Pandemic - more good

 Another good thing that's come of the pandemic is that we could focus on Little L's tummy.

Little L has some pretty major tummy problems. We figured out eventually he is lactose intolerant (he did ok with mom's milk but never could tolerate cow's milk). But there were other problems too. And we just couldn't figure it out. He kept getting lactose on accident and also getting real tummy bugs (tummy bugs are rampant in daycares if you don't already know this) so it was really confusing. 

We finally took him to Children's Hospital in Kansas City and spent about $2K on tests to have them tell us "we don't know what's wrong but it's probably some food intolerances." They suggested going on a FODMAP diet for people with inflammatory bowel syndrome, also called IBS. FODMAP is an acronym for all the foods that can set off IBS. It is all in the chart below.

There were so many things on there that we ate all the time like apples and beans and honey! It was awful but we thought we'd try. It quickly proved impossible with his insane ability to sneak food at parties and all the tummy bugs he kept getting. We got more confused.

Then the pandemic hit, and we were stuck at home. It was a great opportunity to carefully control the food and the tummy bugs our Little L was exposed to.  We did the elimination diet and added things back one at a time. We quickly figured out the hubby has some food intolerances too! He never knew this before. This was SUPER helpful because the hubby can communicate more clearly about what hurts his tummy.

We discovered both our boys react to the galactan group (this includes soy, cashews and chickpeas). They are particularly sensitive to soy - we have been putting this in the same category as milk and really keeping it out of his diet. The others he can take in really low amounts. Some of the others he is generally ok with but can cause problems in higher amounts like watermelon and veggies like Brussels sprouts. Once we got all of this out of the diet it became much easier to spot problems.

But things continued to be confusing. For example one night when Little L had nothing that should have hurt his tummy he was up all night vomiting. We knew there must be something else. We did some more research and eventually discovered GERD. This is for people with acid reflux. 

Aahhhh - now things were starting to make sense. Tomato sauce, peppermint, and chocolate were all ok with IBS but not ok with GERD and had been causing our Little L problems.

So now we are finally seeing some patterns that make sense. Little L has lactose and soy intolerance. He also reacts to too much galactans and fructans. And, we limit the GERD foods and try to give those earlier in the day to prevent acid reflux.

These diets are complicated, especially the IBS diet.  I imagine things will get confusing again once he goes back to school. By then hopefully he can keep track of what he eats a little more, which will help a lot. There are also some enzymes he can try taking and things like TUMS and pepto bismol help too. We will be working on this for a while. But we have come so far and I am very thankful.

A day in the life of the pandemic

 I've really appreciated seeing what it's like for others during the pandemic so I thought I'd share more about what our day is like here. This is a typical day from this fall.

7:30 am - wake up, eat breakfast (we like to cook oatmeal), get dressed and put in a load of dishes and laundry

8:30 am - Big L starts school in our little office with a 10 min class meeting. After, we have a short 'family meeting' to get organized. Then the hubby "goes to" work (up in the bedroom) and I start homeschool with Little L. 

8:30-11 am - Big L attends school by dong schoolwork in the office and occasionally attending class or working with friends on zoom. She comes out a lot for technical or other kinds of help. The study hubby works and occasionally stops down to grab a snack. Little L and I homeschool and are on call to help Big L. We go through the calendar and work on activities from our homeschool program. Sometimes he plays long enough by himself for me to check my email or wash a pan.

11 am - I make lunch while Big L wraps up school and Little L repeatedly demands my attention or sometimes plays by himself

11:30 am - we (big L, little L and I) eat lunch

12 pm - "movement" time - we do an online yoga class, run around the yard or a "hike" on the treadmill. Sometimes we get out to an outside playdate with another family, this is very carefully planned out with only families that are extremely careful and trusted. Lately (as cases have gotten really bad) we've been mostly just getting out with one other family.

12:30 pm - The hubby takes over on the kids and he eats lunch while I go to work (up in the bedroom). The morning is very challenging and I am grateful for the break. I often roll right into meetings (virtually) starting at 12:30 and am in meetings straight until 5:30 or 6. I try to get through my email between (or during) the meetings.

