Next Phases

As a family we stayed locked down until the end of May. This was our conservative approach to social distancing given that we had multiple high risk people in our house. Zach went into a work a few times at the end of May and I worked a couple shifts, but for the most part we stayed home and away from everyone, including our family. This was hard. This was hard to explain to the kids, it was hard to try to justify to strangers, and it was hard to be the odd man/family out as the state opened back up. However, as hard as being the odd man out is, it's equally as hard trying to navigate the next right steps of opening up our family somewhat.


So last week, after missing the first two weeks, both boys returned to baseball. This was a really tough decision for me and I'm not confident I made the right decision. But I made the best decision I could, at the time, given the information I had. The league had sent out an email detailing all the new guidelines that had been put into place. The first two weeks there was a one person per player rule, which we missed since we didn't go at all. In the email there was then a list of things that they were doing to keep people socially distanced during games. Apparently, even though this wasn't listed anywhere, those were just suggestions and none of those rules were being enforced after the first two weeks. So this means that we are now in charge of trying to police the situation and keep our kids some what away from large groups. Basically they are sitting outside the dugout and we're keeping their water bottles/equipment with us. Once again being the one person doing things differently is frustrating and difficult for the kids to understand.


I went to Rowan's game on Tuesday, because honestly I didn't realize how much I loved watching them play and I miss it. No one had on masks, though we were all outside in 90 degree heat with 20mph winds. Everyone was sitting fairly far apart and Rowan did fine sitting outside the dugout with us. I loved watching him play. He did great and his little team is starting to know how to play some ball. After my frustration with the lack of rules or enforcing anything I thought about saying we weren't playing, but I think we've decided we will just have to be very vigilant with over seeing their actions at games. We've also decided that it's probably best if we don't take Thatcher who literally would eat food of the ground and can't be stopped from touching anything and everything. That means sadly I probably won't get to go to many games.

Baseball was the first place we started to open back up, mainly because I thought there were going to be more rules, but also because it was all going to be outside. The second place was finally getting to see our family again. My biggest concern through it all was my mother, who is probably at the highest risk of any of us for not doing well with COVID. She stayed at the farm for almost three months and we all missed her dearly. Last Saturday she finally got to come visit. She made the decision to start seeing family again, while still avoiding big crowds, which I think is really the best we can all do right now, unless something changes. So she came Saturday and the boys were delighted. Her visit reminded me just how much we've done at our house since quarantine started. We have new floors, a new patio, a new dishwasher, a robot that sweeps our floors, all kinds of fun stuff. The boys had loads to show her and couldn't get enough hugs in.

Abbey watched Thatcher during the game Tuesday and I was able to go over and chat with her, and hug her sweet kiddos, after the game. Thatcher was thrilled to play with cousins and maybe slightly less thrilled to play with Moose the dog, who he has a love hate relationship with. Thursday Kari brought the kids over to bring me my birthday present and then we went to their house Friday morning to see their baby chickens and their new deck they've built during quarantine. There is lots to catch up on. I've missed my sweet nieces and nephews so much, it was wonderful to get to finally get to give them hugs.



Worth was having none of my shenanigans Thursday, but he does seem to love Zane which is adorable. 

 These two kids have missed each other something terrible and they had a blast playing with each other this past week.

 Able has built a huge deck at this house and is making small picnic tables with his leftover wood pieces. The boys helped put some pieces together for our little wooden table while we were there.

Those have been the big changes of this next phase but for the most part we are still at home. We aren't going to stores or places were there are big groups of people. I did get to have an evening by myself with Thatcher the other night while the boys were at baseball practice. I have so missed one on one time with T during all of this. It's the perfect age where they want to do the projects you come up with and they want to tell you stories, they are funny, and still kind of cuddly. I absolutely loved our evening together. We painted with bubbles, swang, watered the plants, and then cuddled up to watch a movie.

 Our sunflower crop is looking great this year.

 I am off during the week and scheduled to work on the weekends in the summer. I am trying to get us out to do some hikes or nature walks in different places around town since we can't really go do any other fun activities this summer. Last week we went to Martin Nature Park and had a gorgeous hike were we might have been lost in the woods ever so briefly.

 We saw loads of turtles and fish and everyone was just excited to not be in our house for awhile.

  Last weekends fun was that our neighbors let us use their pool while they were out of town. It wasn't too terribly hot so we could go swim for hours and I didn't die of a heat stroke sitting pool side and I didn't have to get in the freezing water either. I could really get use to that life, but also don't want a pool in my own yard. It was loads of fun for a weekend though. We even got to catch a bull frog out of the pool and relocate it in the pond in the neighborhood.

