Winter Happenings

It’s been a minute, so I thought I should post an update so 1. everyone knows our home is COVID free now and 2. I can document all the usual things that have happened. Otherwise, I’m gonna start forgetting things.

Byron tested negative for COVID on Wednesday, January 19. He still had a bit of a cough, but I knew that could linger for awhile so I had him retest and it was negative! What a relief! No one else in the house ever got any symptoms, and those of us that tested were all negative. I don’t know how we managed to be so lucky.

I know other special needs families who worked harder than us and still had COVID invade their homes and infect everyone. It’s so discouraging. Illness makes caregiving harder. An illness, no matter how mild often sets our children back for weeks or months; long after typical kids are “back to normal”. We’re already faced with our child’s mortality more often than other parents, and whenever things slip outside our careful routine, we immediately slip into defensive mode. We know what it’s like to see our children fight for their lives and there’s trauma in having to go through that process over and over again. Please pray for my friends fighting COVID in their homes right now, and those adapting to the lingering affects on their families.

Addie tested negative on the same day as Byron and was happy to head back to classes (which started on the same day due to the MLK holiday and then a snow day on Tuesday). However- PLOT TWIST! – the school required her to take another COVID test on Friday and it was positive! Since she’d had the negative test on Wednesday, they told her she needed to quarantine until the following Thursday. So, after 36 hours of freedom, it was back to quarantine. On Monday morning she got a call that she actually needed to quarantine in a different, private room, in another dorm (I think to protect her one roommate who’d never had COVID). So she rode out the rest of her quarantine elsewhere. Thank goodness she was actually healthy enough to move all her stuff across the street and up to the 18th floor of another dorm. We assumed that since she would be released on Thursday, she would be able to compete over the weekend at Notre Dame with her fencing team but no! of course the NCAA has a very lengthy “back to play” process for athletes coming off of COVID quarantine. (Which I think was a surprise to her coaches since they used her photo on promotional images and had already booked her hotel room for the event.) So while she got to travel along to the competition, she didn’t get to fence. The athletic trainer expects her to be cleared in time for the competition this coming weekend at Northwestern. Hopefully, the rest of her semester is uneventful going forward.

We celebrated not having germs by going to the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton last Tuesday. It was fabulous. We were the only patrons in the museum until after lunch, which meant I let the boys drive all over yelling at each other with very little interference on my part.

Tony and I have been working on small home projects on the weekends and I’ve spent the rest of my time working on the second month of the Accepting the Gift Religious Education Curriculum. Check it out HERE! I have two more projects I need to layout and launch before the March curriculum release so you’ll understand if blogging remains light. Eventually, I do want to hire more people to help with editing and layout, but until I get my taxes done and know how much money Uncle Sam is leaving me for the coming months, I’m still trying to DIY a huge chunk myself.

Edie is busy planning Sea Scout meetings, and is already getting information from every Maritime college in the country (or at least it feels like it). She’s also baking a lot which makes Addie’s absence easier to deal with.

We’ve moved our homeschool ‘morning meeting’ to the afternoon and are now trying afternoon tea time, which is a big hit because snacks. It means even Byron is trying to join us to steal some biscotti. Teddy is also happier because then he can get all his schoolwork done in the morning. Fulton is the only dissenting voice to the new routine because it required change. I’ve got some more field trips planned for the next few weeks to help me through winter. It’s been too cold for the boys to be outside, and now we’ve got about a foot of snow on the ground which is too deep to even slide around on the patio. At least the wheelchair repair guy finally made it out, albeit without the correct batteries for Fulton’s chair. Also, daylight is lasting later and later everyday and I’m clinging to that brief glimpse of spring with all my might.

Have a great week!