Most of the shutdowns had occurred, and now it was time to figure out what to do next. This post covers life from March 23 – April 2nd ish??
No school, no church, and no work. No zoo, no museums, no restaurants. No parties or play dates. No sports leagues to play in or watch. For a very active family that is involved in all of these things on a weekly basis, this was really hard hit for us!
The only thing that I could think to do was make some posters to help us process everything going on, or rather process everything going off.
Our first poster answered this question: “What does Covid19 mean?” Remember, at this point, our kids still didn’t really understand why everything was shutting down because it all happened so quickly (and frankly, I don’t think any of us adults understood what was going on either!) It was important to talk more about this as a family.
All four of us wrote responses on the poster. Covid19 means: mis-information, shutdowns, cranky kids, cranky parents, canceled, anger, fear, not going out, trying to ignore the stock market, washing hands, sadness, no toilet paper, foolish people, minecraft, no hugs, family time, more screen time, no routine, busy but not accomplishing anything, less traffic, less air pollution, etc.
A couple days later we made a second poster. “How do you feel about covid19?” We wrote: confused, trapped, helpless, powerless, optomistic, morose, silly, fearful, sad, mad, annoyed, hopeful, hopeless, exhausted, happy, anxious and conflicted. In short, it was a pretty big deal.We were going through a lot. And so were many others.
Drumming became really important during this time!!
Tanner played chess with Grandpa on a video call. This worked out well, and we did it a few more times with grandpa and also Magnus.
Jeremy made a visible grid so it would be easier to play over a video call, and this helped a lot.
We went on a few nature walks around the canyon.
One of our walks took us to this Labyrinth, which is directly up the hill from our house. It’s on private property, but the owner said we can come here anytime we like! We’ve returned several times.
We managed to squeeze in a trip to the beach before all the county/city beaches were closed. It was awesome to be one of the only people there. And so crazy to think that just the week before, the place was packed. The beach was allowing people to come onto the beach as long as they kept six feet social distance. That was no problem for us!
I brought my djembe drum with me to play. It was a great way to cope with things.
Dallin took a nap in the sand.
The tide was really low. So many tiny sea clams, they look like pebbles!
And check out the sand dollars!!! We found over 50 of them!
This sign popped up in our neighborhood. It says: Hello Neighbors, we miss you!
Tanner looked so cute looking over my shoulder at the computer one day with his two missing teeth.
I started doing lessons with the nieces. It was so much fun that…
The boys seemed to be pretty entertained too, watching from the stairs! I ended up doing music lessons with several of my nieces and nephew until the school year ended.
I brought out the kinetic sand for the boys one afternoon. It was really calming sensory activity for both of them. I think it was my first time getting it out since we moved here. We’ve used it a lot during covid life.
Jeremy took on most of the grocery shopping for us. With all my anxiety, it was just too much for me. He discovered that all the tuna at Aldi was gone, just like most stores. The demand for canned tuna and many other shelf stable products went through the roof during March, April and May.
We enjoyed the pool a bunch, and good thing too. Because it ended up closing for awhile. Boy, did we miss it. But it felt good knowing we took advantage while we could. We tried to pretend we were on vacation even though things didn’t feel anything like a vacation.
Jeremy, Tanner, and Dallin took an epic bike ride somewhere.
Jeremy got a salad bar going for dinner one night. It was a big hit. Jeremy’s secret: for every topping they chose and ate, they got an extra minute of Minecraft time.
I was doing lots of experimenting with online music lessons. They went well, but at this point things were still new for all of us and it was taking me twice the amount of prep work. After each lesson, I was pretty drained. Here’s the little schedules I made for some of the lessons.
Dallin is laying in the squishy ice plants on our street. We took a lot of walks to the grassy strip that the boys call Funderland, and to the climbing tree by the pool.
I did another level of organizing our garage.
On Saturday, March ?? we decided we were sick of eating home-cooked food. We usually eat out 3 times a week and were missing it. So we headed downtown to find anything open for takeout. It was the first time in 10 days that I had driven around town. Jeremy let me peruse all around town to see what was up. Everything was shockingly dead.
Zoo Parking Lot
Playground at Balboa Park
Some of the busiest streets downtown on Saturday night. This Saturday night, it was empty. Very bizarre. I danced in the middle of the street while we waited for our Greek food. We came back a month later to the same restaurant, but it was shutdown.
We took our food to Coronado beach and ate on the rocks, watching the sunset. It felt so good to be out and about, to see a change of scenery.
Watching the sunset also gave me a chance to notice how much Quarantine was taking a toll on my mental health and on the kids mental health, more than we expected. It was important to recognize that we had experienced so much loss with these changes, and they were worth grieving over. At this point, a few more disappointing changes occurred. Our visit from Auntie Desha was canceled. Our spring break trip as a family to Mexico City was canceled. Such bummers!! Also, school shutdowns were extended from April 6 until further notice. The uncertainty of life was pretty suffocating, and people’s comments on social media about how we should be grateful instead of sad was feeling very invalidating and insensitive.