 Last weekend was also the two year anniversary of Zane's valve replacement. This year he was able to make his own heart shaped cake and made red velvet cake from scratch. Zane is going to come out of quarantine quite the cook/baker. He loves doing it and is getting very good at it as well. I wish I could resist eating his delicious creations. I cannot believe it's been two years already. When I look back on the pictures he looks so young. His little face seemed much more like a little boy than the young man he's growing into now. The pictures are hard to look at because in the moment you don't realize just how sick he actually looked. He was pale and his eyes just looked so scared. I cannot believe how far we come and I am grateful for each day with this big guy.

 Those are the few highlights of the past few weeks but for the majority of the time we're still stuck at home, bored, fighting with each other, throwing fits about having to do chores, all the same old stuff. Parenting is made much harder when your life literally feels like ground hog day. We wake up and do the same things we've done every single day for almost three months now. There are no outings to break up the day, no trips to museums to go along with what we are learning. Also I'm done with homeschooling. I spent all my creative brain power that I had on homeschooling when I was legit being required to homeschool for six weeks. I don't have anymore fun ideas or projects. Honestly when summer vacation started this year I'd already done six weeks of them being home every day, which is like being at the end of July and just having to press through those first few weeks of August. Except in this case I have all of summer ahead of me.


Needless to say it's not going great on our normal, boring days at home. I have made a schedule that has learning time, creative time, and free time built in but trying to stick to it is impossible because I'm tired of fighting with them to do anything. So instead of fighting the fight I just give up. Then I get frustrated and disappointed in myself that we've accomplished nothing, learned nothing, and done nothing fun. No wonderful summer memories happening this year. Last year I had it all planned out, there were field trips  and themed weeks, but this year we are struggling and it's officially 100 degrees everyday which makes everything that much harder.

Here is the one fun event we did this past week, Lego Challenge, a la Lego Masters on Hulu. They had an hour to work together to make a space themed lego scene. That was it, an hour of lego playing was as creative as I got this week. 

 During the lego challenge Thatcher washed all his legos, because again I have no creative brain power left.

 The big boys, completely on their own, figured out how to make water balloons from regular balloons we had around the house. I had a big ziplock full of balloons from previous birthday parties so they did this all afternoon until every last balloon had been filled, and broken in our backyard.

 Also after years of this little green tractor sitting in the garage with a dead  battery we finally bough a new one and Thatcher has been driving around the yard for days now. It's loads of fun.

 Friday was our first trip out into society for real, not outside, but to a real doctor's office. Rowan and T were both behind on their well child visits and if Thatcher didn't get caught up he'd be behind when it came to kindergarten shots next year. So out we went, masks on, ready to meet our new pediatrician. Thatcher wore his mask for about five minutes and then promptly took it off and starting running around the waiting room, touching and climbing on everything. Oh and then he started sneezing just to make the whole thing that much worse. Waiting rooms are one of those places like gyms that are pretty disgusting baseline, and now they just seem like the worst place ever. I just kept saying "don't touch anything, please Lord don't touch anything." These kids are growing up on a weird time, that's all there is to it. The appointment went well. Our new doctor was a patient of Dr. Simmons, our old pediatrician who passed away, when he was growing up which was nice.


Thatcher remains huge, weighing in at 39.8lbs and 40.1 inches tall, almost exactly the same size Zane was at three.

 Rowan passed a big milestone as well, finally tipping the scales at 50lbs. I never thought I'd see the day.

 Our last bit of exciting news is we are baby sitting a skink for Brent. This is Stubs who usually lives at OSSM, but is going to be hanging out with us this summer. His cage is huge, but other than that he's settling in nicely. He got a little skink bath last night to hopefully decrease the amount of skink skin that is on my floor. The boys are very excited to have a pet, even it if it just for a short time.







Pediatric Nursing in a Pandemic

As I've said before, as a pediatric nurse I have in no way been on the front lines of this pandemic. I was cancelled from work for right around two months straight. The last day I worked, before everything changed, was March 17th. That was the day that things were closing and changing by the minute. There had been a player test positive at a Thunder game the night previously and the game had been cancelled. This was the first big event, nation wide, that we'd seen closed down due to COVID. That day in the nurses morning meeting people were speculating about their future plans, 'surely Disney won't close, I have a trip in May.' At the beginning of the day there was one world and by the end of my twelve hour shift there was a different world. All major events or gatherings of people had been cancelled. The mood at the hospital was full blown panic, with new restrictions being put in place by the hour. I drove home that day in silence, trying to soak it all in. I had that feeling you have leaving a job when it's your last day or the last day before maternity leave and you know it's going to be a long time until you make that drive again.

