Phases 1-3

This entry documents the end of the first New York wave of Covid19. Experts assure us it is far from the end of the virus. Still, there is a definite feeling of being in remission here, as we come to the lowest level of virus activity since early March. My attitude has improved enormously since we've been able to see friends and family again. I hadn't been much interested in examining silver linings during this pandemic; all I have been able to see is misery. Now, as summer progresses and our hospitalization numbers fall to the level they were in late March, we are being taught to be grateful for things we once took for granted. Even I can see the value in that. 

It being much harder to transmit the virus outdoors, and given that most of our indoor haunts are closed, we intend to spend much of the summer outdoors. 

Joni gasped the first time we put her in the grass. But she did not cry. 

School ended early this year, on June 15. I guess they decided to let families handle the week of parties and field day type events that usually fills that final week. There was no particular relief or disappointment associated with the end of school

Believe it or not, we found ourselves an empty beach on Memorial Day! Apparently people don't get out to Hamlin until around 11am! We made a break for it and had several quiet hours enjoying a perfect day on the Lake until a combination of the baby's longing for her crib and our hunger for lunch got the better of us and we had to go home. 

This is me in bliss

As the warm weather finally settled over Western New York (it took until just about Memorial Day), we discovered the incredible potential of our fire pit to be the location of socially distanced gatherings, and basically, to save my life. I have been 1000% happier since June brought me my first fire party. I never thought I'd be so grateful to sit ten feet away from my friends and family and look at half of their faces, but I am. 

My birthday cake. I had a small and distanced party and it was everything to me.

My birthday gift! Bubble Bobble. You can play both new and classic versions!

Solstice Fire

For the solstice, I got the Whiskey Movie Squad to assemble. How dope is this stop-motion style video Aaron made us for a souvenir? We had such fun and were so easy together. I hope to do as much of this sort of thing as we can for as long as the Indian Summer may last this year, as Winter 2020-2021 is likely to be be extremely unsocial. We are still only in the first wave.

We've attended two rallies for Black Lives so far, one in Rochester, one in Henrietta. Henrietta! 2020 becomes more extraordinary by the week. 

I see more people at Target and Wegmans not wearing masks than at these protests; I didn't see a single CHILD without a mask at either of the protests. Turns out, saving lives is a political stance. Register me with the people who want to save lives, please. 

Joni continues to grow and flourish! Here she is at 4 months!

She can roll over both ways, sit up with support, grab things at put them right in her mouth, suck her thumb, and take a bottle like a pro.

We got out the Nickoloffs' old exersaucer for her this month. She's a big fan.

What sleeping looks like now. 

I'm unbelievably grateful to be living in New York State just now! Just as Covid is really taking off in 30 states now, New York is bottomed out at 1% positive. Recently, we had ZERO daily deaths from Covid. Here in Monroe County, we've been on a long, gradual downward trend. It doesn't mean the pandemic's gone; we know that. But it sure does ease the emotional load to be in remission.

To celebrate my return to the outside world, and my (partial) return to sanity, I cut my hair. I like it loads better. 

A few weeks back, the state reopened playgrounds. Here we are enjoying swings for the first time, after months of having to keep the kids off them while we took our sanity hikes at Mendon.

It feels so good. 

We are seizing this summer so hard. 

NY Pause

It was hard to update for a long time. I rather felt as if we would be living the same kind of life, with no reportable change, for the rest of our lives. But there have been a few subtle changes in the last weeks that make me think we might be entering a shift, so I will document what our life has been since mid-April. 

Oddly, the death rate from Coronavirus in New York State hit a peak at about Easter. Since mid-April, we have seen it go from hovering in the 700s daily to now, where it has dipped to just around 100 per day. I don't think I've missed a day yet of the Governor's "Show" as I call it. Jon laughed at me yesterday when I told him that Cuomo took a Covid test live on his show. But they have become something more than press briefings to me, and I think a lot of New Yorkers would agree. 

We keep the same schedule pretty much every weekday: I teach VIP Kid in the morning, the kids eat breakfast and dress and start school at 9. The baby naps 4-5 times a day. By early afternoon, the older kids are done with school, chores, and typing, and they generally play outside. I try on the good days to discipline myself to do things of my own, like make cookies, read, or write my fanfiction. By mid-afternoon, Jon is done with work, we walk for around three miles with the dog so I can cope with my crazy (and, I suppose, so Jon and the dog can stretch their legs). Then we make and eat dinner, listen to Grandparents reading stories on Marco Polo (we project it on the TV so it becomes like a broadcast; we all watch together), and go to bed. 