12:30-1:30 - Big L takes a break and plays chess or draws while Little L and the hubby tear around the house.

1:30-3 pm - Big L goes back to school in the office, which is similar to the morning. The hubby and Little L continue to tear around the house. Sometimes, the hubby has a work meeting or works a little somehow.

3 pm - The hubby turns on the TV so he can work. Altogether he gets about 6 hours of work in and I get about 5. 

6 pm - we have dinner together (husband makes it), and run another load of dishes and laundry.

7 pm - We put Little L to bed. The hubby takes some down time while I read him books because he is on for the next stage.

7:30 pm - I am off duty again and the hubby takes care of lingering complaints from Little L and the bedtime battle with Big L while I exercise and get back to work. 

8:30 pm - Big L goes to bed. I work until 11:30, while the hubby exercises and/or works. Altogether we each get about 8 hrs of work in each weekday.

Sat/Sun this is the time we buy groceries, clean the house, work on house projects or baking, and organize ourselves for the week. I have to be quite organized because the week is so intense. We are also quite exhausted by the weekend. In fact, I hardly make it through Fridays. 

The schedule works but there is nothing extra. I have to be incredibly careful about filtering requests at work so as not to overburden myself. This is not easy because saying no to everything is not so good for my career so I am also very carefully prioritizing - it is a constant mental exercise and I am often rearranging meetings or changing deadlines so that I can make it all work. One thing that is essential is that we are not doing anything outside of the house on the weekends. This is how we get it all done so that we can make it through the week. If there is extra time we also manage some baking/sewing/house projects and they have been a really nice distraction from the extremely busy work week and the constant difficult news from the pandemic. 

Pandemic - more good

 After writing the last post I realized there are more things I need to add into the good category - what's happened because of the pandemic. Don't get me wrong, there are many awful things, and I recognize that I have had it a lot better than most. But there's plenty to hear about the bad and I think it would be better for me right now to focus on the good, especially because there have been some really good things.

So, more of the Good:

1. We have all developed some new talents. For my big L, it's drawing. For my husband, it's home fixing and cooking (he's gotten especially into making sauces). For Little L it's learning about science (he has a whole spiel about how vaccines work that is truly amazing). For me, it's baking and sewing. I also got to do some gardening, I'm getting better at cleaning, and entertaining the kids. Basically, I'm learning to be domestic (in a 1950s kind of way). I wish I had learned these skills earlier!

2. We've saved some money. Money saved on childcare (and eating out, travel, and entertainment in general) turned into a treadmill (a really nice one!), a new basement floor, and re-grading our yard (not exciting but much needed). We also diverted some extra money into the kids college accounts and donations.

3. Home improvements. Being home made us finally get motivated to take care of some of the issues we needed to take care of. We refinished our deck, remodeled our basement bathroom, and did a bunch of small things like put up shelves and re-organized the garage.

4. I am becoming crazy efficient. To be fair, a lot of this might have to do with adrenaline. But I have started using some new methods to organize myself at work, get things done at home and keep track of things that are really effective.

5. Our family has gotten a lot closer. I feel so grateful that I enjoy my family enough to say this.

The good and bad of our pandemic fall

 The good

1. I got to see a new side of my kids. Especially my big L, who is really growing into a wonderful person. She is so responsible, and talented. I saw a lot more than I usually do in seeing her all day, doing school work and learning her new schedule.

2. I had a LOT of fun with my kids. In the summer, we swam at the pool (our pool, the club pool and the lake), berry picked, hiked around the neighborhood, baked and gardened. In the fall, we were at home more but still had fun. We have a lot of fun normally but the big difference during the pandemic is the feeling of time. During the pandemic, you have a lot of time to kill. Nothing really matters - whatever we don't do that day, we can just do tomorrow. It opens the door to a lot. We move in whatever direction we feel like and we don't worry too much about whatever plan we had. For example when we were at a fruit farm this summer, we saw some corn and stopped to check it out. It was so fun - I will probably remember stopping to look at the corn more than the fruit farm itself. normally we would not have felt that free.

