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.

Babies

Wow, it is so fun to have a baby again.

Babies are so cute!!



And so entertaining!!!



They turn a regular ole' gal like me into a MOM with a FAMILY



And you can cuddle them even years later!! (although sometimes they fight a little)



BABIES!!!

Baby things you actually need

For baby #1, we had a big baby shower and got loads of stuff that I had carefully researched beforehand. And we bought even more stuff and got it all set up months in advance.

For baby #2, we bought a bunch of used stuff at a rummage sale about a month before our due date.

And as I was wondering out loud whether we had forgotten anything to a mom-friend with 3 kids she responded with "You don't really NEED anything, do you?"

And I realized, she's right! (sort of)

All you need for the baby is:

1. A carseat (if you have a car)
and
2. Diapers (although this, you don't even really need right away - the hospital gives you some!)

But seriously, there have definitely been some things we needed more than others.

Things we're glad we got:
1. Baby carrier (our favorites were the Moby and the Ergo)
2. Crib (and the book, "Happy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" which helps you get the baby to sleep in said crib)
3. Stroller (we got the kind you can pop the carseat into, and another one just for jogging - both were invaluable)
4. Video monitor (especially if you have a kid that has the uncanny ability to hurt themselves in any situation)
5. Pacifier (our babies would have been the end of us without this)
6. Swaddle (we liked the Miracle Swaddle for our bear-fighting baby #1 and the Kiddapodamus for our more mellow #2)
7. Breastpump - in Kansas, insurance now covers this! Yay!
8. Tylenol

Things we got but didn't need:
1. Coat - these shouldn't go on a baby that's strapped in to their car seat, and if you mostly drive everywhere then you'll never use it. INSTEAD you can get a carseat cover, or a carseat/stroller sleeping bag. Or if you're not feeling very fancy just use blankets.
2. Wipe warmer. A friend loaned us theirs to try. Not only did our baby not notice or care, but it had a little light on it that we eventually realized was waking our baby up at night! No thank you wipe warmer!!
3. Uncomfortable/cumbersome/ill-fitting/off-season clothes. And later, clothes that seemed perfect when purchased, that my kid just didn't like for some unknown reason. Unless you know you'll love it, buy used! SO much cheaper.
4. Shopping cart cover - we ended up with this somehow and never, ever used it. I could barely remember to bring the stuff I actually needed when I went out, much less this. And as a microbiologist I must say I don't think there are any more germs on a shopping cart than on all the other things my baby touches - which is pretty much everything.
5. Baby shoes - they just fall off! instead, get the little socks that look like shoes. So cute!!!

Things we got and didn't need but totally loved anyway:
1. Baby legs - those baby legwarmer thingies. Totally unnecessary but cute!
2. Bumbo chair/baby swing/rock-n-play - you can just set the baby on the couch or floor, but these things are quite handy.
3. Baby towel - obviously, you can use any old towel but the little monkey and duck towels are SO CUTE!!
4. A million extra bottles for the breast pump. Somehow I never had enough!
5. Changing table - you can talk yourself out of spending the $$ on it but then you get one and are so glad you did. And this is another one you can often buy used.
6. Bottle warmer - you think you can live without it and you can, but it really is nice.
7. Boppy pillow - I love mine so much I use it even when I don't have a baby around (like right now, to prop up my laptop). And I have taken it with me on many trips. But you can clearly just use a pillow.

I've mentioned this several times but can't say it enough: buying used is often way better - especially when you're not sure what you really need!

Happy babying!