Checking in

Hello from the Stanis Family quarantine, ehem social distancing… whatever. It feels like a quarantine, so let’s just call it what it is. Quarantines have been used for many hundreds of years to keep from mixing the sick with the healthy. Essentially this is what we are trying to do. Enough of that though, I thought it was time for an update about how the Stanis’ are coping with life in the face of SARS CoV 2 (the virus that leads to COVID 19, a disease). No one here has any symptoms of disease. Liv had cold symptoms a few days prior to the schools shutting down, but recovered her runny nose without incident or intervention. Therefore, we are not living in the face of COVID 19, just SARS CoV 2.

Having disclosed that we are all healthy, I will say that this season has been our worst season in a while. The kids one or more of them, have been sick (runny noses, coughs, fevers, ear infections, etc) since November! So this kinda feels good from a health perspective.

So Oregon schools cancelled as of March 16th (a Monday) Tay and Liv had a scheduled day off on March 13, so really they had an extra 3 days. Ava and Wes did have school that day, so our quarantine really started on March 14th.

Having kids with special needs, we knew that this shutdown meant that I had to figure out a routine. My kids all thrive on some sense of routine. I started with a “Covid 19 schedule” that quickly spread around social media pages. This was a great place to start. I learned during the first week that we couldn’t really have an academic period in the afternoon. My kid’s attention, especially Wes’, was so spent that it was impossible to try to learn anything. I also learned that while it was a great idea to put away electronics during the morning, I was pretty dependent upon electronics for most of my academic ideas, thus we needed electronics during academic time. So after our previously scheduled spring break, we embarked upon a new schedule that looks like this:

We have been following this one since yesterday, and so far, its working better for our lives. Tay and Liv go to a school that practices project based learning. So in the morning I try to come up with some kind of lesson (yesterday we made a sour dough starter) that we work on as a group. I try to incorporate math, reading, and writing skills into these “lessons”. In the afternoon, they can use creative time and project time to explore topics that they are interested in. Liv, Tay, and Ava then present what they learned during this time while we are having dinner. We expect that they will have a more formal presentation of everything they learned on Friday. Hopefully I can post them here later.

The schedules are met with a little resistance here and there, but for the most part, it creates an understanding of what is expected to happen. Wes has the hardest time with this. While it helps him to know what is coming, sometimes he doesn’t prefer that activity = resistance. This is not surprising and I try to keep reinventing things to keep it fresh, light, and interesting. Today he spent nearly his entire second table time learning typing lessons with an app on his iPad. It was mostly independent and easy. Which is an A in my book!

As for me and Jon, we are carving out time to keep exercising. This really is the only time we have for ourselves. Last week I went for a jog and an older gentleman on the trail (the trails were packed) pointed out that we had a similar pace. He asked if I minded if he walked along with me. I’m a really accommodating kind of person, so I said I didn’t mind. We had a nice casual conversation and stayed more like 3-4ft apart. In truth, I minded a little. As I said, exercising is the only time we have to ourselves. Every other minute is filled with kids or dogs needing something from us. I miss the hours of the kids at school when I could clear my head and get things I needed to get done taken care of. I felt good though, when it was time for me to turn back, because I think giving the man my “time” was a big thing to him. And right now we all need a few “big things” once in a while.

Our seclusion has marked the end of “winter” and the beginning of “spring”, quite truly here in Portland. Near the beginning the kids enjoyed our first, and only snow fall this year. Wes was dying for snow, he and Ava even scrambled outside to erect a “snowdon” before everything melted in the afternoon. Of all of us, he is the only one who really misses snow. I think that is because he never had to deal with any of the mess of it. Maybe I would like it too if I only got to enjoy the fun of snow.

We kept meaning to get up to the mountain to play in snow, but it just hasn’t really worked out this year. And with the virus shutting everything down, I’m not sure we will get there this season. Our governor has closed state parks, trails, and beaches. It saddens me because the state of things really is so dire. I hope in the end that we all will understand how very necessary our sacrifices were. The kids and I have talked about this a lot to them understand. The idea of not having school has been distressing to most of my kids.

“Snowdog”

As you have been reading along, I included some photos I took while on walks of spring’s blooming. I hope they can provide some brightness to those of you who are not yet blooming.

Welcome Spring