Life Under Coronavirus: Week Four

Day 22

Today I once more acted as Mr. Wizard, who did a science show back in the 1980s. I used some different chemicals in a test tube to create crackling and popping in the test tube I described what I did and the chemicals I used to him. I am hoping he will have an interest in science with my live experiments. I did it outside so I wouldn’t make a mess and since it was warm out.

David went to the grocery store and picked up milk, cereal, and bread. We still need things and he even finds toilet paper. Most stores now limit how many people can go in and have Plexiglas separating you from the cashier. The different era we are living in now.

Afterward, he watched some Star Wars Rebels while I worked out. I started a new book on two guys who re-enact Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the United States going up the Missouri River and ending on the Columbia River.

Lunch was on the menu today. I grilled two cheese and sausage sandwiches for both of us. We are going through a lot more lunchmeat then before. I know we use more groceries but still cheaper than going out to restaurants. We are also saving money on driving to the city and going out and about.

He has one big fit over something, I can’t remember it now, and was sent to his room. Then I find out he took down his pennants and he has to stay longer. Hopefully, he has learned his lesson not to do this.

After lunch, we went bike riding. Andrew is still using his glider bike, but I am fine with that. The more he rides the bike, the better he will be when he does the pedal bicycle.

I moved the turtle to the safety of the grass from the road. — I moved the baby turtle to the safety of the grass from the road.

Along the way, we explore the neighborhood. David walks along with us. He sees a baby turtle on the road. I pick it up and move it to the other side of the road so a car doesn’t crush it. On the way back on the loop we do we stop to look for frogs in a ditch that always has murky water. We see them jump as we get close to the water. The trees are really flowering now and spring is coming into focus. It is good to be out with the kid.

Dinner that night includes cheesy spaghetti for him and we have David’s jambalaya. We watch a sci-fi TV show called the Vagrant Queen with Andrew. It is one that is mildly funny and not too violent so at least it is a show we can all watch together.

I read Harold and the Purple Crayon to him again and he falls asleep pretty easily. David and I watch our shows before heading for bed.

Day 23

I began the day tired from the night before. Andrew had trouble sleeping so I didn’t get as much sleep as usual. At least I got him back to sleep in his own bed.

I did the usual morning routine. I check the news and have a cup of coffee. I’ve been drinking more than one cup lately as Andrew is a morning person.

We did another science project. Today I mixed chemicals that changed the color of the water, such as a blue and red mixture making purple.

The afternoon he played outside some. He wanted to be in the backyard in a tent. We don’t have one at the moment, but I have a beach tent that is open from the front. I let him play in that while I worked on gardening. I have a small brick wall that I use in part of the garden that needed to be propped up again. I found worms that I put in a container for future fishing. He thought that was interesting. I also found two snails for him to look at.

David made spaghetti for dinner that night. We were going to eat outside by the wasps were bad. I will have to keep spraying. It is that time of the year when they are looking to nest, the downside of living in the burbs and by a lake.

The evening we watched RuPaul’s Drag Race. Which he found interesting. It was done with the movie Frozen in the final showdown and they even danced to Let It Go.

Day 24

I was cleaning the house up for the Jewish holiday of Passover today and Andrew wanted to help.

I began by sweeping the floors. I did some of it then I would pass the broom over to him. He did the best he could, but I was just happy to see that he wanted to help. It was important for me to encourage this helpful behavior.

He assisted with cleaning the mirrors. I lifted him up and he did the spray part then I wiped them down with a paper towel. I did the tougher jobs of cleaning the toilets, which he was not as interested in doing. I also scrubbed the bathtubs down on my own along with the sinks.

Andrew putting his efforts into helping vacuum.

We went onto vacuuming. The vacuum is a bit taller then he was and he was not quite sure where to go with it, but we worked on it. I finished it up after him. I even took a cute video of him going to town on the carpet.

After housework we had lunch. I had some frozen waffles that I wanted to finish up and he happily had those with me.

That afternoon we went to pick up a canoe. A nice neighbor had offered to give us a canoe. This was halfway mark between Andrew getting his own kayak. If he does well on the canoe we will get him his own kayak when he is a bit older. I didn’t ride with them back.

I helped to put him in the kayak, which was made a little more difficult when I saw a snake in the rocks we were in. I sort of dropped him quickly in and then moved out of the way. We didn’t mention the snake to Andrew, he had a small scrape from it, but I thought it better than disturbing the snake that was below us. It was spring and they are coming out of their winter hibernation.

I met them at the dock and found out that Andrew had been bothered by a spider on the canoe and since there is nowhere to go, it made for a less than fun time for them both.

David spent most of the rest of the afternoon preparing for the Jewish holiday of Passover. It is an important holiday and involves a special meal and service.

Andrew helped with desert, David made rice crispy treats and he smoothed out the mix in the pan, which he enjoyed. Andrew, of course, liked the marsh mellow residue on the spoon and pan. Yum.

Andrew was a little frustrated while waiting for dinner. He had to spend a little time in his room. These are long days for us all.

The best part for him at Passover is the hiding of the afikoman which his hiding a few pieces of matzah, hard cracker-like bread, as part of the ceremony. The kid looks for it and receives a prize.

The prize was a superhero game. Which we played after dinner, this game involved members of the Justice League taking on the Joker. This included a Batarang, a Green Lantern force field and Superman’s X-ray vision.

Day 25

We worked on his sight words: Jump, Where, Said, Not, Big, Blue and Make. In this activity, he first traces the words and then writes them out. We then look for these words in his books. These words are harder to find than earlier ones. We looked for them but only found a few.