That feeling proved somewhat right. Soon after Children's Hospital cancelled all surgeries and the forty bed surgery floor at children's actually closed. I work a fair amount of my shifts on this floor, that was now being combined with a smaller unit. The ICUs were empty because when it isn't respiratory season surgery patients are who fill up ICU beds. As flex pool I'm the first to get cancelled when the hospital is over staffed for whatever reason, and now the hospital was cancelling all flex and a lot of their core, floor nurses, as well. Pediatric hospitals became ghost towns. The pediatric ICU was prepped to be able to accommodate adult ICU patients. Nurses were offered training in the adult tower so they could float across the street to help if the crisis started to look like it was looking in larger cities. Meanwhile I was emailing and calling my bosses trying to get them to guarantee me that they couldn't force me to work with adults/COVID. Once I finally got that in writing I was able to breath a little easier.

All of this proved to be a huge blessing as I was able to shelter in place, with my heart kid, during the worst of the COVID-19 here in Oklahoma. I didn't leave my house for close to two months, and that felt safe. I was able to file for unemployment due to being furloughed as a result of the COVID crisis which meant I had enough money to not be a in blind panic due to not getting paid for two months. I was able to relax a bit as the weeks passed knowing that we were all safely home, with no risks of potentially getting infected. While I frequently lost my mind in my house with my children, we made some great memories during that time as well.

Last Thursday, at 4:30am, I got the text that I was going to go back to work in the NICU. I didn't really see that coming so I only had two hours to wrap my head around that before starting my shift at 6:30am. I knew that going back meant wearing masks the entire shift. I knew that we were required to wear the same mask, that previously we would have gotten in trouble for wearing into the same room twice, for AT LEAST three days if not more. I knew that everyone in the building, all visitors and staff, were required to wear masks at all times. I knew that children, who previously would frequently have a room full of visitors to help them through their scary hospital stay, were being restricted to one visitor. The visitor must be designated at the time of admission and cannot be changed, even if you're in the hospital for months. I knew all these things as facts, what I did not know was what that would look like in practice. How that would effect the staff, the patients, and the families?

I was surprised  by so many things being back at the bedside. Let's start with the masks. After a decade of wearing a new mask every time I walk in a room, because let me be very clear, that is what these type of masks are designed for, it was almost unnerving to wear the same mask all day. It felt weird of coarse having a mask on when I was charting or talking to coworkers, but more so it felt disgusting to have the same mask on the entire day. I fought the urge/habit to rip it off and throw it away every time I left a room, because that is what I've done for a decade, because that is what you're supposed to do. I wear glasses to work, and let me tell you a mask and glasses is really fun. Your glasses fog up and you look even crazier and your job is even harder to do. I thought about wearing contacts the next time I work, but then I thought maybe my glasses might provide some sort of barrier between germs and my eyes, since of course we don't have safety glasses which probably would be recommended to wear during a pandemic. I walked around feeling like I was on the verge of hyperventilating for a few hours, but slowly got use to the breathing part. After hours in a mask the back of your ears start to hurt and break down. The constant, steady stream of hot, grouse breath on your face also makes your face break out like a teenager, just around your face and mouth, which is lovely once you take the mask off. Your nose runs all day, and as I found out Thursday, wearing masks all day causes me to have nose bleeds, which I did yesterday, with a mask on. Added bonus the blood on the inside of my mask did qualify me for a new mask since it was soiled. Bless us all.

The part about masks that I didn't think about was just how much nonverbal, comforting communication I do, all day at work, with just a smile. This can be a smile at the house keepers I pass in the hall, who are emptying the trash and cleaning rooms, risking their lives to keep the hospital  clean. Or a smile at anyone I pass in the halls, in the cafeteria, or in the elevator because this much I know to be painfully true, a small smile from a stranger, while you're wondering the halls of hospital, just might save your life. That's been the thing to pull me back from the edge more than once. I hand out small smiles to everyone I pass when I'm at work, because I do not know their stories. I found myself smiling and then when they did not appear to smile back it registers that they couldn't see my smile or maybe I just couldn't see theirs. This is a heartbreaking scene that played out every time I walked into a room and tried to give a comforting smile to the one parent sitting vigil by their tiny baby's bed, only to remember that wasn't a tool in my nursing toolbox anymore.

I've worked in the NICU three shifts now, so I haven't been back at the bedside of older children yet, but I can't imagine doing that work with a mask on the whole time. Yes, there are a lot of patient's that you are supposed to wear a mask every time you go in the room during normal times, but when things get real, and the child is terrified, the mask is always the first thing to go to try to connect with that child and calm them down. Right or wrong that's just what happens. I'm sure I have my fair share of respiratory illnesses because of this exact scenario every year. Nurses and doctors are terrifying to children even when we're all smiles, imagine how terrifying we are when none of us have smiles to give.

