheese on a pizza, and why it's not a good idea to walk so close to the edge of a sidewalk on a busy street.

We also had a good time reminiscing/telling Quinn about "the 1900's" when there was no Disney+, not even Netflix! And how we use to have to go to a store to see if they had the movie we wanted to watch available for rent. We also tried to explain the concept of cassette tapes and CDs and walkmans. Tomorrow will be one week of quarantine/social distancing. It's still so unreal to think this is actually happening.

Like a Stonewall

It was a beautiful day in the commonwealth. The kind of day when you are standing a bus duty and wish you had the day off. All mild winter long my colleagues and I wished for just one snow day. Look what we got instead. A virus. It's kinda fitting for teachers if you think about it.

We are making the best of it here in Virginia, though. Quinn had an A+ day. Only minor issues that she was easily distracted from - first day since the quarantine started. This morning she read her first book ever! So exciting! I made the book on a site called BookBuilder (https://www.bookbuilderonline.com/). This is super awesome. I took the words she knows and picked out books she would be able to read and then put her name in them. She loved it.

After lunch, k'nex, and a quick FaceTime with Grandma and Bo, we headed out to the battlefields. We did the Old Stone Bridge hiking loop! I was super impressed there was no complaining at all about the walking. There was a lot of questions about killing, and war, and death. But ya know par for the course. I also tried to tell her she was a born confederate, but her father and I are northerners. She did not like that one bit. She's a northerner by blood I suppose. She also tried to draw a lot of parallels between Frozen II and the Battle of Manassas aka the Battle of Bull Run. I went with it.

After finishing our hike, Quinn really wanted to see a cannon and I thought she would be pretty impressed by good old Stonewall, so we drove to a different section of the battlefields. As we were walking around that area of the park an older couple was walking toward us. The man was carrying something I swore were bagpipes. Turns out it was, in fact, bagpipes. As we got nearer he played them while walking down the trail. I do enjoy some bagpipes, but this was pretty unexpected.

A near flawless day today can't bode well for tomorrow, BUT it's supposed to be almost 80 again, so I'm keeping my hopes high for now...also can't be good.

In the Time of Coronavirus

Well friends, my last post was approximately 1,226 days ago. A lot has changed. Yet some things are still very much the same. You can thank the global pandemic, COVID-19 aka Coronavirus for this resurrection. Sooo my goal will be a daily or semi daily (I should start with low expectations here, let's be honest it's been thousands of days) post about our journey through this time period. I hope it's less than 1,226 days. Let me begin my story last Thursday...when I knew for sure that it was really about to go down.

THURSDAY: 

• Worked a full day, end of the day announcement that we would have school Friday, but workdays on Monday and Tuesday.
• Scrambled to pick up Quinn to try to get a few things at Costco. Got a few things, but not really everything I wanted...mainly no pasta. 
• Matt got home, we ate a quick dinner then I went to Wegmans were everything was over picked or gone (still no pasta...everyone is eating carbs, even though I thought everyone was on Keto), but I did get a good amount of stuff. 

FRIDAY:

• Worked one of the weirdest days of school. Just an eerie feeling all day. About 45 minutes before the end of they day they announced that no one would return until April 14th. All day was a mad dash for me to divvy out food to kids, try to unload refurbished computers, do the daily tasks, etc. Now we had little notice to basically gather stuff ASAP, clean, and leave. 
• Picked up Quinn and went to Target. Here is a picture of the last people we saw up close.

• At Target we gathered the last of the groceries we could find, and picked up a crystal growing kit as well as a rock painting activity for Quinn. Also new sidewalk chalk! Target still had no pasta, but Matt found some at a corner store in DC that day. 
• Matt was also given permission to work from home through March. Quinn's school sends notice they are closed and will reopen March 31. 
• Started the mass amount of laundry. This was mostly school bags, coats, lunchboxes.

SATURDAY: 

• Quarantine, day 1. Sort of. I did go drop off food at a friend's house, but with good reason.
• Continued massive laundry.
• Sidewalk chalk
• Surface cleaned the house. 
• Family walk.
• Movie night: Live Action Aladdin on Disney Plus

SUNDAY:

• Did some online churching.
• Started the crystal growing kit.
• We did cheat a little on this day too...we went and bought new running shoes. Our discount card was going to expire and now there's more exercise time :) 
• Quinn had her first Coronavirus meltdown and refused to get back in the car.