The bad

1. we miss our friends and family soooo much

2. it is very stressful!

3. there is something that is harder to define, which is a deep disappointment in the culture of our country, particularly as a scientist, where people don't believe in the pandemic and at its root, they don't believe in science. There was a feeling (among myself and many other scientists) of screaming into the void. It was an enormous burden.

Pandemic update

Getting ready to homeschool, and then homeschooling, has had me constantly busy. Here are some things to catch up.

1. Big L's school. Last time I updated, big L's school was not offering an online option and we were looking elsewhere. After I requested to end her enrollment, as did many other families (about 60), they finally put together an online program. We mulled it over and then signed up. I'm glad we did - it has taken a lot of work off me. It was a very difficult transition at the beginning, but by around late September we had gotten the hang of it and were very grateful for it after that. There is a lot to keep track of and Big L has gotten pretty good at being responsible for most of it. She is learning some great lessons. She is also enjoying the flexibility in her schedule, which she fills up with art projects - often with her brother.

2. Little L's school. For Little L, I chose a homeschool program called Busy Toddler. He just turned 4 this fall, so I'm not so interested in teaching him really but more in keeping him busy so he doesn't drive the rest of us crazy. There are a ton of easy little active learning projects for every day that take minimal effort to put together, like throwing an egg around the yard to learn about gravity. There is also a big fan support group on FaceBook and I'm getting lots more ideas - like holiday related activities - from there. 

3. My school. At the end of the summer, I was convinced that reopening my school would be a complete disaster - 20,000 undergrads that don't social distance = not good. It turned out, it was only a disaster at the very end. The beginning - September and October - went surprisingly smoothly. The students stayed careful. Our lab stayed open, student cases stayed at a pretty low and manageable level. Nobody died (though one of my colleagues in my department was in the ICU with COVID for almost a month). In mid November, cases started getting out of control, the hospital did start to fill up but by then the semester was only over. We all hung in until Thanksgiving, students went home, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Now we are at the winter break, and I am so thankful. We made it through the fall, my little family is ok, the people in my lab are ok. Even most of my relatives managed not to get it. Now we all just need to hang on another couple of months until each one of us can get a vaccine!

Face mask pattern

 I made my own face mask pattern! The pattern + instructions are a PDF here. I improved the pattern from two others I had been using. This one fits under the chin and over the nose. You can add little wires to help it fit around the nose but I've found that with the curve in this design it's not needed. Also I wear glasses to can tuck the nose part under my glasses like the true nerd I always strived to be. I've also chosen not to add a pocket for an extra filter - I use 3 pieces of quilting fabric, which to me feels like a good enough barrier (any more might get uncomfortable). One could certainly incorporate a filter pocket into this pattern though.

Another great feature is that it has adjustable straps! I finally figured out the web is an amazing resource and looked up some tutorials on how to make adjustable straps. I quickly found one I liked and applied it and love it. I made adjustable ear loops using pony beads. The instructions are here. (there are other options also! they are here).

The only major con that I can find of this pattern is that it's a bit bigger than others so it's not as easy to put in the mail. I just can't fit it into a standard size envelope. If you've got an easy way to ship (ie without having to go into a post office) let me know! 

Pandemic schooling

It is mid July, and K-12 schools all over the country are set to start in a little over a month (ours is supposed to start on Aug. 24). 

Except, we have a raging pandemic happening.

Our society is very far from being in a place to send kids back to school safely. So, the big dilemma is whether to send kids back and risk the unknown, or keep them home despite the terrible cost to their social development and your career.

We are choosing to keep our kids home. We knew all along this was the likely scenario, although I had a lot of moments where I hoped otherwise. The decision is now clear. Here is our reasoning:

1. It's not safe for my kids.

2. It's not safe for their teachers. 

3. It won't be consistent - I believe we will have constant interruptions whenever a kid or teacher tests positive.

And things that are making me particularly concerned:

1. Cases are exploding all around us - the chance of my kids interacting with someone that is positive while at school is well above where I am comfortable. This accounts for 90% of our decision.

