We have quarantined with Little A’s Grandma and Pop-pop the whole time which was good not only so we could do our jobs, but also for Grandma’s sanity. Little A had started Gymboree classes a few weeks before all of this and was really starting to love it. It was nice to continue to practice motor skills while practicing some new social skills. We understand obviously why everything needed to close, but still made us sad he could no longer go. Grandma and I can teach him all kinds of academics, but he needs to be around kids his age to learn social skills. We hope he will be able to go to a toddler program in the Fall. Sorry for the little tangent….so back to quarantining with the grandparents being a great idea. When it all started, Jeff was deep in his busy season and really needed to focus 10-12 hours of his day on work. I am a teacher and thought since we weren't video chatting with the kids I would have more flexibility, but I was quite busy everyday. Even though Little A has started to play independently he still needs/wants a lot of attention. Here comes Grandma to the rescue. The two of them learned and played together everyday (it helps that Grandma was a preschool teacher). From my perspective, it was harder to be home and watching them play...made me wish even more that I could join in too. Grandma was watching Little A while we went to work before all of this happened. One day, Grandma needed a break so Jeff and I tried to balance our schedules while watching Little A. That didn't work out well. Jeff forgot I had a staff meeting video call and had taken a work call at the same time. Thank God during all staff meetings I could keep my camera off and mute myself. It was hard to divide my attention with a toddler who didn't want to sit at the table. I guess I had forgotten to buckle him into the booster seat because I looked up and he was sitting on the table next to my laptop. In other words, a day without Grandma didn't go well.
Little A has continued to receive speech services, but just like everyone else it has gone virtual. He logs into Zoom for 30 minutes twice a week. It started out well and his speech therapist was being very creative. Now we are all kind of over it. It is hard to come up with ideas to hold his attention so he will sit in front of the screen for that long. When it was in person, he was able to move around a lot more to bring his therapist things that he wanted to play with that day. It is harder to follow him around with an iPad and can make the other person very dizzy. Also, Little A sometimes just talks softly, so we are constantly repeating what he said to make sure his therapist heard. Other times our activity was too good of an idea and he is too focused on what he is doing that he isn’t even talking. My favorite activity that we have done is making ice cream in a bag and Little A’s favorite part was eating the ice cream. You put the ingredients (half and half, sugar, vanilla extract) in a bag, put that bag in a bigger bag with ice and salt and shake until you get ice cream. He loved pouring in the ingredients, but told us no shake. When it was time to eat, he asked for whipped cream and chocolate chips on top. We have also played with Play Doh, sand and water a lot. Sand made a big mess in the house, but that was the only way to get him to come back inside from the sandbox in the yard in time--bring some sand with us. Little A loves water and enjoys pretending to wash animals in the “bath”. We also have read many books and have made them as interactive as we can. One book has velcro animals that come off the page, or we find toys/action figures/animals that can be used with each page. He has met his goals along the way during his Zoom speech sessions, but it still isn’t the same. It is harder to work on what his lips/mouth should be doing for certain letter sounds when he doesn’t want to look at the screen. Little A used to look forward to his therapist coming over and would wait by the door to let her in. Now he looks forward to clicking the “bye” button to end the Zoom session. We hope soon that speech can be in person again, even if his therapist has to sit 6 feet away with her mask on. We are lucky to have enough toys that can be used in his sessions. It is much easier for Little A to interact in person than over Zoom. Our fingers are crossed that the Fall will bring back some “normalcy”--whatever that may mean.