In the NICU the gut wrenching decision of which caregiver can be at the bedside has to be made by the time the mother is discharged from the hospital. This is an impossible decision to make. The mothers have just given birth and needs time to recover, but when faced with recovering or the possibility of not seeing their baby for the first few months of it's life, their recovery goes directly out the window. You cannot keep a new mother from her baby. This means that fathers, grandparents, siblings, aunts, and uncles, all whose love and bonding is so vital during the first few months of life cannot be there and will miss all of it. There is no one there to relieve the mothers when they go to sleep or go home to see their other children.  This means the nurses are trying to give these babies some physical touch, some sort of bonding that is so imperative in those first few days, weeks, and months of life.

 But we're trying to do that from behind a mask. How are these pandemic babies ever going to learn to smile or read facial cues? All of them are going to have detachment issues, as will these poor parents. I can't imagine the separation anxiety the toddlers and older children that are in the hospital are going to have after these experiences. I know the goal is to keep everyone alive. That's the main priority and in encouraging news the masks, and other measures that have been implemented, seem to be helping. There hasn't been an outbreak in hospitals within visitors or staff. This is due to the distancing, the decrease in number of people allowed in the building, the screening that is being done upon entry, but also because everyone has on a mask, keeping their germs to themselves. Masks are a tiny, somewhat annoying gesture, that at the same time is a huge act of kindness, potentially saving lives.

These sweet NICU mothers are also left to make life and death decisions about their children, to intubate or not, to withdraw care or not,  the biggest decisions one can make, by themselves. They have none of their people there. There are no waiting rooms full of family members, who can't be a the bedside, but who are sitting vigil, ready to embrace you the moment you walk out the doors. I also can attest to the importance of the waiting room vigil. There is great peace that comes with knowing that all your people are right their, sending all their love and prayers through those walls, ready to meet you with hugs, pats, and cupcakes when you are ready to take a break. This means the world to people in this terrible situations. I can't imagine doing it alone.

And this is where a great burden falls on the nurses. Before I came back to work I remember thinking that working in the NICU probably wouldn't be too different than before. However, the nurses now have to step in and fill the roll of all the people, be the supporter, give the hugs, sit vigil, and take on all of that for all of her patients, three days a week, for twelve hours. That's a new kind of exhausting my friends. I never take care of life or death babies in the NICU, but I talked to friends who have been NICU nurses for thirty years who say they can hardly handle the emotional toll this is taking on them. This from people who choose to work where tiny babies die all the time. It crosses that very fine line between having compassion and taking on other people's pain/sadness. As nurses we are extremely compassionate, but, and I speak for myself here, I cannot take on my patients and families pain and sadness as my own. I can be supportive and loving all day, but I don't pick it up and cannot make it my own. I drive away in the evening, sending them a little prayer, and then I have to leave it there, or else I could never come back. Nurses are having to step right over that line and the emotional toll of that I am sure is crushing right now, in all areas of nursing. I can't imagine the nurses having to sit with COVID patient's who are dying alone. That's just too much.

Lastly, the hospital itself has a completely different feel to it now. There use to be so many spaces for people to gather, to sit and have a moment alone or be surrounded by people. There use to be seating areas everywhere throughout the hospital. There is huge atrium on the front of this hospital that use to be full of benches, chairs, and tables. My first reaction upon coming back to work was the drastic difference in the atrium. All of the chairs, sofas, and tables have been removed. It's a vast, empty space now, with the only tables in it being used for the screeners stationed by the front door. The relaxing music is still playing, it's still beautiful, but it feels cold and empty. This is true for the whole hospital. Hospitals are built with gathering areas in mind.  Where does everyone's village gather when they can't be at the bedside? All those spaces are gone now. Waiting rooms, gift shops, dining rooms, all are now closed and sit empty, no villages allowed. I use to leave whatever floor I was working on to go eat in the atrium. I would find a different, peaceful place to clear my head for thirty minutes, maybe soak in the sunlight. That's not an option now. Neither is meeting a coworker for lunch. Lunches are staggered, only two people allowed in a large break room at a time. We must stay six feet apart of coarse, since this is the only place our masks may be removed. This, I am afraid, is the new reality for hospitals and it's a devastating one.

I'm grateful to be back to work and I'm grateful to have gotten at least a little glimpse into how the pandemic has changed the hospital experience for so many. There is the thought among older nurses that wearing masks all the time will become the norm, just like how wearing gloves for everything became the norm during the AIDS crisis in the eighties. This doesn't even begin to touch on the broken health insurance system that I'm confident is going to bankrupt thousands if not millions of people who are left with huge hospital bills after weeks on ventilator. There will be thousands of families saddled with millions in medical bills for a love one that did not make it. And your medical bills don't disappear if you die. The family that is grieving you then also has to fight through that broken system. I can't even imagine what weeks on a ventilator costs, with insurance, let alone for the all the uninsured that are being affected by this crisis in large numbers. Because some how the essential workers are the workers that get paid the least, with the fewest benefits. The system is broken and on top of the currently 94,000ish people who have died many more lives will be shattered at the hands of medical bills during this crisis, which is cruel and wrong.