2. Our school is not reducing capacity and is not capable of enforcing the rules around being safe (such as having families that are at risk quarantine).

3. Many people do not believe this virus is a problem, which means many families (and possibly teachers) will not feel the need to follow the rules.

4. Testing is abysmally slow and inaccessible.

5. Contact tracing is useless because of the privacy laws in our state. 

6. I no longer have any trust in groups in charge of decisions around school safety, public health and policy.

So, what does this mean for me?

I will continue to stay home with my kids, splitting shifts with my husband, not getting nearly as much work done as I could before, and feeling overwhelmed. And I am very lucky, because I can get away with that and not lose my job (though my career is a different matter - this is the topic of a future post).

A problem we are facing in particular is that our kids' school is not offering an online option. So, we must leave the school and find another one or develop our own homeschool curriculum. And, once we leave, it is difficult to come back - unless we pay for them to hold our spot indefinitely (for two kids, which is $2k per month - not a light decision). I understand why, but am very disappointed. In fact, the situation is leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth. Many other families will not return, and the school might not make it anyway. All of this is weighing heavily on me this week. Plus, I have a lot of work ahead of me to prepare for the year ahead of homeschool, and a possible permanent transition elsewhere.

Pandemic gardening

Gardens are such a great distraction for kids, so the minute schools shut down I started one.

I am no regular gardener, but have been known to garden occasionally. When we first moved in we bought two raised beds (literally raised, they are like tables - this is so helpful for my bad back). These beds are pretty small but are enough to grow a few things every year. The last two years, we didn't grow anything because we've been doing other things. So we bought a bunch of dirt and filled them back up again and got them ready to go. Now, they are full of things!

A view of our two garden beds from our living room window (taken during the rain). You can see a little bump in our yard way out behind it, which is really what I was really taking a picture of originally - we had water accumulating in a sort of pillow under the grass that was coming from a pipe from one of our gutters! We actually had to go out and "pop" it!!! But that's a story for another day.

This one shows kale in the front (we just picked it), carrots behind that and then a bunch of cucumber.

This one is full of tomatoes. There seems to be a bunch of different kinds. We grew them from seeds that a friend gave us in an envelope labeled "assorted tomatoes" so it will be a surprise!!

These are the assorted seeds we got from a friend. So many different seeds, and so much fun waiting to see what grows!!

 I've never grown so many plants from seeds before, so it was kind of an adventure. I figured out that if you cut up a milk carton, it makes a great place to start some plants. I put 3-4 in each container and then had to pull the plants apart later, so maybe smaller sized containers would be better - but these were free and didn't require a store trip so worked for this year!

Our first go at sprouting seeds totally failed. I didn't get the holes cut in the bottom of the containers very well and the kids over exuberantly watered everything until they all met their sad death. 

We got more seeds, and cut bigger holes, and tried again. Almost everything grew the second time, though it was getting a little later in the season so things like the sugar snap peas never quite had a good season. But many other things, like kale and carrots and cucumbers and tomatoes, are doing just fine. 

Since we grew from seed we didn't really know how much would grow and ended up with a LOT more starters than we had room for in our little gardens. So, I started buying pots to put around the deck. We considered building a whole new bed in the yard but didn't know if we would keep up this kind of volume to make it worthwhile after this year. Besides, the pots around the deck meant we could easily watch the plants grow from our kitchen table, which has been especially fun.

A chili pepper! Almost ready to pick. We grew 5 kinds: Serrano, jalepeno, ghost, and two mysteries from our friend's seeds.

Chives! After our kids eat these, they smell like chives for hours.

sugar snap peas! These are my absolute favorite garden snack. I hardly got any this year because they went in too late, and the few we had were immediately picked and eaten by the kids, which both act like rabbits.

This pot is full of okra, and giant sunflowers. I probably tried to pack in too much to this one pot but I thought I'd try it. 

Basil! Another pick-and-eat favorite of mine and the kids. We also have peppermint growing under the deck, which sprung up on its own, and that is probably the biggest hit of all of them.

I also have about 4 more pots of tomatoes, and a bunch of pots that have just one okra or sunflower each. 

