Our COVID summer routine

Beatrix got a professional BATH AND A NAIL TRIM for the first time since FEBRUARY! We love her even more now that she smells good and doesn't leave gross remains of herself all over the couch all the time!

It's not that I am too busy to blog. It's that I am too boring to blog.

Our days are exactly the same:

• Ben and I get up before the kids to work. I exercise as well, start laundry and coffee, etc.
• The kids get up around 7, and Ben keeps working while I supervise their breakfast (they are making and cleaning up their own breakfast and lunch these days which is going great, actually).
• The kids do cursive
• Jack has dive practice at 9, and 3 days a week the rest of us have a pool reservation at the same time. Ben usually walks Jack to dive on the days we don't have a reservation because we can't walk in to the pool until 9:30. On pool days, Ben also exercises/walks during this time. So does Harry, who has a sports Zoom conditioning workout through the high school everyday at 9:30. He walks or bikes to the pool after.
• We come home from the pool at 11:40 when our time slot ends and get dressed/make lunch/eat/clean up lunch. The kids do a writing prompt in their journals.
• Ben works during this time. Ben works during all times from 6 am-6 pm and sometimes later.
• I work in the afternoon, usually in Dorothy's room while she plays with her dollhouse because it has been so hot no one has wanted to be outside.
• Harry has 3 neighborhood friends he can social distance outside with, so they play non contact games or hang out or ride their bikes. Jack and Cooper fight to the death.
• All three boys read for their book club in this time block.
• Around 3 I encourage some kind of group activity, usually outside, and I at least haul my fat ass to the porch or hammock and watch.
• 4:30 is the absolute last call for pre-dinner snacks, so it usually sees all the kids in the kitchen attacking the pantry.
• Around 5 or so, I unload the lunch dishes, clean up the after-snack mess, fold a thousand loads of laundry for Ben to put away (or sometimes I am too tired, and he folds, instead, after dinner) and do dinner prep. Dinner prep is made so much easier by the fact that I wash and prep all of our produce on Tuesday (grocery day!). Last night, it took 20 minutes to make tacos from start to finish.
• Everyone bickers and plays video games from 5-6:15-ish, when we finally eat together.
• Ben mans laundry and kids from 6:30-ish-8 while I clean the kitchen and take Dorothy and whoever else wants to come on a walk around the neighborhood. I aim for 30 minutes, but we go at a very slow pace and usually take popsicles.
• 8 pm-8:45: BEDTIME, all hands on deck. 
• 8:45-10:30: Collapse on couch to watch TV (H and J go to bed around 9:45pm but they hang out with each other during this time, coming up for snacks, of course). We also try to touch base about the following day, what needs to get done, if anyone has baseball practice, etc. 

THIS IS OUR EVERY DAY.  ON REPEAT.

Harry sees friends throughout the day. Dorothy and Cooper play with kids at the pool (you would be amazed how many games kids can develop and still maintain social distance), and Jack sees his dive friends every day, so I am happy about that. All three boys are also sort of playing baseball (I mean, they are really more like practicing, but there are kids there!), and Dorothy has a friend next door who is also not going places.

I don't know what the heck the kids are going to do in the fall for a social life because they are not going back to school, but the rest of the world is. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.

Genius pool game: I sit by the edge and raise my arm. The kids jump over it like they are dolphins:

 Thank goodness for the pool!

 Now that he makes his own lunch and breakfast, Harry spends a significant portion of this day in front of the fridge waiting for inspiration to strike.

 Social distance, with mermaids. Dorothy is the teeny spec on the horizon.

Baby!

 Baby with her foot in her eye!

(Baby is in the  26th percentile; no one is worried about her growth anymore;. The tech said she is 4.9 pounds and on track to be 7-ish, which would match her up with everyone else, so YAY! No more perinatal follow ups for now-- may need more after 37 weeks because I am old). 

Cursive:

 I am Grimace from McDonald's. It's cool.

 Dorothy has suddenly lost 5 teeth, 3 in the last 5 days!!