Well, I made it five days in a row. Ha. I’ve missed more days than I’ve managed to stick with it but rather than letting that stop me I’m doing a consolidated dump post. Normally I wouldn’t try to play “catch up” except that I have been picking a photo each day and considering what I would write in a post each day, so I’ve basically been writing the posts in my head just not on the page. I might as well put down what I had been planning to, right? Partial credit?
January 6, 2022
I love the cold days. But the older they get the harder it is to burn off the amount of energy needed to make for a decent bedtime if we can’t get outside. It already feels like a zoo around here most of the time and the house usually looks like a tornado has been through so why not just embrace it and pull all the couch cushions and pillows and play floor is lava.
January 7, 2022
The youngest discovered a week or two ago that her tooth was loose. She came in from outside in tears worried about losing it despite the fact that she’s watched both her sisters lose multiple teeth over the years.
This afternoon I checked in with her after seeing her messing with it and informed her that the time had come: the tooth was so loose we might want to think twice before sleeping with it like that. She was nervous but didn’t want me to touch it. So instead I showed her how to use a Kleenex and just give the tooth a firm little hug.
In less than five minutes her eyes got wide and she held out the tooth in the Kleenex to me. Later, before placing the tooth on the note she painstakingly wrote, she insisted that we brush it. (insert crying laughing emoji here)
Meanwhile, mama is over here having a moment that all of my babies are losing their baby teeth. When did this happen?
January 8, 2022
It’s so fun to watch this girl draw and write. This evening during books time she set to work replicating her library book cover. She was especially proud of the elbow/hand on hip detail and the way she formed her letters like the book font.
Kids are the best.
January 9, 2022
On January 9th seven years ago today four minutes before sunrise, this girl arrived earthside. I am so grateful and blessed to be her mama, but if we are being honest I take very little credit for her amazingness. When she was just a baby we used to rock together in her bedroom with only the hallway light creeping in and I used to look into her eyes and have the sensation you get when you look down into a deep pool of water. What’s down there? Something magic.
As she grew so did her magic and mystery. Things that were easy for my oldest weren’t easy for her and I was in uncharted parenting waters. My oldest is a fountain. Nothing needs to be done to draw her out. But this one it took patience and coaxing to bring her up from the depths.
These days she mostly bubbles like a soft and constant brook, and doesn’t require as much coaxing. But she’s still a little bit of mystery and a lot of miracle and it still feels like a privilege to get to witness. I love the way her brain works and her sense of humor and her intensity and sweetness and heart. I love that I get a front row seat.
January 10, 2022
Part of our bedtime ritual these days includes letting them draw while they listen to books. They each have their own notebook and share the new art supply kit between them and make all kinds of creations. Kid art and writing is one of my favorite things in the world, so I love seeing the elaborate pictures and narratives they create. It’s like tiny windows into their brains and I’m amazed every time.
January 11, 2022
We found out today that one of the family members we were around on Sunday tested positive for Covid – 19 today. Since it was less than two days between when we were around them and when they tested positive it counts as an “exposure”. Current guidance on an exposure is that, because we are all fully vaccinated, we can mask for five days and, if we don’t get symptoms, test on day five or mask for an additional five days.
In this phase of the pandemic we are headed into a wave of the newest and most contagious variant yet: Omicron. Because of it’s high spreadability it essentially sounds like we are all going to get Omicron at some point. There won’t be any avoiding it. They’re even saying that the masks that have worked so far aren’t sufficient anymore. That they need to be three layered medical grade to actually be effective.
So on one hand, if we are all going to be exposed eventually, we are perhaps in the best situation at present given that all my children have been vaccinated within the past three months and my husband and I received booster shots in November. On the other hand, it feels really weird to switch to being okay with something we have been avoiding for almost two years.
Anyway, I went for a walk this evening and was thinking (overthinking) all this. I found myself wishing for a sign. That this was all going to be okay. Or at least that we were where we were supposed to be. Or something. Maybe it was that I wanted to know that someone else was watching out for us because I don’t feel qualified to be in charge of anything this important. Or maybe it was just wanting a sign that there is more to everything than this pandemic. That there’s a bigger picture.
Then both owls appeared in the same tree and I called my husband to bring the kids so they could see them and we listened to them talk back and forth and fly across the park to the light pole and then the sunset lit the sky on fire and it all felt surreal and amazing.
January 12, 2022
The middle child woke up with a fever of 103.5 F this morning. We have no clue how to navigate this in the sanest and safest way for everyone, so I’m hanging upstairs in our bedroom with her wearing and mask and we’re keeping her away from her sisters and dad for now.
It’s hard when your kids are sick. It’s hard to parent in a pandemic.
January 13, 2022
The girl, despite her second day of fever, loves being able to hang out in our bed and relax. She even got to sleep with the whole queen sized bed to herself. It also helps ease mama’s worries that she seems generally unphased by her fever and is her cheerful self.
Also, her Covid and Influenza tests came back negative today. Is it that we tested for Covid too early or is it something else? Who knows. I’m just grateful she’s doing okay.
January 14, 2022
After her negative Covid test we weighed our options and released the middle from her quarantine. She was a little disappointed to leave the fluffy bubble of mom and dad’s bed but she was happy to rejoin her sisters and it did my heart good to see them play together.
It was also weird to watch them play soccer together in the yard and realize that, given that we’ve spent almost two years in a pandemic and have thus limited our social interactions, they are suddenly at the age where they could be signed up for soccer and all the other activities. Parenting feels like such a constant, center of everything thing that it’s weird to realize how it can sneak up on you.
January 15, 2022
Today the girls played charades together. They didn’t even need us to help or read cards or anything they just did it.
Amazing. (And adorable.)
January 16, 2022
We have a pair of owls that live in our neighborhood. They have for a few years. One of my favorite things about winter is that I can run at 5 p.m. as the sun is going down and often see or at least hear one or both of them. They’re often either in the park or in the trees around our house and on a fairly regular basis we can hear them talking even from inside our house.
My new favorite hobby is to search for owl pellets in the park. The first one I found a year ago on accident. Then I found a second. Now I’ve figured out that in the winter when the city doesn’t mow the park you can look for feathers or bird poop under the pine or maples and find them in bulk. Earlier this week when I saw the owls I found three pellets. Tonight I found more.
Which feels like a gift because the youngest started running a fever today after the middle was finally fever free yesterday and my anxiety isn’t coping very well. I wish we could have a reasonable stretch of time where we weren’t trying to figure out what everyone is sick with.
January 17, 2022
Day two of fever. Like her sister did, she is handling it fine and playing happily in spite of it. It helps that mama finally finished the hat she’s been begging me for (except for the fluff of fur that should be arriving next week which will then be attached to the top.)