We tried and never succeeded at: marigolds (from seed), and beans and pumpkins (they were damaged by the wind in transit from a neighbor's house). We also had a really hard time with peppers and kale (I think the seeds were just old) - we planted about 30 seeds and got just two to grow of each, and it took about a month. The peppers were a complete surprise - I had given up and planted something else in the starter pots when they suddenly appeared one day. I still don't know what kind - we'll see!

Gardening has been WONDERFUL for the kids. It's a great distraction for a tantrums and bonding time for all of us. Everyone in the family is taking pride in what's growing and pitching in to help. My only complaint is that we don't have nearly enough - everything gets eaten before we even bring it inside!

Pandemic haircuts

We made a big decision. We decided to take Little L for a haircut. COVID cases are still relatively low in our town (we just passed 100 cases in a city of 80,000), but it really looks like things are about to get worse so it was now or never (at least until vaccine). We took him to a place that requires masks and appointments, and at a time when there were no other customers. We were in and out in 15 minutes. 

To go, he had to wear a mask. He's only three, so this was a big uncertainty. But, he did great! He loves haircuts, so was very much willing to wear a mask. Also, I sewed him a super cute Star Wars mask and we gushed about how handsome he was in it, which he loved.

In fact, he wore his mask all the way to the hair cut place (which is only 5 min away).

Little L just loves haircuts (unlike his sister, who was a terror to get haircuts). He happily climbed up on the booster seat and sat like a perfect prince the whole time, no cringing or anything. He didn't even touch his face mask! When he was finished, he high fived the lady and nodded knowingly when she said they didn't have suckers because of the pandemic. He was extremely happy to get a temporary tattoo instead, which he put on immediately when we got home (it was a sudsy shampoo bottle).

His new haircut looks great!

While Little L got his haircut, I talked to the lady cutting his hair. They have had little business since re-opening. Tips are unpredictable because lots of customers are broke. She has no childcare and has had to ask her parents to help out in order to work, which is a big risk to her parents. We commiserated over our hard realities (hers are definitely worse than mine). We commiserated over the uncertain future. I would have hugged her if I could have - but instead, we stayed 6 ft from each other and had to talk through our face masks. It is such a crazy world right now.

But, at least we could get Little L a much needed haircut!

Opening higher ed schools under pandemic concerns

This week, the university where I work and many other higher education schools announced plans to open up schools in the fall despite the ongoing pandemic. 

This seems to be the going plan: 1) bring back students and 2) hope for the best.

Given that the NBA can't even keep their players COVID-free, with all the money they can put into that effort, it seems unlikely the universities will have much luck. But I guess you never know. 

Logistically, it seems like a nightmare. We have maxed out our classrooms and dorms and dining halls. We have narrow hallways and often only one exit and entrance to the classrooms. We really can't keep students away from each other, even if they want to be. And they probably won't want to be. In our college town, there have been constant parties near campus even during the height of the shutdowns. I'm glad I'm not in charge of figuring out any of this.

The faculty are having mixed reactions. Personally, I understand the dilemma and the need to hope for the best. It just seems so unlikely that they'll make it past 2 weeks. But to be honest, the main thing I am worried about is childcare. Opening up the university will accelerate a spike in cases leading to faster school and daycare closures - and parents everywhere are so desperate to even have a little relief in the fall. Me included. With the announcement this week, all my hope for returning kids in the fall - even for a week or two - vanished.

Thankfully, I live in a place where most people seem to understand the situation and are doing everything they can to mitigate it. People wear masks. They social distance (often better than me) and wash hands (also probably better than me). They sew masks and leave them in baskets outside, and then advertise on social media where to come find them. Nobody judges, at least not openly. Because of all that, we've kept cases low. We were even mentioned on the front page of the New York Times last weekend! Maybe we'll continue to keep cases low-ish in the fall too - here's hoping.

Pandemic sourdough

The title of this post should maybe just be "Sourdough" because the story of the sourdough started before the pandemic. 