Much of our days are spent either playing outside, going for walks or in the pool. He loves to be outside and would spend all day there if we let him. He rides a kids ATV and wants to be just like his big cousin. He also enjoys the swings and the sandbox in Grandma’s backyard as well. We have attempted to take a couple of walks/hikes. The first one at a local park, Little A was distracted right away by the picnic tables that were near the entrance of the trails. He kept saying “picnic” and trying to run to sit on them. In hindsight, we should have disinfected one and let him have a snack before we started. We ended up having to carry Little A through most of the trail until his mind was no longer on the picnic table. I’m glad we chose the shorter path. This path had a rocky stream that we allowed Little A to put his feet in. Of course Little A wanted to go further into the stream to try to swim. Needless to say, we carried him away from the water and a good portion of the path back to the car. Another hiking path we did a couple of times is right around the corner from Grandma’s house (well about a mile away). The first time, which was a 90 degree day, I thought it would be a good idea to walk to the path. We convinced Little A to ride in the stroller for this part at least. We brought his little doll stroller with his bear sitting in it thinking he would do a lot of walking if he had something to push too (plus a lot of walks around the block at home include Little A wanting to push his own stroller--this usually does not turn out well). He was walking fine until about halfway through the path, he kept going to the edge where it drops down a bit and telling us he wanted to go down. At this point, we convince him to go into his stroller for a snack. The first half of the path is shaded, so even though it was 90 degrees out, the sun wasn’t beating down on us. A lot of people just turn around and take the same path back to where they started, but my bright idea was to continue around to the other part. I did not realize that there was no shade on the other half of the path and that it was a lot grassier than the first part too, making it harder to push the stroller and, oh yeah, did I mention it was uphill a bit? Little A ended up napping in the stroller for the rest of the hike back to Grandma’s house and Grandma and I can’t even describe the amount we were sweating. By the time we got back, we had walked 3.5 miles in 90 degree weather. Recently we decided to go hike on the same path, but it was only 80 degrees out and we drove to the path. We only did the shaded half of the path--so a round trip of 2 miles. Little A walked about 1.5 miles, eating snacks most of the way. He loved dragging sticks, and looking for animals (birds, squirrels, bunnies) and leaves. He took a good nap that day! When we aren’t going on adventures, it is nice to just play at home some days too. He recently got a new playhouse for the yard, which he loves to push the doorbell and pretend to play. He even “mowed” around it with his bubble mower while we mowed the actual lawn. We are trying to help build his independence and practice speech with everything we do and a good way to do this is have him help in the kitchen. Little A likes to pour his cereal and milk (with help) into his own bowl. He is also really good at spreading the sauce and adding cheese to a pizza crust. Just this morning, he wanted to put the applesauce into the reusable pouch himself--so I held it open as he would put one spoonful into the pouch and one spoonful in his mouth until the cup was empty. He was so proud of himself. As we do these things, we are making him say the actions he is doing. With everybody working from home, Little A gets to spend more time with his Dada as well as his Pop-pop. Pop-pop may not admit it, but he definitely loves his Little A daily interruption--as long as he is not on a conference call. Sometimes Little A is asking him to fix something, sometimes he is sharing a toy and other times he is seeing what snacks Pop-pop has in the office. Little A gets to see more of his Dada too. It was busy season when this started which meant Jeff would be leaving the house way before Little A was even up and returning by the time we were asleep. Now, we take turns who gets up with Little A in the morning and gets his breakfast ready. Since Jeff’s commute is now down the stairs to his office instead of over an hour to the city, he has time to snuggle with Little A watching Mickey Mouse or T.O.T.S. in the morning. He is also able to sit down to dinner with us each night too! Something he didn’t get to do very often when he had to commute to the city because Little A ate dinner before he got home on a normal day. As much as COVID-19 sucks (and boy does it right now feel like a rollercoaster still), this was time with Little A that we were so lucky to have. To have the ability to watch him grow each day when we would have otherwise been at work is a small gift from this shitty situation. He has grown so much before our eyes in these last 6 months and continues to surprise us all each day! Every day is a fun adventure with Little A!
Like everybody right now, we are still figuring out what September is going to bring. I am still not sure if I am remotely teaching from home for most of the semester or not. Jeff will be working from home for the foreseeable future. Grandma is as always an amazing support system and will fill in when we need her. Little A is most likely going to school 3 days a week for 3 hours. We felt comfortable with their plan during the last Zoom call and will find out more this week. As anxious as I am about it, I know that we can’t give him the important social skills he needs at this point at home with just Grandma. She is a miracle worker and a great preschool teacher for him, but she can’t give him what other two-year olds can. He will have speech two days a week still--most likely over Zoom, but that somewhat depends on what his therapist needs to do based on her own kids’ schedules. Look out for another update in the Fall to find out if Little A went to school, how that is going and what our life in this crazy time looks like.