I also can't even begin to imagine what the COVID units look like. What nursing in one of those areas would be like. I can foresee a lot of burn out, a lot of PTSD, a lot of people leaving the profession, and sadly I can imagine a lot of nurses and doctors dying due to the unbelievably unsafe situations these people are working under. I for one would quit my job before I put  my life on the line for it. Nursing isn't my true passion, my children are, but I know a lot of nurses to which that does not ring true. Nursing and caring for people is there life's work and their true calling. They easily put their lives on the line for others. There are probably more people who don't want to put their lives on the line, but that's how they feed their children that they are passionate about. So they are left with no choice. They have to walk into a war zone with a paper mask when what they need to survive is a respirator. It's heartbreaking. Times of crisis show the truth about situations and institutions. This crisis has shown a light on just how broken the healthcare system in the United States, supposedly the richest country in the world, really is.

Last Day of School 2020

Historically speaking the last day of school consists of me sending Thatcher to school and taking to big boys to do something fun. It usually is a week later than this too, but that's beside the point. Our day usually starts with t-shirt pictures in their senior class shirts and an excited good bye as they get on the bus one last time. This also all happens after month long end of year celebrations. There is Antler Day, Tug of war day, the various days that each class has that are full of end of the year parties or dates with their teachers. Then on the last day of school I come and check them out a little early and we go do something fun. Last year, with Rowan in Kindergarten, I checked them out after the Kindergarten program in the morning so it was a full day of fun.

There is  usually a laundry list of lasts before the actual last day of school. This year Zane is missing a ton of lasts. This was his last year at Prairie Vale which means he's missing all the lasts at that building as well. There would have been a clapping out ceremony, a 3rd grade farewell ceremony, not to mention hugs and good byes to all the teachers there that he has grown to love and consider family. I guess missing all these things will spare me some tears. I had been anticipating those good byes and knowing I was going to be a crying mess. He's been through so much at that school, it was going to be a sad good bye for everyone. This year was also the last year that both boys will be in the same school building until high school, which is so bittersweet to me. I hate that we are missing all those moments. The boys have gone through a range of emotions about it over the past few months, but they seem to fully fine with it today. Meanwhile I am desperately wishing I could hug the teachers and let them have those good byes at the end of the day.

So today, after two months of distance learning, and a week before it was originally scheduled, it was the last day of school, whatever that means in this world. So we I busted out the senior tshirts from the cedar chest and we took last day of school pictures on the porch, then headed back inside. It's cold and rainy this morning, a fully gloomy day. The only celebratory things we did today was, I let them opt out of morning exercise time, I didn't enforce how long they had to read, and we went to pick up pizza for lunch. The pizza was amazing and I couldn't stop eating it.

Here is little Rowan in August, three days post breaking his arm for the second time. Rowan had a bit of a tough year as the academics of school became harder. There was a pretty big learning curve with the new technology and various ways of testing. This year Rowan fell in love with math. He would do his math learning apps all day. He doesn't have the same love for reading and I'm not convinced he made as much progress and he was supposed to on that front this year. The way they assess a student's reading is completely different now than when Zane was in first grade two years so we end with me very confused about how he is doing on his tests verses how he reads for me at home.

Prior to these past two months I would have said that Rowan and his teacher didn't have a great relationship this year. I would've said they didn't really click and that sometimes happens, such is life. However, from this quarantine time I think I have changed my position about it. Rowan has cried about missing his teacher multiple times a week, every week for the past two months. He has requested zoom calls with her and we've walked over to her house (which happens to be in our neighborhood) multiple times do he could say hi and talk to her. I have realized that the issue Rowan has/had is that he cannot handle any type of criticism or even teaching. He takes it all as a personal attack. Any time you try to correct him or even teach him a new concepts he cries and thinks he's in trouble and that you are mad or don't like him. It's all 100% personal and he dissolves into a puddle of tears about all of it. I think Rowan started getting some criticism and needing more correction this year as the school year went on. I think that was difficult for him to deal with and stressed him out. I think that when other kids got in trouble in class that stressed him out. I think he's an anxious kid that takes everything that anyone ever says directly to heart, just like his name sake. That's a lot to deal with, but it's a good thing to know about him going into the next year. Hopefully we can find some tools to help him deal with that as well as expressing that to his teacher early in the year next year.