Sometime last year, I was asked to be the 'scientist' in a panel discussion with an invited author, Sandor Katze, who writes about food fermentation. I had never heard of him and had almost zero knowledge about fermentation. But I agreed, and had a blast (of course). I ended up going to all the events related to his visit, including an AMAZING dinner designed by an artist that uses fermented food as a medium for their work (fermentation and feminism). It was fascinating.

Anyways, that brings me to sourdough. One of the events was a partnership with the public library, which was doing a book club on a book, "Sourdough" at the time. So I read the book. It was kind of blah, but I got really into the idea of making sourdough. And my husband read the much more interesting fermentation book by Sandor Katz and got into making fermented peppers. So we tried each. The peppers worked great (except for a few that failed). The sourdough, not so much.

The first starter we forgot about and it dried out.

The second starter we overwatered and it molded.

The third one died with no explanation. I think it knew about all the others and was protesting on principal.

The fourth one worked, which happened during the pandemic. After about a week and a half, we were sure we weren't going to kill it and we started our sourdough. We followed a recipe with great detailed explanations from Tartan, a bakery in San Franscisco (we bought their book). We let the bread rise outside in the morning, when it was about 80F, and when it got up past 90F in the afternoon we moved it to an uninsulated part of our house that was about 80F (the rest of our house is at 73F with air conditioning, which we've found isn't quite warm enough). It rose really well. The studly hubby did a great job working the dough because he has learned how to work dough from all the pizza he's made over the years. Then we baked it and boy! it was so great. 

Pandemic facemasks and doctors

I've been sewing facemasks like a fiend. It's been a HUGE stress reducer. I'm giving them away as fast as I can sew them, too - everyone needs them now! It's been so fun finding cute fabric and playing with the patterns. I've just started wearing them a lot more now that I am going back to work. Now that I am wearing them, I am finding little ways to improve them and looking forward to rolling out production of FaceMask v2. 

Today, I took my daughter to the doctor for her yearly checkup. We are cancelling everything that is not essential especially those involving kids (because they put their fingers all over everything). But, she needed to go for several reasons so we put her in a face mask and took her. I gave her one of the first face masks I ever made, which I made too small on accident so it fits her well.

This picture is of my daughter and I in our facemasks. She's so cute in a face mask!

The doctor's office was a little different. We sat in our car and called the front desk when we got there. They sent out a nurse when they were ready for us. They took our temperatures before letting us in to the clinic (not that it helps). They had plexiglass in front of the reception area, and they spread the chairs out in the waiting area. All the doctors and nurses had face masks on (the good ones - N95s). They never took them off, not even to talk to us. 

There is new data suggesting face masks, even cloth ones, are a powerful protector against COVID. I'm all in on that idea. One can really express themselves through the type of face mask they wear, and you can also get out and about a bit more, which is really a nice relief after all that time at home. The trouble is, you always want to adjust it or pull it down to talk - my daughter was especially bad about this! And that brings new risk in. I kept having to coach her on proper face mask wearing. And try to remember myself. It's kind of exhausting! Hopefully, with time, we'll all get more used to it.

Pandemic cooking

Since we're home all the time now, we've started cooking a lot (like everyone else). Like, A LOT.

We have only gotten food cooked by someone else ONE TIME in the past 3 months.

We are also cooking lots of new things: home made tortillas, bread, Thai food, salsa, vegan strawberry shortcake and lots of other vegan things (little L is lactose intolerant).

This is our homemade vegan strawberry shortcake with strawberry compote and real homemade whip cream (little L gets coconut whip cream).

This is me eating tacos with homemade tortillas, chorizo and topped with homemade green tomatillo salsa

These are some of our other favorites: vegan banana chocolate chip muffins

This is one of our favorite cookbooks! Everything in it has been a winner.

We're also cooking lots of family favorites: homemade yogurt, ice cream, chicken soup, enchiladas,

Our homemade yogurt - we often top with a strawberry compote or teaspoon of sugar

We're also experimenting with some really interesting stuff like kimchi and fermented peppers, sauerkraut, etc (we started this before the pandemic), sourdough and other kinds of bread, and growing our own veggies (more on this later).

One of our loaves of bread - super delicious!