We found a Thomas the Train Engine counting book and he remembered most of the words in the book and counted the objects in it. He missed a word here and there and I corrected him. We hadn’t looked at the book for a while, so it was good that he remembered a lot of it.

Using Superman's X-Ray vision to see the number of the card through the top. — Using Superman’s X-ray vision to see the number of the card through the top.

We played the superhero game for a while, the same one we did the other day. In this game, most of the time the heroes win, so not really a problem with the loosing. You also are able to use a ball to throw at the good guys and a bat harpoon at the Joker, so it has some fun involved. I like these games then him doing it on a computer. I guess we are old school.

After game playing, he watched Black Panther why I did some work of my own. Then David let me take a walk and then shower for dinner.

Passover dinner usually includes matzo ball soup, but the weather was hot yesterday and having the soup on a colder day made more sense. Also, there was a large amount of food yesterday so this worked better. It was good and Andrew liked the matzo balls and even some of the broth.

Day 26

Tracing his words for the pre-school class was his homework today. We did this in marker and he did a pretty good job with his e’s although some of his other letters were a bit off. I encourage following through and he’ll do better next time.

I worked on my garden boxes. I moved the strawberries into one of the boxes. I was going to head to the hardware store and obtain some screws and some more wood for another garden box but David didn’t think I was prepared enough for it.

You have to wear a mask and gloves now and then clean off what you buy and such. We decided that I could wait until May to do it since the weather is cold next week anyway I won’t be planting anything into the first week of May so a late frost does not stunt the growth of the vegetables and fruits growing in the garden.

We decided to take a drive instead into Calhoun County where you can take the car onto a ferry to cross the river and Andrew enjoys doing this. So we did an afternoon drive. It was probably a good idea, none of us have been anywhere since we have been under stay at home regulations. We needed to get out of the house. When we crossed the river we were going to get a curbside dinner at a restaurant in the small town down the road. I called and found out they had just closed after doing the curbside dining.

We turned around and headed back home on the ferry once more. We were hoping to drive through the state park, but it was also closed. On the way home, we tried to reach the barbecue restaurant in town for curbside but they didn’t answer.

We finalized on Dominoe’s Pizza and this made Andrew happy. We went by home first and used the bathroom then headed to Domino’s where we waited in the car to bring out the pizza. We got two larges and Andrew and I ate one whole pizza together. He really can eat when he wants to. We have the other pizza for another day this week.

That evening before bed we worked on his numbers. He counted all the objects on each page. I am glad he likes to do the counting, I feel like that adds to his learning for the day. Hopefully tomorrow we can ride on the boat.

Day 27

It was warmer today, but we kept having cloud cover, which made it feel cooler. Andrew wanted to really go out on the boat so we decided to take our first boat ride of 2020 today. We live on a lake and have a dock so we can go right out of our back yard. It was a bit windy, but we were wearing our spring gear of jackets to stay warm. We drove towards the dam and then Andrew wanted to take over steering under David’s watchful eye. He made sure that Andrew didn’t hit a boat dock. We have a pontoon with a 9.9 horsepower engine so we can’t go too fast. I think the fastest the engine can go is maybe 20 miles per hour, but we don’t speed that fast anyway. This was what he really wanted to do today.

The tree’s leaves are budding and flowers are blooming everywhere and my allergies do kick in. Yet, it is pretty out. You can also see the work being done on older homes and new homes being built. There is always work to be done on a lake house.

That afternoon Andrew and I played a little lightsaber dueling before I took a quiet walk in the afternoon. David and I have been doing walks to help us keep sane with all this together time.

David cooked lean steaks on the grill and we ate outside on the porch. The wind had died down some and the sun peaked out of the clouds for a while.

We spent the early evening watching Disney Plus and TV series The Mandalorian. This looks like this will be a decent series for the family together. It does have a few violent scenes, but it is PG rated and nothing worse than some of the shows on the networks, really.

I read to him a children’s book on what it will be like going to kindergarten. The book discussed the fun aspects of art and playtime and then talked about learning letters and numbers. He will be going to kindergarten in only a few months so I thought this was a good book to prepare him for it. I will have to remember to put it aside and may read it to him a few more times as we get closer to August.

Day 28

David made matzo French toast for breakfast, which was delicious. He is still observing Passover. Andrew had cereal instead.

Then he wanted to color for a while. David had found some Star Wars ships online that he could color in so we did that for a while. Then he wanted me to cut them out so he could go around acting like they are in battle. I did that some with him.

Lunch was leftover Domino’s pizza and David had some Passover food, which I can’t remember now.

After lunch, I asked if he wanted to go fishing. We don’t have any bobbers but if you hold onto the pole you can feel the fish tough on the line. I had found some worms to use. I strung them up and we did this for a little while. It started to sprinkle so he wanted to go back inside, it was also not good fishing, they weren’t biting today.

The next big activity for the day was bike riding. Usually, we go down our road but today he wanted to head a different direction and go on the other side of the lake. He called it an adventure, which I thought was cute. So we headed a different way. We had to take a moment to watch an impromptu Easter parade of cars go by and honk. It was interesting.

We came to a field and noticed that we could see our house across the way. It was a different view for him then we checked out progress on the new house they were building. He liked the small hills that he could glide up and down. We could have checked the trails out in the park, but it was pretty busy so I talked him into following the lake. We did a pretty decent bike ride today. It is interesting that he is branching out on new directions to go.

David decided that we should have a decent meal for Easter so we had turkey, cranberry sauce, nut loaf, and some matzo biscuits and Cadbury Eggs for desert. It was a good meal for the Easter holiday.