It was a shame because that first version, filled with zoom calls and video instruction, was excellent. After those two weeks off, the schools returned with cloud learning 2.0. At Hollywood hill, Sadie and Mason are still getting really detailed lesson plans- Sadie's teacher, Ms. Schock has been especially amazing. Caden's teacher, though, is taking the latest iteration more literally and is assigning only a few larger projects- which, understandably, doesn't seem fair to Sadie. I'm also supplementing Mason's lesson with an entire new reading curriculum that I got from our neighbor, Lucine, who opened a private school last year.
It's hard to believe that Caden will never go back to elementary school and that his last day went by unnoticed by any of us. I've already enrolled him for classes at Timbercrest middle school and he is taking it well that he won't get the customary 5th grade milestones; a weekend away at Camp Cedar Springs with another school's 5th graders (Casey was set to volunteer) or a moving up ceremony. I'm not sure he's realized yet that he'll never be in school again with one of his best friends, Aayush, since he will go on to a different middle school and high school.
It was really sunny here today, which makes a huge difference. Every day it's sunny, the kids get out and play with the Perlmutter kids, Shanti, Om, Jake, and Presley.
Sadie and Mason literally spent all of today outside playing with the Perlmutter twins.
The boys dragged out Andrew's skateboard last week and have been practicing in our driveways as much as they can- oddly choosing to wear their ski helmets instead of bike helmets.
Casey has started working from our barn space a lot more and Sadie and I used it yesterday to practice learning a TikTok dance. (I cheated by learning it last week on Molly's deck with Shirin and Megan).
Grandma and Papa J have set up an entire virtual golf studio in their house, complete with driving range and putting green, and I drove out of the neighborhood today for only the 2nd time in a month to send them two of the four n95 masks we found in our garage.
The CDC started recommending wearing non-medical face masks or coverings last weekend. Which was a reversal of their previous statements that the public shouldn't be wearing masks because they're needed for medical workers and they create a false sense of security. (Casey things that previous position was more based in politics than science).
It was a truly odd feeling to walk into the UPS store wearing a DIY face covering. I didn't want to soil our only pristine n95 mask (we have one other that Casey used while building our "barn" space) so I used a headband as a makeshift mask. The policy is so new that I had to give myself a pep talk in the car to go through with wearing it despite feeling ridiculous... Talking to the man that worked there while he didn't have a mask on (although he was behind a new clear guard at the desk), made me feel like a weird hypochondriac. But the man that came in after me also had a mask, so that helped.
There was a similarly odd feeling when Sadie and I went to our local nursery on my birthday. Casey and the kids cleaned out our greenhouse, per my birthday request, so we could plant some things and I read up to try to figure out how not to kill the seeds... At the nursery, the man behind two counters was very nice but also kept pointing out all the things he'd Cloroxed.
I'm hoping to keep writing here to record our memories and feelings from these intensely weird time. Until then... just as things were starting to go down here, I wrote this article for Glamour.com and this article for Women's Health. I was also interviewed for this piece at The Hill. I'm worried about all the work that I'm not getting done now that I'm in charge of the kids, and their online schooling, 24/7 but I'm trying to make opportunities where I can!