I have learned from this experience that it IS possible to be grateful and angry and sad all at the same time. Also,Telling people what they should or shouldn’t be feeling- especially during a time of trauma- does not help people during their struggles. It just adds guilt to everything else they are dealing with. Being at the beach was really helpful to my spirit, and so I made a commitment to come here once a week or more during all the shutdowns.
After a week of staying away from all friends and kids that the boys knew, we could easily see that this was not a sustainable way to live. I’m talking unsafe for us because of how violent our kids were getting with each other. Our kids needed to be able to play with other children. Luckily, our neighbors felt the same way, and we started letting our kids play with each other. They were really happy to be back in their fort playing with their good friend. I found Dallin there in his jammies one morning.
Climbing the tree by the pool.
Jeremy had some ipads that he was able to sell. With online school on the horizon and kids being cooped up with not much to do, these were suddenly very hot items on the market!
With the extra time, I wanted to do something on my bucket list, which was to record myself singing some songs. Jeremy helped me play around with different ways to record and film. At one point, we tried a song in the closet, haha. Turns out, we liked the sound in our living room the best.
The boys got creative with their marbles and this symbol.We made up games with it, and this was the highlight of our day.
Another few days went by and I couldn’t stand not leaving the house. I threw the kids in the car and we walked around 30th street and Juniper to see if life was still happening. We ordered a treat from the Italian bakery. It was my first experience at a restaurant with the shutdowns. No one could go inside, just take-out only. They served from the window, santized my credit card, had markings on the ground for where to stand, etc.
At this point, there was still lots of contradictory messages about what covid actually does to our bodies and how it spreads. I still believe that everyone over-reacted and gave into the fear mongoring. It felt great to be outside and seeing people shopping, being somewhat normal.
That feeling was short lived. A man in front of us was very anxious about things. I could sense it, so I reminded the boys to stay in our space every single time they moved their bodies while we waited in line. But the man still snapped at Dallin for hopping on the sidewalk. I was fuming inside and would have liked to punch the man in the face for being so worked up. Dallin never came closer than 6 feet from him. I wanted to yell out “Can everyone just please chill out about this!?!” But instead, I kept quiet, tried to forgive him, and we went to the next store.
Things were pretty weird walking around town. The street was really quiet and there were lots of empty parking spots. (not normal for this highly populated area!) The signs at the next store really made it clear how problematic the food shortages were becoming. This was a chocolate and wine bar, but almost overnight they transformed themselves into a local grocer. I was impressed that they figured out how to stay in business without being able to function normally. The signs that struck me the most were for toilet paper and eggs. Just seeing some of those products available was shocking. It reminded me of pictures out of a World War 2 documentary.
Then, I took the boys to the parking lot of the zoo, where we played catch with a football. We did this because all the local parks and fields were closed- even the grass areas were off limits. Really sad times. It honeslty wasn’t very fun, because there was a zoo patrol driving around the parking lot to keep people from coming to hang out. It really sucked that there was really no place nearby to take our children to run and climb and just be kids, and this went on for weeks.
We tried to do more yoga. It seemed to help?
The boys found a happy moment reading to each other. I was so excited because a lot of this time was spent with our kids having meltdowns and whining. This moment was short, but really precious.
We started getting things set up for Easter. I decided to make a sign with the jelly beans like the ones we kept seeing in stores for toilet paper and items that were out of stock. It says “Due to high demand during Covid 19, LIMIT 3 per customer. Thank you!”
Putting up window decorations for Easter. It was the resurrection scene.
My camera took a random picture of me while teaching a lesson on FB messenger. I am singing “Ive Got Peace like a River” with sign language. I chose this one especially because we all needed more peace with everything going on.
Another thing I chose to do with the extra time was to do a fashion show. I posted the pictures on Facebook. My post said:
“
I did a fashion show of my Music Around the World Class! The 7 week course was an after-school enrichment class that I taught to 26 elementary kiddos in Jan and Feb. I did a different theme each week and tried to match my outfit with the featured songs, which brought my lessons to life and gave students more context to what we were learning.
I meant to get selfies each week, but got pretty busy making music with my students! We had a ton of fun together. 🎶
Now that we’re social distancing, I figured I could document what I wore because most of the items were gifts to me and I wanted to remember how I pieced everything together for the next time I teach the class. Thanks to Jeremy for taking the pictures.
Disclaimer- These clothes are not a perfect representation of the cultures we studied because I don’t own complete items for each region of the world. I simply used what I had in my closet. If you notice something incomplete, I’d love some help with getting more items!!”
Middle East. This beautiful outfit was given to me by a student from Pakistan. Also featuring a matching bracelet from another student and my grandma Ruth’s ring that she wore while teaching and singing to me and many other students.
I taught the children how to play Ye Toop Duram, which is a Persian singing game that children play in Afghanistan while passing and rolling a ball. The students said this was a top favorite.
