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We treated ourselves to a movie night (the Goonies from 1985 won out over my suggestion of Richie Rich) and homemade ice cream sandwich cookies after a pretty good week of remote learning. Tip: make the cookies way thinner. They were even too big for my mouth. Conor missed the treat but got super excited because he thought his remote control was controlling the TV! He is so helpful.

We also went on a hike (not a surprise) in the long meadows. We did encounter a surprise though: we found the back side of six flags from across the river. Look carefully at the photo. It was close to Conor’s nap time so he was getting fussy so we fed him on the trek back.

Beautiful weather. Lots of soccer, Frisbee, walks, etc.  The kids claim lots of clean-up too, but I don’t see a lot of evidence of this.

Brothers! (Conor always says Eeee for Elliott and has recently started saying “brober”

Rolling with the homies…. (Conor loves his bike but hasn’t quite figured out that its different from a stroller and you need to use core strength to stay up)

Look at my sister’s ball skillz!

Screw these bowls… my mom is finally paying attention to me!

We’ve reluctantly had to rely more on technology since the COVID crisis.  Elliott has an Alexa in his room, and its interesting to hear about his interactions with Alexa.

In the beginning…

Elliott: “Alexa, make fart noises.”

Elliott: “Alexa, how much wood can a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?” (Turns out 25 lbs.)

Last week…. “Mom, did you know that our basketballs arrived?”

Me: “No, I didn’t.  Did you open them up with Dad?”

Elliott: “No, Alexa told me.”

Me: “What, how did Alexa tell you?”

Elliott: “Well, she has this blue light that’s like a (struggles to say the word) notification.  I ask her what it’s about, and she will tell me that a package arrived with blah blah blah in it.”

This morning… “Alexa, what time is it?”  (He asked before 7 a.m. in a groggy state because he had a new lego set he was building and wanted to continue on it.)

This afternoon, Jordan walks in.  “What are you listening to?”

Elliott: “Fox News”

Jordan: “How about you try kids trivia instead?”

(At dinner, we asked him how he made his way to Fox News… he said he asked Alexa for the news and then she offered options.  He chose Fox.  My guess is that was the most memorable, easy-to-pronounce news source.  We’ll need to find a kid option; I don’t want him turning into a Trump supporter!)

On a walk this afternoon…

Elliott: “You know Mom, how like you have an allowance… I’m not sure if that’s the right word.”  (Nat and I figure out he means account.)

Elliott: “I donated $10 to help fight COVID.”

Me: “Wow, you did!  That’s great buddy!”  (I ask a few questions… I’m thinking that Jordan asked the kids if they wanted to use some of their own “charity” envelopes – we just started having them set aside 10% this year – to help COVID.  I soon learn this is not the case.)

Elliott: “Alexa asked me if I would like to donate money to COVID, so I said yes.  It had to be at least $5 so I did $10 of your and Dad’s money.  Is that okay?”

Me: “Yeah bud, that’s really great.  Let’s think about you giving some of your money too, okay?”

(Natalie, meanwhile, indignantly protests because she feels like he should have to give all from his own charity money.)

It’s all too funny not to laugh.  It’s always based in innocence and curiosity, never sneakiness or malfeasance.  It’s scary how much Alexa knows.

Aunt Leah Danger Ellis Busch from Alaska is teaching her nephews and nieces (including the Rob Marx cousins) about habitats and Jordan Linville is teaching piano. I get the fun tasks of organizing learning bins with the kids and making the daily learning plan.  Nat is having fun playing with Facebook messenger apps.

Day 13: COVID quarantine = All my favorite people are always around and have time to snuggle and play!!!!!! – Conor

Governor just announced no school until at least May 4. MA has 1,100+ cases. Conor is one guy who loves the Covid quarantine and is crushing this remote learning. He reads more books than any of us (he brought this book to J today to read!) and has discovered his belly button. Elliott and I went for a bike ride this afternoon to deliver sidewalk chalk messages to friends. And Natalie’s huge bright spot is that we set her up with Facebook Kids Messenger; she is loving it! I think the number one person she texts is her Dad, which she even admitted was a little funny because we all spend so much time together. 

Cribbage for Math time! Science experiment with Kaitlynn. Conor was loving a baby organic chemistry book because the atoms were balls. And COVID care package from Grandma  yay!!!

The stomach bug put me behind a few days. we had a renewed attempt at remote learning today and did much better. We were doing personal reflections at dinner and Conor was clapping for all of us! (Conor felt decidedly less positive about the spring snow storm though)  I’m feeling super thankful for a neighbor who gave us clementines, eggs and bananas since our grocery order doesn’t come until late Tues night and it’s been a week since we have been to Big Y. 

Conor woke up feeling much better but is still crabby. We let J out of his room for dinner.

Elliott joined me for 7 min of PE today!!!  Look at that impressive plank! (He was setting up for a push up). And learning time began. We got instructions from school. I’m going to make a learning plan with them each morning. I also told Jordan to order a chromebook with rush delivery and made a large order for supplies on Amazon. So thankful for delivery workers! A lego FaceTime play date with the Marx boys counts as engineering and drawing FaceTime chat with Grandma counts as art.

Day 4 was rough. Conor woke up in a bed of red kidney bean-puke and Jordan went to bed with a dry cough so we quarantined him in Elliott’s room for 20 hours (day 4 into 5).
Natalie and Elliott did a scavenger hunt on our old street with a lego prize!  The pic of Conor walking with them in their St Patrick’s day clothing was the only time they were by each other yesterday because otherwise they had to social distance from each other.

Day 3 of 23+
It was a full day of conference calls so the family fun was considerably less. Conor is loving baths so that occupied him for almost 30 min while the other two kids spent time on technology. Conor has a cold so he is crabbier than usual and J has a sinus infection so he needs to rest more than usual. Hoping this is the worst of it.

N and E also helped pick up dinner mess so We had time to play apples to apple. N and E also had a friendly wrestling tournament that didn’t end up in a fight or injury!! (If you talk to Nat, don’t tell her I wrote about that or posted pictures.). They also read and wrote a little today but my home schooling hasn’t started yet (reference the top many conference calls).