If I look at my calendar for this week, it looks like I didn't do anything because there aren't any appointments listed on there (except for a hair appointment on Saturday). Actually, I was super busy; I was just being super busy at home most of the time.
As I mentioned, I did have an appointment to get my hair done on Saturday. When I left the house it had just started raining lightly but that turned into torrential rain while I was on my way to the salon. Thankfully, I had an umbrella with me in the car but my feet still got soaked since the parking lot at the salon had turned into a small river. It stopped raining by the time I had to return home, although we got more rain later. That was the leftovers of Hurricane Laura. (We've had quite a bit of rain this week, including a couple of strong thunderstorms.) The rest of Saturday was pretty routine. Seth and I went for a short walk that evening and it was beautiful with the sun starting to go down:
Sunday was actually quite busy and we did go somewhere! It was our ward's turn for in-person church, so we went to that at 1:00, because that was our assigned time. But besides that, our ward broadcast a Zoom meet of the 10:15 session (except for the sacrament part) because 3 members of our ward who have moved in since we had to stop meeting were speaking (briefly). Since we wanted to see / hear the new members, we tuned in to that. The first member actually just got baptized last week, but unfortunately the technology wasn't working well and it was hard to hear him. We were able to hear the other 2 speakers pretty well though. After our meeting at 1:00, we stayed after for a few minutes because another family in our ward was blessing their baby and they had invited us to come (and asked Frank to assist). It was nice to be there for that and to see / talk to a few people! Sacrament meeting was a little crazy; they had a lot of issues with the sacrament (still figuring out all the new procedures, I guess) and unfortunately Frank's piece of bread had a lot of hand sanitizer on it. That made him feel rather sick for the rest of the day. He felt fine by Monday morning, though. That evening Seth had an online stake youth fireside. So all in all, we had a lot going on that day.
The rest of the week was pretty crazy as we have been trying to adjust to school starting and the new format. His school district is using a program called Schoology, but it turns out that for some reason they haven't set up Seth's school's account yet so until that gets sorted out they are using Google Classroom, which they used last spring. (I'm not looking forward to having to learn a whole new system in a week or two!) As I said before, I don't love the way they have the schedule set up. It really is like he's in school all day...except he's here. They haven't started having Spanish class yet, so the schedule is going to change somewhat and I'm honestly wondering where that's going to fit in because I feel like he's online with teachers a lot already and I'm worried that he won't be able to finish all the work they give him during the time they have allotted for work time. We'll see how it goes, though. This week he got everything done and even had a little extra time now and again, but he also hasn't been taking an hour break for lunch / "recess", because he's not hungry (one of the side effects of his ADHD medicine).
First day of school:
Seth has done well with figuring out all the technology as well as the schedule...he was always in the right class at the right time. (I had to laugh at how many times I heard a teacher tell a child that they were in the wrong class and they needed to log off and go join a different class.) I also appreciate that our technology here at home worked well (no internet issues, etc.) because a lot of people were having problems with that, particularly the students who are using the chromebooks that were provided by the school. (Thankfully, Frank had an extra laptop he picked up somewhere that he was able to set up for Seth last spring, so Seth doesn't have to use a school chromebook.)
Emotionally, though, it was a bit of a rough week (for both him and me). For Seth, I think a lot of that had to do with adjusting back to being on his ADHD medicine every day, being on a stricter schedule, and having all this new stuff thrown at him all at once. For me, I'm just feeling frustrated and cooped up since I feel like I need to be home when he's online, which is basically all day. (Frank's looking into setting up some filters and such so that hopefully I will feel a little better about leaving if I need to.) I have been able to get all my errands / chores done, but it hasn't been easy. Monday went pretty well but Tuesday was awful! (Tuesday included a total meltdown on Seth's part and I ended up hiding in my closet for a while until I felt like I could cope.) It's been better since Tuesday, though, and Seth just finished all his work for the week and turned it in, so we are free until Tuesday. 😀
One aspect of having him do school at home that I hadn't really thought about is that I'm more aware of what he is doing (or supposed to be doing) and that is a challenge for me too. Since he is at home, I can't help overhearing what the teachers are saying a lot of the time and what instructions they are giving for assignments and things like that. I also can't help noticing when Seth's attention drifts when the teacher is giving some specific instructions and things like that. So I've had to learn as the week has gone on to distance myself a bit because if he were at school, obviously I wouldn't be aware of those things and wouldn't be worrying about them, and he would figure things out (or learn from his mistakes). It's too much for me to take all of that on, emotionally, and it's not really fair to Seth to have his mom sitting next to him saying "Are you listening? Did you hear what the teacher just said?" and stuff like that. So I try to ignore what's happening with school most of the time, even though I'm in the same room with him a lot.
Today I went to the school to pick up some materials that one of his teachers wants him to have. I just had to pull up in the car line and his teacher brought the materials out to me, so that was pretty easy.
Here are some good things about virtual school, though, since I've been complaining a lot. There is a little bit of flexibility since Seth has work time in the middle of the day. So if I really have to make some appointments for him during the day, I can do that and he will just have to do the work later in the day. (I'm still going to avoid making appointments during those school hours if possible, though.) Also the teachers are recording lessons they give and posting them in the Google classroom so that if anyone misses a lesson (especially because of technology issues) they can watch it later. This also gives Seth the option of going back and watching a lesson over again if he can't remember how to do something or forgot some of the instructions. That's been helpful a couple of times this week. He would not have this option if he was doing in person school. Besides that, for me I've found a lot of things to keep me busy all day while I'm at home. A few weeks ago, I started working on a project where I was organizing a folder of photos. There are over 700 photos in this folder, and I thought it was going to take me forever to finish this project but I finished it a few days ago because it was the perfect project to be working on while I'm at home supervising Seth. I have also been able to watch a series of YouTube videos on how to wire a dollhouse (pretty interesting, and it's not as complicated as I thought it would be) and yesterday I started working on a crocheted hat and have already learned how to do a couple of new stitches / techniques. So that's been fun!
Frank has been busy, as usual, with his job and his business. He had an overnight install on Monday and it turned into a true overnight because he didn't get home until about 6:30 Tuesday morning. Ugh!! then he was up again a few hours later but at least he didn't have to go in to work or handle any emergencies that day.
I actually can't think of anything else to report this week--the week was kind of dominated by school, as you can tell. The COVID-19 numbers are still looking pretty good here in Maryland so tonight Maryland is moving into phase 3 of reopening. I don't know if it's going to make much difference to us since school is still virtual and church is being way more conservative than the current guidelines already (but maybe we'll be able to have more than 25 people the next time we meet). One of the places that will be opening back up is the movie theater, but I don't go to movies very often. Anyway, I'm glad to see that the numbers are still improving. I'll take it! I'll finish up with a few photos of our wet world, which I took yesterday during one of our many rainstorms. This kind of sums up my week...stuck inside, looking out at the rain. (It was raining super hard, but slowed way down when I went to get my camera.) Notice how green everything is, though!
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