• Took a family walk.
• Ordered books on Amazon.

MONDAY:

• Sight words
• Daily chore...changing all the beds. 
• Playground time and a walk.
• Had a little read in.

• Did miles for the first time in a long time. Never a good time. 

TUESDAY:

• FYI...I typed this out to a friend, so it's the only day that's 100% accurate. I'm struggling to remember Saturday to Monday...
• 745: wake up 8:15: make breakfast, eat breakfast, watch Doc McStuffins 9:30: sight word practice, flahcards and shaving cream, clean up 10:30: puzzles, marble run 11:15: teach Quinn how to play war to work on numbers 12:00 lunch and clean up, some coloring 1:00: play outside 2:00 wash the car inside and outside 3:00 FaceTime with Grandma and Bo and snack 4:00 laundry and tell Dad to stop working 415: the mother went on a walk 5:15 bath 6:00 number zingo 6:30 frozen pizza and Frozen 2 8:30 bed for Quinn

WEDNESDAY:

• Sight words with marker boards and hangman...Quinn is currently obsessed with playing hangman (I guess she learned it a school) I'm so glad she now is learning more words than Quinn, love, mom, dad, cat.
• Daily chore was cleaning out and organizing the playroom.
• Walked 1.7 miles with Quinn (I told her she's doing a marathon and when she accrues 26 miles with me she can order something on Amazon.).
• Got gas in the car...Matt found out today that he's now working 8 weeks at home, so he has to go in to his office to pick up things. I filled up the car at Costco...there is an attendant that cleans the pump after each person. I also brought my own Clorox wipes and coated my hands with them while using the pump.
• Played Sorry
• Revived the Blog. 

Well writing this confirmed my memory is not what it use to be. I also take a lot more videos than pictures. I have gone walking and/or running everyday, so that's a plus. I'm also happy to get more time with Quinn than I typically would. This week my direction from my job was to take a week to address the needs of our family and ourselves. Next week we will begin working virtually, but we do not have exact guidelines yet. They will be provided later this week. I think that will also continue to evolve over time, but only time will tell. Stay tuned. 

ONE!

Quinn is ONE! She's been one for a couple weeks now, but we have been seriously busy since. By busy I mostly mean sick. We are back in action this week and today, Election Day, I finally have a day off! So year one blogpost is on the agenda. At the official one year weigh in Quinn came in at 19 pounds, 11 ounces. She's 30 inches long. She's keeping it consistent in the 50th and 75th percentiles. She has 15 teeth...just waiting on one top molar to come through and then hopefully we will be done with teeth until the 2 year molars (which she will probably get tomorrow at the rate we are going). 

We celebrated Quinn's first birthday with our family and some good friends at our house. We had her favorite food (PASTA!) for lunch. After her pasta she had her first cake...vanilla cake with vanilla icing. After being hesitant, she got a little more into it, but never really went too crazy. Quinn (and her parents) have been very lucky for the help of our families and our Virginia family this past year. 

We are still blessed with a very funny, curious, smart, and independent girl. She becomes more and more strong willed by the day. She has learned a lot the past month. She is better at sharing attention and becoming more independent in playing. She still loves reading. She often will pick out books and bring them to us, or even pick out books and "read" to herself. She is pretty much full on walking at this point, that's probably happened within the last week. She is also really great with signs. She signs for dog, baby, milk, thank you, more, all done, bath, etc. She is also understanding more and more that we tell her and will follow our directions..."go get...," "where is...," "come here...," etc. She is not the best at following NO :). Quinn has a lot to say, but we don't really understand her yet. Hopefully soon! 

Our daily schedule is still pretty consistent. Quinn wakes up at about 6:30 everyday and goes to bed about 8. She takes an hour long morning nap and about a 2 hour afternoon one. We did drop a midday milk feeding, but sometimes takes milk in a cup at that time. She does not like cow's milk! She eats everything we eat and a lot of it. We went out to lunch today and she finished her own pizza. She still loves pasta, most fruits and veggies, she's getting better with meat, likes cheese, falafel, and really most things we give her. Her independence is alive at meal times as well when she likes to try to feed herself using a fork and spoon, and she's really pretty good at it. 

This past year has gone by so fast and all three of us has learned so much! Quinn has brought so much fun to our family and we are so excited to see what she will do each day. We are looking forward to all the new things this next year will bring! We love you, Q!