,
Cooking is an easy thing to do while the kids are working on other projects, especially things that can be started and stopped a lot. The kids even help sometimes!

Big L helping little L knead the dough for some bread. The first time I asked little L to knead the dough he thought I said "EAT the dough" and he took a big bite of it! We had to run after him and get him to spit it out! It caused quite the laugh.

Little L LOVES washing dishes, which is a real blessing when you are cooking a lot. He'll wash dishes for an hour sometimes!

Homeschooling, pandemic style

Taking care of kids at home is hard. Taking care of kids while working full time is harder. Taking care of kids when you can't go out or interact with anybody and have to work full time is absolutely ridiculous. But, we have really come a long ways in 2.5 months.

Here are some things we've learned to be helpful.

1) Restrict screen time. If we don't restrict it ends up being ultimately useless as the kids don't really pay serious attention to it. Also, our kids whine constantly so we had to implement a 'go to your room if you whine about it' policy which we now apply to lots of things.

2. Put the kids to bed as early as possible. Little L's daycare teachers are magical nap-inducing fairies. Not so much at home. And he became a chronic cranky bear when daycare ended. We moved the bedtime up by an hour and viola, things got SO MUCH better. Plus, then mom, dad and Big L get an extra hour of time away from the 3.5-yr old tornado.

3. NEVER do housework while the kids are sleeping. I was inspired by this post over at busytoddler.com (a GREAT resource). Alone time is SO PRECIOUS. And kids need to learn to help clean up anyway. I've gotten so good at this and at keeping kids busy that sometimes I can spend 2+ hrs on housework during my shift with the kids. The secret was...

4. Plan ahead for kid activities. On Sundays, I scroll through blogs and order a few supplies. I focus on different types of activities like crafting, education, cooking, house projects, and physical activity. I found great ideas at homeschool blogs like the one above and 123homeschool4me.com. It's best to keep a running list of new ideas and a bin full of old projects too. I'm also learning to keep EVERYTHING like toilet paper rolls and empty tin cans because you never know what might turn into a project!

5. Make the most of your work shift. Separate work into "high focus," "medium focus" and "low/no focus." For the high focus (aka 'deep work'), let the designated kid-care parent handle EVERYTHING (except a true emergency). For medium focus (aka a meeting you only participate in a little), either help out the other parent for a bit or do another medium or low focus task, like order groceries or email. Try to do low focus tasks entirely while on your kid shift (the Studly Hubby is GREAT at this).

We've tried obvious things like instituting quiet time and teaching Big L to watch Little L, but they weren't really all that effective. Maybe those things work for other people. We are kind of flying with whatever works for us, and continually adjusting. But, we do seem to be getting better, in tiny steps. Perhaps others will find this and post some great ideas we can try! And to any of you that do, my best to you - it is a crazy train.

Pandemic sewing

As a kind of pandemic therapy, I've been sewing.

I used to sew every once in a while. Then the pandemic happened, and there was a call for cloth face masks. My sewing services (and all those great fabric scraps!) were called to action.

Here is a stack of face masks I sewed. Many of them went to the folks in my lab, as face coverings are required at all times in the building where we work.



The first time I wore a mask in public it seemed really weird. I am still getting used to it. My big problem is that I never quite have them on right in the first place, and adjusting is difficult without touching your face. Since I sewed them in the first place I am going to have to figure out how to make them fit better. Here is a picture of me on the first day I wore a mask out in public.



My new thing is to sew masks that match my skirt that I also sewed. Here is my first one, which matches a skirt I sewed in a set with one for my mom for a trip we took to Myrtle Beach a couple of years ago (trip for work, I took my mom for fun).



My son is in the picture too. You can see he is needing a haircut! We haven't gotten him to wear a mask yet but he told us this morning he would wear one if he could get a haircut. He loves haircuts for some reason.