Rowan doesn't have a million friends like Zane and I'm not sure he's found exactly where he fits in friends wise. He's definitely more shy and seems to be one of those kids that only wants to have one best friend at at time and is still figuring out being friends with multiple people or even just playing with random people when your "best friend" is playing with someone else. This brings him lots of heartache and stress as well. It's a struggle at times when I really don't think it needs to be. Overall he's well behaved and only got in a little bit of trouble this year mainly around telling the truth and having a good attitude. These are both the things he gets in trouble for at home so this was not surprising.

Then there is Zane. Zane always seems to test at the top of all the things though he doesn't seem to put forth much effort doing school work. He goes through spurts of loving all the subjects. Sometimes he's really into reading, sometimes he's really motivated to master his multiplication facts, and then sometimes it's a fight get him to do everything. With that being said he always does well and nothing seems to terribly hard for him. His favorite subject, per his admission is social studies. He loves all things history and loves learning about famous historical figures. The Who Was books are his favorite thing to read and he frequently has to be forced to read fiction books instead of always nonfiction. He loved doing his living history project on Jim Henson this year and learned lots of things about other famous people as well throughout the year. 

Zane continues to a wide range of friends, but I've found he tends to have more girls as friends than boys. I recently asked him about this and he said it was because the third grade boys get in trouble a lot. They are mean to girls and to each other and are either always playing/talking about fortnight, football, or they are being mean to people. So he chooses to hang out with the girls who are kind to everyone and are more imaginative at recess. He has a few good friends who are boys, but not a lot. I take this to mean that is a great judge of character and hope that this is something that continues to work for him in the future. Next year the size of his class will quadruple as fourth graders from all five grade school go to the same building. This means there will be a lot of opportunity to meet more friends and more boys who have similar interests as he does or who just aren't jerks. I love that he knows who he is and stands firmly in that. I also love that who he is is kind. 

It is becoming increasingly obvious that I highly under estimated how large my children were going to be. This is an XL tshirt, that while it is a little long, isn't all that big on Zane as a nine year old. There is zero percent chance this fits when he's a senior. It was a fun idea, but his pictures in this as a senior are going to be a belly shirt situation.

Here is the first of the year brother picture. Look at Thatcher's long hair. It looks crazy compared to his current buzz cut. Of note the shorts Rowan wore to the first day of school in August are now shorts Thatcher wears daily, because Thatcher is going to be a giant.

 Say what you will about quarantine but it has bonded these brothers, for better or for worse. They fight like cats and dogs but there is definitely love bonding them together as well. They are a tight crew now, by force. Who knows what will come of all this, but hopefully a lasting bond between these three will develop in the end.

 Pizza Party!!

And now it's officially summer. We had just barely slipped into a normal rhythm and schedule with home schooling and now we will have to adjust it for summer. Having a schedule to go back to definitely helped in the end, but summer schedule probably can be a little less school heavy. I'm scheduled to work every weekend again this summer but who knows when I'll be going back to work. Usually on the last day of school there is a feeling of panic that all these children are going to be home all day, everyday now. In good news I've overcome that panic weeks ago and we've settled into that being our reality, with no hope of fun field trips in our future. I don't know if that will make this summer better or harder. It will definitely look different. I wish I knew what it would look like, but for now we'll just settle on, it will look different and we're taking it one day at a time.

Last Week's Realizations

Last week we got to take part in our first quarantine parades. One of Zane's friends had a birthday so we drove past his house and delivered cookies to him and one of Zane's friends that lives next door to him.  Zane was very anxious about being out in public even a little bit and the parade ended with him being sad that he couldn't hug any of the people he'd seen. Zane's a hugger and the total absence of hugs from his friends and teachers hits harder when you actually see them.

The same day as the birthday parade Zane's class got together and did a parade for his beloved teacher. Zane has had such great luck with all his teachers. He's loved every single one so far. He finds a way to bond with every teacher he's had. I think he isn't intimidated by them or scared of them, he sees them, as he sees everyone, as potential friends/confidants. Each year I love watching that bond form between him and his new teacher. It's hard not to love Zane so he always quickly becomes a class favorite. I'm not sure how long that will last but I'm so grateful for all the wonderful teachers he had at Prairie Vale. I'm so sad he missed all the lasts at that school. Next year he's going to a new building and it's devastating that he wasn't able to say good byes to all the teachers he loves there.

So the parade past Mrs. Gipson's house was extremely special. Zane made signs and molten hot lava cakes that we delivered with Teacher Appreciation gifts of spices, of course.

 Mrs. Gipson was surprised and over joyed to get to see all her students. You could tell that both she and her students just wanted to run over and hug each other. There were tears shed all around. I love our school community and love the people who love my kids. It was a special moment for sure.