Africa!! Skirt from Zimbabwe as a gift from my mom, and bracelet handmade by Od Peter from Ethiopia. Head piece isn’t African, but I liked the way it went with the skirt (it’s from a hilltribe village in Thailand). We learned songs from Ghana, Senegal, and South Africa and explored several instruments from various regions of Africa including the jdembe drum.
Caribbean! This beautiful moo-moo dress was my Grandma Robertson’s and worked perfectly for this theme. The head piece is a square scarf, also from Grandma. The shell jewelry is from various travels like Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and I think the beaded ankle bracelet is from a Hmong village. We listened to steel drum music and sang Day-o and Tingalayo, another class favorite.
India. This handmade beauty was custom-made for Desha Wood while she lived in India. It fit me better, so I am the lucky owner now! Also featuring bracelet from my dad, and necklace from Grandma Robertson. Hoping to someday get real Indian earings. We learned an Indian stick dance that one of my students from India taught me many years ago.
Europe. My inspiration for this outfit was my French Linnea doll my mom gave me around 9 years old. The yellow cotton dress is one I purchased on eShakti. The apron is from my Alice costume. To represent a locket, I wore my Be Like Bernice necklace made by Melissa Zavoral Hoof. We learned Rig-a-jig-jig and the Austrian Goodbye Song. When I found out that only a few of kids knew how to play London Bridge, I taught that, too, and it became a favorite among all ages. I also taught Mama Dont Allow in this outfit, even though it’s not a European song.
Central America. This skirt is a traditional Guatemalan dress. The women selling it to me found the longest one in the market and took extra time to show me how to wear it. The belt is the type worn on special ocassions and features the famous quetzel bird. The necklace was made by girls at a boarding school in Guatemala City and given to us (Hormel representatives) as a thank you. The headband is also from Guatemala. Necklace and ring are jade pieces from Grandma Robertson. Earings are handmade by a jeweler that we hosted at our airbnb suite in Austin. They’re made with pummice stone, which seemed fitting for Guatemala. I taught the students the songs Buenos Dias, Don Alfredo Baila and a special dance that I learned from some Guatemelan children. I was surprised how quick the class caught on to the steps!
Southeast Asia. I have a few super fancy outfits from Thailand and Vietnam, but I didnt want to risk damaging them while teaching. So I pulled out a simple skirt, and used some Thai silk to make a princess shawl that I could dance in comfortably. I used all the gold jewelry I could find (which wasnt much, note to self) to add some shimmer to my look. I taught the students how to give a proper Thai greeting. They enjoyed a finger game about a crocodile called Dgo La Kay and the popular Thai elephant song Chang, Chang, Chang. We also did some movement and listening to the song Sakura from Japan.
This image was really comforting to me, and I’ve been holding onto the message during the past 6 months.
Our school district and several others around us were giving out free school lunches to all children during the shutdowns. I found a pick-up location on Coronado Island that was giving out a week’s worth of breakfast and lunch every Monday. This worked out perfectly for our needs. We stopped by the beach on the way home and it felt so good to be there. The weather was beautiful. And the boys loved feeling the sand, it was mesmerizing to them. We honestly really needed the sensory input, to feel human and not shut up and isolated from everything we knew and loved felt amazing.
I don’t remember what the rules were for the beach this particular time, because they literally changed the rules every week based on all the changing information with Covid19. And every beach followed different rules, which was extremely frustrating. All I remember is that we had to be a little sneaky in order to enjoy the sand.
We made this our weekly routine until school ended- Every Monday at 10:45 we drove to Coronado Elem school to get our free lunches, then stopped at Coronado Beach for about an hour to walk and explore in whatever way that we could. This was one of our saving graces this very lonely, isolating time.
Walking must have been allowed on this day. Really shocking to see so few people on this beach.
We gave each boy a shelf in the fridge for their lunches from the school. I was surprised how much stress this relieved for our family. These lunches weren’t the greatest, per say, but they saved us a lot of prep time and arguments about what the boys were going to eat. And it gave us simple snack foods, which was very helpful because things were really unpredictable at the stores during this time. We were so, so grateful for this!
We found ourselves doing more and more zoom meetings and video calls with people. I think we are either watching a Youtube or talking with some cousins in this picture. It was probably 9:30 or 10:00 am and we were still in our jammies and in bed. This was just part of our way of dealing with all the sudden changes and many disappointments. (It wasn’t until June that we were able to get back into a regular routine of getting dressed everyday).
To help pass the time, Tanner made a chart about his friends and their ages. I’m not sure why, though, other than he takes after his father’s love of spreadsheets!
Jeremy decided he could use some of his extra time to finally learn how to shuffle cards. After a few days of practicing, he was pretty decent at it! When the shutdowns got extended, he used the spare time to learn a few awesome magic tricks.
Dallin got into bike tricks for a few days of our new quarantine life. He put on a fun show for us!
Somehow, we made it through March. Just when we hoped to take a deep breath and get back to some level of “normal”, we got word that the shutdowns would continue for at least another month, probably longer. It felt daunting and paralyzing. I held onto the Easter season as something to look forward to. Can’t wait to post about that next!
