Week Seven: Another Extension

We decided at the end of last week that it was time for us to get a move on. It’s a good thing we decided that too because I emailed our movers and my contact informed me that their summer rates would increase on May 15th and the Bay Area just had another extension to the end of May. So, we’re finally going to move on May 11th. It’s back to packing for us. Most things are still in boxes, but items have been taken out and moved around. I told Mr. WTF that a lot of our things will be in different boxes than what is labeled, especially when it comes to toiletries. Those are the boxes that needed to be opened right away after the last time we were all packed up. If you recall, we were ready to go to try to beat the quarantine, but got trapped so boxes needed to be reopened. It’s going to be unpacking mayhem in Bend. I foresee a lot of griping on my part.

This morning I started putting random things back into boxes. You know, like the box of bandaids that got unpacked and put back into the drawer where it used to belong, or the books that got unboxed and moved to a different room. Those kinds of little things that were once in the correct place and now are not. I made a huge effort to not buy a lot of stuff once we decided to move. It definitely helped curb my spending during Christmas time. It hasn’t been that bad recently except that I had to buy a few things that were already packed because they were just too far down in the pile of boxes to dig out. Our pantry, which was empty, is full again. It’s stuff like that, that makes me grumble.

Now it’s time for us to get back into moving mode when we’re finally getting all settled into quarantine mode. Learning time will have to be adjusted so that we can start packing up and finish household chores that we wanted to do prior to the move. I’ve been working on cleaning up our weeds a little bit at a time, but now the pressure is on. We were originally going to have gardeners come and do all the weed cleanup, but with quarantine, we’ve been doing it ourselves. It saves us almost $900 just in the cleanup alone! I only have a little bit more weeding to go, but it’s been getting hotter and my allergies are going full swing, which makes my motivation and speed slow down significantly.

As for learning activities, we’ve still been active with that. I haven’t given up yet, though there have been many days when I want to. A couple of weeks ago, I saw someone post (I don’t remember who) with a craft to mail hugs. My dad has been saying that one of the things that he misses the most are hugs. It was a multi-day project, which I’m surprised held their attention so well. I’ve noticed that if I tell them that a project is for one of their grandparents, they will work harder on it. The idea was that I’d trace their bodies and they would paint themselves. Reid ended up painting himself as The Flash and a Purple Martian, while Lucas made himself Captain America and The Hulk.

We also did some finger painting to learn about Earth Day and then also some shape construction with toothpicks and marshmallows. I tell you, if it wasn’t for Pinterest, these kids would be sitting in front of the tv all day long. I asked them if they’d ever done finger painting before and they said no. They were super timid about it at first, but then once their fingers got dirty, they got realllly dirty. I strategically planned for them to wear their swimsuits so that they could just get into the kiddie pool afterwards. For the finger painting, I read that it helps strengthen their fingers for pre-writing…if you say so. The educational portion of that lesson was to learn about Earth Day and why recycling and conservation are important, but strengthening fingers for pre-writing also works in my book.

Clearly the educational video was riveting…

*For Friday Funday (this is how we’re learning they days of the week) we used some marshmallows to make shapes and prisms.*

We were celebrating another birthday this week. One of our neighbors was turning three while in quarantine. She goes to the same preschool that the twins did so we made her a birthday poster that the school calls an “Aiken Drum”. I had no idea what this was so I had to text one of the teachers, but what they do is sing a little song and then tell the adult what kind of fruit each of the birthday person’s body is made out of. She has a strawberry head with a watermelon body, carrot and celery legs etc. It’s silly, but we recorded the whole thing and sent it to her to watch.

*Friday was a very busy day in our house. We also made Mr. WTF a cake with decorations only a father could love.*

I also got them some Bingo daubers to make their activities more fun. I printed out some circles and randomly put in letters and number. I assigned them letters to find. They said that it was hard to do, but I think it’s because it required them to really concentrate and look at each circle for the answer. *…see all my prior complaints regarding attention span and focus.*

On another note, one of our many fixes to have done in our house was to patch a hole that a woodpecker originally made in the side of our house. We have a good friend who’s family owns a stucco business. Naturally, we asked him to come by to patch up the hole. He tried his best to get the squirrel out of the decorative fixing, but there was still one in there that no one knew about. After a while, we thought that maybe he accidentally trapped some babies in there. The squirrel, who my neighbor named Fredrick, laid on our downspout looking so depressed for the rest of the day and night. There’s excrement stains up there for proof. As it turns out, he was waiting for his mate! If there aren’t babies in there now, there will be soon. Fran made herself a new hole. Don’t worry, her head isn’t stuck. Mr. WTF and I decided that they can just live there until they’re actually costing us money. I was in a terrible mood all day because I thought we killed baby squirrels, so they’re not being evicted after all.