Sometimes, there's a little creative project in the mix, like the day we made bagels:

Joni observes Adele's homeschooling experience

These two are tight. Joni grins at both her siblings on sight

This shirt as as much a reminder for me as it is a cute statement for her

My heart's a bit sore. We've heard from church that we won't be in church until July at the last, and honestly the way we're likely to be worshipping (no singing, masks on, at a distance) is not the way I want to remember Joni's baptism. So her baptism, which I had hoped would be in late April, is now indefinitely postponed. I try to recognize that, in the scheme of things, this is not a big deal. But it still hurts.

We add interest and variety to our lives by occasionally ordering out. This was my Mother's Day curry from The King and I:

We're now on our third puzzle experience, having finished our series of Diagon Alley streetsigns:

Joni's wearing one of her amazing HP onesies, a gift from my cousin Emily

On weekends, we change our schedule. We don't have to, of course. Jon could continue to do work  on weekends, the kids could do schoolwork, as far as the teachers and bosses are concerned. But we make the weekend distinct, because it makes us feel like time has some kind of recognizable geography. So we clean the house on weekends, do church from our living room, and take weekly outings to local parks.

For so long the weather was in the 30s and 40s, the 50s only if we were lucky, and it really did feel like no progress of any kind was being made on any front. But recently, there has been a shift in that too.

This week I made chocolate chocolate chip cookies; a couple weeks ago, it was these "Butterbeer" (butterscotch) cookies

At least one evening a week, usually Saturdays, we play games or watch movies with friends online. It gives the illusion of having a social life. I quite rely on it. 

We change our inspirational quote weekly, to give us something to rally around. This from Star Wars reflects the sort of mania that had settled over us last week.

We now have two cloth masks each! I am growing to hate them incrementally less.

As Chris Traeger would say, "Therapy!" 

On May 15, our region met the criteria for stage 1 reopening from NYPause! I'm cautious in my enthusiasm, as the next stage can only happen if we keep our R-naught transmission rate below 1.1. But the numbers are improving daily. I have some hope that the second wave may be delayed until Fall or Winter; very little that the ordeal is actually over.

Meanwhile, Joni lives in the cocoon of her family at home. As far as she is concerned, all is right with the world. 

The kids have daily music sessions with our old college friend, Isaac Gillespie. What a lot of light and joy he injects into our living room!

Not to speak too soon on the 19th of May, but the weather seems to have turned a corner. 

Joni is three months old. She rolled over, from back to belly, two days ago. I just put her down for a nap with one arm out of her swaddle for the first time, and she's been asleep like that for 90 minutes. 

I simultaneously want to skip this year entirely, and to be totally absorbed watching Joni for all of it. Alas, neither seems possible. 

I'd like to finish with a reflection about the historic nature of this crisis, or what it has meant to us all. About the grief, the fear, the occasional fits of hope, the loneliness, the waiting. But today is just one of those humdrum days where the words really will not come. The children are restless; there is a lot of huffing and sighing and storming into other rooms, a lot of tears. Yet all the while the atmosphere is subtly different this month. The leaves are green, and the air is warmer. People we know are starting to get together. We have done three social distancing hikes with the Nickoloffs so far and feel less guilty and anxious each time. I applied for a teaching job last week, though no one has any idea of yet what school might look like this fall. 

There's a wind of change beginning to blow. I try to raise my hopes to the precise level where I think they should be, but I find they prefer to vacillate wildly around the mark. What was that lyric from the White Album?

"When you find yourself in the thick of it,

Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you,

You silly girl."

Love in the time of Coronavirus

And just like that, everything has changed. 

Back in 2009, I wrote this entry entitled "Love in the Time of Swine Flu," expressing my frustration that that virus caught the country so ill-prepared that we were actually running out of vaccines. Oh, sweet summer child, me. 

It was the weekend of March 14th, 2020 that our world came crashing down. I don't think I'll ever forget it. As I have told friends, it was like watching your house burn down. After a certain point, you know it's doomed, that it's all coming down. But you still watch. You mourn every separate room that the fire consumes. 

In January, Coronavirus looked like a really sad and scary problem the Chinese were having. In February, Coronavirus looked like something that might affect a few West Coast areas. 

But in March, first the local school musical was cancelled, then Miles' field trip. At the same time, both Jon's university and mine switched to online classes only for the rest of the semester. It looked like necessary precautions to take at places with such large gatherings, but surely, I thought, they wouldn't close schools. Surely we could still see our friends. Surely we could still see our relatives, as long as everyone's hand hygiene was tip-top. Then the building combusted. 

