Shelter in Place

Tuesday's "tea time and reading" happens as usual!
Lion is especially excited about the cookies a friend gave us.

I've joked with people about how "we home school--we quarantined before it was cool!" but in all seriousness this isn't what normal home schooling looks like! Real home schooling involves library and museum visits, park visits, beach days, playing with friends, and for a lot of people co ops--all things that have been cancelled.

Technically, our life doesn't look that different: we do our academic lessons at home following our usual routine, and all our scheduled activities (church events, music lessons, and even taekwondo class) have all migrated online. What isn't happening for the girls? Hanging out with other home school kids during my Bible study, Lion's running around and eating dinner with the kids at chapel, Monkey and Bug chitchatting about life with the other 6th grade girls during games and dinner at youth group, playing card games with their friend N at music lessons, building multi-generational friendships at our chapel's Sunday service, spending hours outside with neighborhood friends, etc.

Taekwondo via Zoom! When classes happened at the rec center, Daddy participated
too, but our house just doesn't have enough room for him.

The neighborhood kids are still spending plenty of time outside,
but now they're limited to their own families and yards. So sad.

The girls are handling this stressful and isolating time in their own ways. Monkey (our extreme introvert) has had her moments of boredom and grumpiness--usually relieved by sending her outside--but otherwise seems to be rolling with the punches with ease. Bug (the most likely to get stressed and anxious) has been successfully implementing coping strategies that we've taught her previously--finding the good stories and humor in a situation, keeping a thankful journal which her sisters have been contributing to with much success, and being intentional about her entertainment choices ("I can't handle historical fiction right now. I'm dealing with my own historical crisis, thank you very much!"). Poor Lion (the lone extrovert in our family) has definitely been hit the hardest by the shelter-in-place order. She is truly grieving the loss of friends; there've been tears, lots of tears. Fortunately, we watched Inside Out years ago, and it's given her a great framework and vocabulary for processing and expressing her emotions

Sometimes you just need to snuggle up with a kitty and forget the world.
(For the record, Pidge loves this. He was purring loudly, and they
stayed this way for quite a while.)

(I highly recommend this movie!). On the first evening it really hit her, we snuggled in my bed while she cried and explained it like this: "I don't want to be sad, but it's like Sadness just keeps taking over. I think Sadness touched a core memory--one about the G girls [our neighbors and best friends] and friendship. I just start crying every time someone mentions them." As a parent, it was a heartbreaking moment. We cried together, prayed together, and brainstormed some ways we could try to connect with her friends even when we couldn't see them in person.