Pandemic summer

In March 2020, COVID-19 came to Kansas and everything shut down in the blink of an eye. For us, it was the week of spring break. Our kids were at a spring break art camp (big L) and with a neighbor at her at-home daycare (little L). I was spending the week in a fog and panic. I knew it was getting really bad because my friends in Seattle had been watching it spread. I knew it was coming to Kansas. I knew it was probably here. I was writing letters to our school principle, the state department of health, and the governor pleading with them to shut down sooner rather than later. The longer we waited, the more trouble we would be in.

Wednesday March 11 was big L's birthday. The Sunday before, we had a few friends over and talked nervously about how things could change. We had dinner together, and the kids played with each other. That was the last time we had friends over or a play date for the kids. On March 11 (big L's birthday), The WHO announced a worldwide pandemic and about 200 higher ed schools moved classes online. I was horrendously late picking big L up from camp that day because I was on the phone with a colleague about the letters I was writing to the governor. I got really mixed reactions about the letters and my colleague was worried I was going too far.

The next day, I went to the dentist. They asked me how I was doing, and I told them I was a little shaken by the pandemic. They were shocked to learn KU had just joined all the other schools in moving classes online. They told me not to worry about it because it was just like the flu. I told them NO, and explained why it wasn't.

The next day, the state of Kansas shut down all businesses, including dentist offices, indefinitely. It would be two months before anything, including my dentist office, could open again. They also shut down public schools. We sat around the dinner table and were all in shock. The kids were worried about their new schedule so we sketched one out for them. I would take the morning shift watching kids and my husband would take the afternoon shift. We would do academic work in the morning and play outside in the afternoon. We would turn on the TV at 3 pm and let kids watch for 2 hrs while we both worked. Then we would put kids to bed and work all evening. Weekends would be split catching up on work and housework. We had no idea how long it would last. We had no idea about a lot of things. I was really worried about getting my quarterly botox shots for my cervical dystonia, which was coming up in two weeks at the KU medical center (I went and it was fine). We were worried about our family, who were constantly asking me questions about what they were seeing in the news. We were worried about the Study Hubby's job, which was a contract position at a movie theater company (his contract was abruptly ended the next week, but he picked up a new contract several weeks later). We spent all our spare time looking at the news. Everything was shutting down. Big L's sewing class cancelled, her theater performance and chess tournament and school music performance all got cancelled. The library closed and there was nowhere to return all the books we just checked out. There was a run on the grocery store and we had to buy whatever we could find instead of what we normally wanted for about the next month. We were terrified they would run out of almond milk, which was the only thing little L likes to drink and he needs it as part of his night routine (he is lactose intolerant). There really was no toilet paper.

In my career many of my colleagues are doctors who eventually become my close friends. Some of them were getting called into the ICU to treat COVID patients. With shortages of everything, they had no idea if they would have appropriate protective equipment to keep themselves safe or enough beds and ventilators to keep their patients alive. I cried when I found out one of my closest friends and colleagues in Seattle had started his shift in the COVID ward in Seattle. Another close friend in Montreal did the same. My neighbor who is a doctor at the local hospital and my sister in law and cousin in Iowa were all in the same situation. We were terrified for all of them.

Now, we've been sheltered in for two months and summer is coming and cases are going down. We are starting to emerge though very carefully. No one is sure what the summer or fall will look like. We all need haircuts and staples like flour and toilet paper. We want to go to the library and get ice cream but aren't doing anything without careful thought. We are still splitting shifts with the kids and it has been brutal (more on that later).

The first three weeks of quarantine we were in shock and survival mode. Now, we are getting used to our new routine and the scarcity of flour and toilet paper and we are finding ways to cope. To try to document some of what we've been through and learned about ourselves and each other and our community, I thought I'd resurrect the blog. In the next posts I will try to focus on some different topics and some snapshots of what our every day lives are about.

Catching up

It's been a while!

Our second baby is now 3.5 yrs old.

Our first baby is now 10!!

We are still in Kansas.

I got tenure! I run a team of 5-10 people doing research on social interactions in bacteria, including bacterial pathogens and soil bacteria. We learn cool science, publish papers, get funding to do new research, and teach people about the cool stuff we learn.

The Study Hubby is still a software developer.

I haven't read anybody's blog in about 3 years. Wow! I have some catching up to do.