COVID
Cases are up though still not up to our FL-summer-spike levels. I have received multiple notifications of positives in both kids’ schools though not yet in any of their classes (and I do think both places do a nice job of keeping classroom cohorts entirely separate).
I do fear what will happen with the holidays, from a nationwide standpoint. Numerous synchronous intimate in-home gatherings & celebration seem like . . . the perfect recipe for giant surges.
I don’t think we are doing anything for Thanksgiving though perhaps something very small & outdoors could be considered. Unlike most places we are headed into our GOOD weather season, for which I am grateful because the past week of continuous rain has been pretty disruptive. (G&C’s school closed due to flooding Monday-Tues and today is Veterans’ Day – I hope they are able open tomorrow! On the plus side, C did better with Zoom school yesterday than I ever saw him do last year — his current set up is in a much smaller class and they used a different style with much more synchronous content and paper materials rather than a bunch of apps.)
The statewide test positivity rate is now at 6.86% which is . . . not great. But I am hopeful that when cases occur in schools they do not seem to be generating large spreading events.
I am not sure how excited to be about the vaccine but I will admit some positive news feels . . . like a small beacon of (maybe) hope that is nice to think about.
Sleep
G took a 1 hour nap yesterday (rather than her usual 2+) and still resisted bedtime for a while, but succumbed at around 9:30 (better).
(I first attempted the calm placement back in bed, but after doing that approximately 20 times I ended up telling her “oh no, you came out too many times and now your door is locked” and quietly held it shut as her human lock. That worked. You can take my Nice Parent certificate away now.)
Habits
I took a break from most of my habits yesterday (slept as late as I could, did not work out, etc). Sometimes I have to remind myself that while it is great to be consistent, many of my daily expectations are entirely self-imposed and if I’m just too (*&@ tired to function, maybe it’s a good time to just let go a little. And when that happens, I’m better off just purposely calling it a break and enjoying the ‘freedom’, if that makes any sense.
(For what it’s worth, last night I dreamed that I had a hotel in Puerto Rico that I would escape to periodically BY MYSELF. I woke up and was so disappointed this wasn’t real.)
Peaceful
Highly recommend this album if you just need something meditative and peaceful right now: Olafur Arnalds (his site links to spotify & other streaming services to listen)
(Discovered on All Songs Considered as usual!)
22 Comments
About Gs sleep, my daughter is almost 32 months and about a month ago she stated waking up in the middle of the night screaming for mum or dad… and then not wanting to let us go back to our bed (unless she was coming -and that wasn’t going to happen). We tried EVERYTHING we could think of, even as you said “locking” her in, nothing worked. After about a week of this, as well as us talking with her during the day and even using a humidifier as a “monster repellent”, she decided she wanted the door of her bedroom to be open when she was falling asleep and making sure we could hear her (in the beginning we would stand in the hallway and reassure her several times, then we were able to sit in our tv room and reassure her from there). Fast forward to now, she falls asleep faster, with the door open and us watching tv not too loudly. She still wakes up in the middle of the night a couple of times, but a quick reassurance and tucking her back in usually does the trick. The safety gate we have on the door frame is not really used any more, but we have better sleep quality now 🤷🏻♀️
All this to say, no need to take your nice parent certificate away, and maybe have chats during the day with her to maybe discover what she thinks may be the reason (although 2.5yos are not particularly very self aware 😬)
Hahaha I meant the safety gate we have on her bedroom’s door frame
Cal Newport’s most recent podcast had a really great opening about every day not having to best your best day. I was very gratified to learn that even he got sucked into last week’s news cycle! Habits can be grounding and useful, but some days, it’s ok for them to look aspirational and for us to slow down and slack off in the name of self care. Especially if that self care is SLEEP!
Veteran’s Day is one of the two holidays of the year daycare is open but our work is closed. I’ve been imagining for weeks all of the wonderful things I would do today. Unfortunately we developed sore throats yesterday after an ER visit and overnight hospital admission for our daughter last week. So instead of my plans (which, if I’m being honest here, weren’t actually that great given pandemic limitations), we pulled our daughter out of daycare and all got covid tests this morning.😭 We are keeping our fingers crossed that the tests are negative and we don’t have to keep her home too long. This will probably be an on and off trend through the winter. We were talking about keeping our daughter home from daycare for the week after Thanksgiving just to be on the safe side, but I just don’t know that we have it in us to go back to not having childcare.
So interesting to read someone else considering keeping the kids home from daycare the week after Thanksgiving! We were considering that same strategy, but also concerned about juggling work with no childcare that week. And our babysitter is traveling at Thanksgiving so she’ll be quarantining and unavailable to help out that week. Alas, no easy answers, of course. Will be curious to hear what others decide!
Is the consideration for keeping kids out of daycare the week after Thanksgiving because you think other children may have traveled (or spent time with people outside immediate family) and may be contagious? Or because your own family plans to travel and you’re wanting to protect others in case you guys pick something up?
We are not traveling or seeing any family for Thanksgiving so it had not occurred to me to keep my two kids out the week after, but you now have me thinking about what others at daycare are doing and whether we should avoid them for a week.
