We start our December schedule today. After isolating for 14 days (and testing), the young family rejoined our bubble for this one month and the sitters stepped aside so that I could pop into the lives of the two kids once again.
The morning is hurried. Breakfast, with a groggy Ed, in the kitchen.
There's just enough time to feed the animals, to attend to a few chores and tasks and then boom! The kids are back at the farmhouse.
They haven't been here since late August and although both of them were eager to plunge into their world of games and toys here, I'd say that Sparrow was just his usual happy self...
... whereas Snowdrop, a girl with big feelings, was besides herself with joy. Words like "I can't believe I'm here" and "it's like a dream come true" were spoken and she bounced with glee from one set of favorites to the next, settling for a long while with her dolls for which she loves to create imaginative contexts, roping me in of course, as we pretend to set one group of her "kids" into one story line and another in some competing place. This is such a common and uniquely farmhausian play scene (the well behaved kids versus the less obedient, the model eaters versus the sugar gobblers, you get the picture)!
Sparrow? Oh, he'll still spend a lot of time with toy foods and duplo blocks. I call him the "take out kid" because he loves to take out a lot of stuff, piling things from every corner in one heap, otherwise known as a mess. I spend not a small number of Fitbit steps chasing after him and putting things away.
It is a school day and at different points, Snowdrop has to check in with her class for 20-30 minutes at a time.
She is quite familiar with the routine and with the Zoom shared screens and all the rest of it, which is good, because I still find the whole set up of online assignments and random videos and questions rather puzzling and there isn't a cohesiveness to the school day, nor much opportunity to engage socially with the kids, which I suppose is understandable, as many of the kids are on the quiet side and engagement is not always easy.
Somewhere in there I'm supposed to fit in a lunch and I thought after the 11:20 mini lesson would be great, but during this class segment the teacher asked everyone if they had had a good lunch so I suppose the expectation is that they eat before that class. Oh well. We ate after.
I'm supposed to take the kids home in the mid-afternoon so that Sparrow can do a full nap there (he never sleeps long here: the house is small, the noise carries). Leaving the farmhouse turns out to be hard for Snowdrop as she has a long list of things she still wants to do. It takes a bit of effort for her to let go, but she does rally and we have a quick but lovely walk around the farmette lands...
... before I take them home.
It is, of course, tough to bounce around like that: from all to not much of anything, to all again, then later in the winter back to nothing. On the other hand, we have this gift of December and who knows what the world will look like in January and so I feel immensely grateful for the days that I do have with at least these two bandits!
Not as cold as it will be soon, so let's go!