We got the call on Saturday afternoon that public schools would be closed. I was trying to nap, sleeping off a bad night with Joni and looking forward that night to my first evening out with friends since having her. I blearily picked up the phone and heard the bad news, then rolled over, feeling bleak. I was tired enough that I still managed a nap, but it wasn't long after I woke that my friends and I conferred and we decided we'd better cancel. I was disappointed. I'm glad, looking back, that I didn't realize then how long it would likely be before I'd be able to see any of those people again. 

On Sunday, I learned my co-workers at RIT would be continuing the semester working from home. All the various locations around town where I would want to bring the children while they were out of school were closing, all museums and playgrounds and public events. We went to what we learned would be the last church service for an indefinite period. 

On Tuesday, Jon learned he, too, would be working from home. On Wednesday, the unthinkable happened: the public library closed. 

Tuesday the 17th was St. Patrick's Day. It was also my 6 week postpartum visit, which was conducted over the phone that day. I had already failed the postpartum depression evaluation I took at Joni's 2 week appointment. Needless to say, I failed the six week one too. I don't know that I've ever been as low as I was in March, 2020. 

We're working on it. 

In the meantime. we're digging inside ourselves for some personal strength we didn't know we had to keep ourselves mentally, physically, and emotionally healthy during this time. I never intended to be a homeschool mom, or even a stay-at-home mom, but here we are. For the sake of our sanity, we keep a schedule, with academic time in the morning, creative time after that. We balance school with play with outdoor time and social time on Messenger Kids, Marco Polo, and Zoom/Google Hangouts. There's a white board, and a quote of the week. 

Jon puts his work schedule at the top. This is our family's anchor, reminding us that we're in this together. 

The kids got their chromebooks from school and we now spend the mornings keeping up with school work and class meetings, while entertaining Joni between her naps:

We are now a puzzle family:

We keep up with Dad and Agnes and Mercedes, as well as with the Grunert Grandparents, over Facetime:

Every week, we take a family outing to an outdoor park (sans playground). Thank God for the Ergo carrier! 

At Mendon Ponds

And every day I listen to Governor Cuomo's press conferences like they're Fireside Chats in the Great Depression. He's like my weighted blanket lately, reminding me that some leaders will listen to experts, some leaders have a plan, some leaders... can lead. 

Also, the Facebook comments are always good value:

We try to help keep up our neighbors' spirits with the bear and the rainbow in the window. On one of our daily sanity walks with the dog and the baby, Jon and I found a St. Francis statue someone had left at the foot of their lawn labeled "free." 

Frankie lives with us, now. 

We chalk the driveway to spread hope and cheer: 

And Joni grows...

and grows.

Her two-month appointment was on Good Friday. Fittingly, it was a horrifying experience. I had to go alone with her, everyone (including me) was wearing a mask, and she screamed after her vaccinations like she never has. She was frothing and unwilling to eat or sleep for a couple of hours. I had to drive her home in that state, with the news all around me that Coronavirus would likely be part of our lives until there is a vaccine in 12-18 months. I wondered if I would ever work again, see my friends again, hug my father again. It was an appropriately miserable day. 

We're all learning to metabolize so much grief, fear, disappointment. We've found that what you have to do is to take care of your body, and keep up a steady stream of whatever you can find to give you joy. Easter found us again dyeing chicken eggs on Holy Saturday, and gathering around a Vigil fire. It was our fire, in our yard. But it was Holy, all the same, and we read the Great Vigil words together. 

 

Easter Sunday found us hunting for plastic eggs in the grass. It was our grass, and we hid them ourselves, but the kids still took the campaign very seriously. 

Miles drew a comic on Holy Saturday, as I was enjoying a virtual card game with friends over some dark and stormies.

On Easter Sunday, Dad and Agnes watched the egg hunt from a distance in our yard. It was hard.

But they-- and we-- are learning to make do. The difficulty level of our lives has been turned up, but we're leveling up.

I don't want to give the impression that I think the pandemic begins and ends with the way it affects our family. Far from it. My mind is constantly flooded with worry and fear for a world of suffering people. I hate all of it, from the kids having to miss their concerts and special events to the lonely grandparents, to the people who've lost their jobs already or will in the coming months, to those that are losing family members, to those who are dying alone in hospitals across the world. This is a time for intercessory prayer if there ever was such a time, and it's a time to magnify the reach of whatever love we're able to propagate into humanity. I don't know if we've all ever needed each other so much. 

Side note: isn't it awesome that dogs and babies most likely have no idea that anything is amiss?