(we are in a small, in-home daycare with us and three other families so likely lower-risk anyway just due to fewer people, but this has given me something to think about)
We, too, would have no childcare other than me for our 19-month-old and 4.5 year old, as my husband now goes into the office almost every day while I work full-time from home. So it would very much NOT be me working full-time from home during that week if the kids stayed out of daycare…
We’re not traveling for the holidays, and likely won’t even gather with my in laws who live 20 minutes away. We’re considering keeping our kid out of daycare the week after Thanksgiving because we think other the other children/families may have been exposed based on their holiday plans, and a week would allow for more time for symptoms to show up. We’re also using a similarly small daycare, and we plan to ask if the daycare will ask the other parents what their plans are for the holidays so we can plan accordingly.
Same here! Although our preschool did require all the families to sign attendance agreements that include some strict health guidelines to follow. They do a good job of continuously updating and educating us on as our local guidelines have shifted over the months, so I think everyone is on board at this point. For example, any travel that includes flights means a 2 week quarantine before returning to school. Which several families have now happily complied with, to my surprise! I thought there would be more push back. We also are supposed to keep kids home if we do end up spending time indoors with people outside of our household or outdoors if not 100% masking. All that to say, I think having a conversation with your daycare to encourage them to open the dialogue with the school community about individual actions over the holidays and how to keep school open and safe, especially since it’s a small school, is super smart. For us, we have currently landed on sending our daughters the week after Thanksgiving if the weather is good since it’s an outdoor program with 100% masking… so long as it’s not rainy. Rain will force them indoors for the whole day, so we’d have to think about that.
Oh my goodness I have had that same scenario play out and it is the WORST. I’m so sorry!!! I hope all tests come back negative and quickly!!
All negative! Yay! Just run of the mill colds, likely brought on by all of the stress and poor sleep of the last week. And we may have missed out on our holiday, but in truth, it worked out well that we didn’t have to do work and childcare simultaneously.
Things are getting worse here in MN. Our case counts are skyrocketing and our hospitals are nearing capacity – and we haven’t even hit the holidays yet. Le sigh. Our governor announced new protocols yesterday including limiting indoor or outdoor gatherings to 10 from no more than 3 families. I hope this sends the message that celebrating Thanksgiving is a BAD idea but I know many will ignore it, especially if they are Republicans. My family will still celebrate I’m sure, which makes me nervous as my c-section is a week later and my parents are watching our son. I’m having them get tested on Monday to allow for a little extra time – Tuesday would have been ideal but that would be cutting it close. I figure if they are still healthy come Wednesday when they arrive, we can trust that they did not get covid over Thanksgiving.
Sorry to hear G is still fighting bedtime! Our son has been whinier at bedtime than usual and will yell for me to come up there but I’ve been staying strong and letting my husband handle it. I do bath and pjs/etc so he does bedtime. It’s hard to not cave into his screams at times but he’s testing boundaries so I am trying hard to not let him get his way – easier said than done, though!
That’s too bad you feel that way about Republicans not taking your governor seriously. I am a Republican and have been following my states guidelines for COVID, as has my family- I really hope we can all move past polarizing the opposite political party and just look out for the health of our neighbors.
We live in Oregon where rules are pretty stringent. (And we actually just started a 2-Week Pause in most of our counties to stop our crazy jump in cases.) My entire extended family is Republican and they have followed our Governor’s guidelines without complaint from the beginning. So… yeah.
My goodness. You sure are making blanket statements here. At the risk of being accused of bringing up a strawman, imagine if this rhetoric was reversed and lumped all dems together? Ouch.
It isn’t the first time I’ve seen this kind of statement, though, from Lisa of Lisa’s Yarns. You could have easily made that statement without adding “especially if they are Republicans”.
I would encourage you to reflect on your statements. So very polarizing. Again, not the first time I’ve seen this from you.
I can tell you that I am a Republican (gasp) and I absolutely follow all of the recommended CDC and state guidelines. I am sharing this with you in the hope that you realize how your statement is wrong.
I apologize for making that blanket statement. You are right. I should not be generalizing. In my family, adherence with guidelines has fallen along party lines but that doesn’t mean that is broadly the case. This had been a major area of struggle in my family but I need to work on separating my experience from what others are doing outside of my family. I agree that the polarization is not good for our country and I contributed to that problem by making that comment.
I will add that much of the current political polarization is driven by AI that feeds each person articles that he/she is more likely to click on — which then creates silos/echo chambers, and moves people more towards extremes rather than towards the middle. My husband (a multi-decade data scientist) wrote about this recently, as well as the studies on how AI drives political polarization: http://www.cecropiacapital.com/blogposts/2020/11/1/how-does-the-rise-of-the-machines-affect-you
Thank you. I appreciate you coming back and sharing that.
The Hotel in Puerto Rico dream made me laugh out loud. I can relate!
Hello, In one of your recent podcasts and/or posts you mentioned a book series about girl entrepreneurship that was recommended to you and your daughter enjoyed. Can you tell me the name? I haven’t been able to find it and forgot to jot it down. Thank you!
The Startup Squad Series!
https://www.thestartupsquad.com/
We’re going camping with our family, just our household, for Thanksgiving. Utah is out of control and our positive testing rate is around 20% and up. We still decided to get passes because with our kids doing virtual school we need some outlet since we’re not letting them hang with friends and really that’s the only winter option here. Our kids are so excited to ski though and the resort is reservation only and they have many protocols in place like masks and social distancing and only riding up with your party on the lifts. I am worried about all the holidays and large gatherings since our governor just decided to mandate masks but said it’s hard to enforce.