Before the parade everyone met at the school parking lot. While my boys and I were securely in our car with our windows up the rest of the kids/moms were out milling around the parking lot, talking to each other, giving hug, and saying hi to people in their cars. I could tell Zane wanted to go out and be a part of this. I felt myself feeling myself starting to judge these people for their choices, even though those choices might be completely safe for their family and their life. That's when I remembered something that Brene Brown said on Jen Hatmaker's webinar that I watched a few weeks ago. She said, and of course I'm paraphrasing here, judgement/resentment doesn't live in the disappointment family, it lives in the envy family. My judgement somewhat comes from the fact that I don't think that we know if it's safe to be out and about, but more so my judgement absolutely comes from a place of envy.

I miss talking to my mom friends. I miss seeing Zane enjoy his friends and get to play with his favorite people. I wish we could do all the things that other people are beginning to do now without of the fear of potentially endangering my life or my son's life. I wish I had the privilege to not have to take everything so seriously, to not have to fear that if I go to the grocery store right now that it could have deadly results. I wish that this whole thing was just a huge inconvenience to my family, not a terrifying, contemplate my own death, lose sleep over my children not remembering me, nightmare. I know none of this is easy for any family, but I am envious of those whose who only have to worry about trying to keep other people safe and trying to not overwhelm the medical staff in their community. I know those are big things, but I'm jealous of the people who aren't concerned that It might effect their families or themselves directly.

 Last week I also realized I needed to see and speak to human adults more. I'm missing my friends and I'm missing adult conversation. So I got to talk to my brother at the spice shop for a little bit, from my car, when I went to pick up spices. I called friends and gave myself time for adult conversations. I even met a friend from my neighborhood by the pond and sat at opposite ends of a ten foot picnic table and talked for an hour. While we were talking I was trying to explain this realization about envy to her and she said, "Yeah but Zane doesn't understand that he might die. He doesn't really know what that means." Sadly, that couldn't be further from the truth.  I am so envious of people who have never had to talk to their child about the real risk of them dying, let alone having to have done that multiple times.  Zane has faced death, looked it straight in the eye, as a seven year old. He knows exactly what the fear of dying feels like. He gets it probably more so than any of us, and he's not trying to go back to that place anytime soon. That doesn't make not getting to see or play with his friends any easier. It doesn't make that reality any less unfair. I wish that wasn't his story or our reality, but it is.

Sadly that is our story, this is our reality, and it just where we are right now. I think realizing that some of my anger was routing in envy has helped me rationalize it somewhat, thought not make it go away. I wish the decisions were easier, that there was more information available to help me make the decisions, and truly I wish there was an end date in sight. But how will ever know when that is?

Tough decisions

As the state begins to open up around us the fear that was ever present, almost suffocating, at the beginning of this pandemic is now beginning to return. There were a few weeks, recently, when everyone was home. Everyone was locked down. Or I should say my people where home and safe. Zach wad designated as our tribute to go to various stores as needed and we did so very sparingly. I think in the past fifty some odd days Zach has been to stores maybe half a dozen times, with an N95 mask  on and a shower upon his return. We were as safe as we could possibly be and the crushing fear of the worst case scenario subsided ever so slightly.

Let me be clear on what the worst case scenario looks like in our house right now. The worst case is Zach has to go to work, or to a store, or wherever and gets sick. He obviously doesn't know he's sick until he exposed Zane and I to the disease as well. The worst case plays out with Zane or I possibly dying from this disease. Even typing that sounds like I'm being an alarmist, but I'm really not. The definition of the most vulnerable population is someone who has a compromised immune system with underlying lung issues, such as asthma. I check both of those boxes. I am not super old, but two out of three top risk factors is not good. I cannot say with any certainty that I would survive if I got this disease. The same can be said for Zane. People with underlying heart conditions are high on the list of the most vulnerable as well. As more people do recover from this disease we are beginning to learn that a lot of them are showing signs of heart damage if they survive. Zane's heart cannot handle any damage. There is a realistic possibility he wouldn't survive this disease either. Those are just the scientific facts of the matter. I'd like to think we'd be fine, but my life is based on science and facts and those are the facts. Even while we sit here appearing perfectly healthy, those still remain the actual facts, and facing the potential of dying is unimaginable.

With that in mind, and there are moments that I have to remind myself of those facts, we have kept our family extremely locked down. Nothing is worth risking the potential of that worst case scenario playing out. The other side of the coin are the humans that are a part of this family. For the first couple weeks of lock down I cannot begin to tell you the emotions, turmoil, and heartbreak that we had to work through with our children. This was grueling work and it continues everyday, but luckily things have begun to settle. The tough conversations around why some kids in the neighborhood are getting to play with each other while our cannot continue everyday. For weeks we were bombarded with questions about why we couldn't just see some people? Why we can't just go get ice cream? Why can't we go to the park? Why can't we just maybe ride bikes next to people? Every possible way to try to find some wiggle room in this mess was attempted and fought over and cried over to no end. In no uncertain terms we explained that life is in fact not fair. We are living in unprecedented times with no rule book and frankly no leadership in this country that we can rely on for factual information. We, sadly, also are household with lots of at risk people so this was going to be our life for a while.

Eventually the kids began accept this. They began to find words to use to describe their disappointment. To describe the hard things they were doing and they also found words to describe how this situation was unfair, but they understood how important the safety of every member of our family is the most important thing. Don't get me wrong the neighborhood kids continued to break our particular family rules on a daily basis and it continued to be hard and heartbreaking, but they understood we were making different decisions. There have been multiple instances where some child was full of emotion and was blaming it on something stupid, but when we really all sat down and calmly talked about what was going on the underlying issue was really that it's not fair that not everyone is having to be a strict as we are being and they are absolutely right, it's not fair, but it's necessary. As I calmly explained to Zane again this weekend, it is more important to me that Thatcher has memories of me than Zane being able to play with his friends right now. It's more important that I do everything I can to see my children graduate high school than us get to go to a park right now.

Now that the next phase of this is coming up or is in some cases upon us every family has terribly difficult decisions to make and no two families decisions are going to look the same. Zach and I have had long, painful, scary conversations around this for weeks now. Trying to sort out how he is going to safely start going back into the office to some extent while still coming home to two very vulnerable people that he lives with. How can he minimize as much as humanly possible the amount of time he spends outside of this home while this first wave of reopening the state begins. Everything could reopen and everything could be fine. There is also a chance that everything reopens, cases spike again, things worsen and we have to start over.

Our plan looks like this. We stay the coarse. The children don't know that any rules are being relaxed. They don't know that we could technically go eat at a restaurant. They don't know that their baseball season is probably actually going to start in a few weeks which seems incredibly stupid and dangerous for what point, little league baseball? I mean I understand the economy needs to reopen but little league baseball does not need to be played. What I do know is the moment I say we can go do one small thing I will be bombarded with every question about everything and every person that they are missing. For example we went fishing at a different lake last weekend. It was about a twenty minute drive and we sat out by the lake for an hour or so. It was lovely. It also included twenty five questions about it we could go to a gas station for snacks, could we stop and eat dinner on the way home, and can we go to a million other public places. One inch of wiggle room and the flood gates will be open. For not just our safety, but also my sanity I am keeping the flood gates firmly closed until we have some indication that opening things back up isn't the worst idea ever.

So I beg of everyone please give every person you come in contact with all the grace in the world. When they talk about these decisions all that needs to be said is, "that's a really hard decision to make."
"I am so sorry that everything is so hard." "I will respect whatever decisions you make for your family." Those decisions may make your life harder or sadder. None of it is fair, none of it is fun, none of it is easy, for anyone.

I keep coming back to when I was trying walk this family through Zane's heart surgery experience. When I realized what we were facing I reached out and found every possibly resource about getting young children through major medical procedures. I called in every favor, talked to every person that I worked with who might have expertise on this. I called in Child Life Specialist that I knew to give him tours and talk to him on the phone. I found child psychologists who could get him in to be seen quickly to get give him some tools to deal with all the emotions he was working through. I talked other mothers whose children had had surgery at a similar age. I read the research, I learned the science inside and out, I looked to every possibly expert not just about the medicine but about how to help children and families deal with the trauma of this type of event. I found the best advice in each category, the things that seemed to help the most people, weighed it with how that would look in our family, then made a decision about what I though would help us all get through it as whole and healthy as possible. In the end the decisions that we made always came down to Zach and I's feelings about it, but I something to base those decisions on.

That is the thing that is lacking right now, the ability to look to the past or to experts, or survivors for hope or advice. There is no one to call and talk about how the walked their children through this particular hard time. There are no scientific studies discussing the benefits of staying home longer verses not quarantining at all. There is no research to tell us how the virus acts or ways to treat it. There is no time line of what to expect or ways to plan for the future. This means we have to be over the top conservative and weigh everything we're thinking about doing based on if doing that thing is worth me not seeing my kids grow up. It's insanity, I know it is. I also hear that voice in the back of my head saying I'm being dramatic and crazy, because that's the voice all women hear in the back of their heads, right? I'm ignoring that voice and trying desperately to keep our family safe and get through this in one piece. It's terrifying, it's exhausting, and I have no idea when it will be over.
kids grow up