First two weeks of school

 The kids have had their first two weeks of school.  Katsu and I basically get into bed each night completely and totally exhausted.  I don't even feel like I am doing much during the day but it is oh so tiring.

Here is the description of our first day from Facebook:

First day of virtual learning done and that was exhausting. And I still have to get my work done today! Andrew had 4 zooms this morning and was pretty self-sufficient except for the zoom with missing password. Now, he has lots of work to keep him occupied this afternoon and lots of disclosures for me to sign. Seth seemed to be mostly on-task. When asked what he did this summer, he said "torment his brothers because they deserved it". So, definitely getting off on the right track in 6th grade. He did have to be coaxed outside for recess instead of playing on the computer. Logan did a cool art project and had some microphone and filming issues and seemed to keep running out of time. And Noah started off with wanting to quit zooming after 30 minutes, but made it through the whole day. Trying to coordinate different recess and lunch times through the day is exhausting and that is before we add in speech and ELP later this week. Jack was relatively chill, but only naps in his carrier so spent a good 3-4 hours in the carrier while I attended to the kids and fussed if I had to bend. I did get in about 20 or 30 minutes of work, but I think most of my work will be once the kids are done with school. As nice as it is to spend more time with the kids, I can't wait till we can at least do hybrid.

The kids schedule is like this.  Noah, Logan, and Seth each have periods of asynchronous work and synchronous work each day.  They all start with a morning meeting.  Noah then has some morning time with his class - calendar, spotlight a kid, things like that.  Then, he has his math lesson together.  Once they are done with that, I will help him work on his ST math - basically a penguin works them through math problems.  He does 20 minutes of that and then he has lunch/recess.  He doesn't need too much assistance anymore, but I think he does wish that I would sit on the side of the room, outside of the Zoom screen, for moral support.  But that's kind of hard to do with Jack.  He does participate, but does not really like doing Zooms and the work is all a little too easy for him.  After lunch, he has language art time on a zoom all together and then he is done for the day on zooms.  We will do his Lexia Core - his language arts app that practices phonics, reading comprehension, etc for 20 minutes.  He needs help getting it started, but he can do it himself.  He also has reading and then some more computer work that practices literacy, usually on Seesaw that he needs helps with.  Then, he has specials - art, science, drama, PE, library.  He needs help, particularly for library which is really not kid friendly at all.  He has been a really good sport, but it's not very fun and, like I said, pretty easy work but not easily differentiable in this kind of format.  His schedule is changing up tomorrow and I think they will do more group work, so maybe that will be more enjoyable.

Logan also starts with a morning meeting.  Then, they have pre-filmed videos that they work through for Language Arts.  They also do Lexia Core.  Logan can pretty much go through on his own but occasionally needs help with some technology problems.  Although apparently Logan has been teaching his classmates how to do technology stuff and sharing his screen on zoom.  And one day when our internet was done, as soon as it was back on, he emailed his teacher of his own initiative and explained the problem.  Then, his class has some group language art Zooms - I 'm not sure what they do and he doesn't want me to watch his Zooms.  Then, he has some individual math work - I think videos again as well as ST Match.  Then, lunch.  Then, specials, science, etc. in the afternoon.  His teacher is doing a read aloud - they are reading the Lemonade War, which Logan has already read.  Logan's teacher has started to do small groups for math where they work on problems together.  The good news is that there is no homework besides reading (for any of the kids) and school gets out an hour earlier.

Seth is mostly doing everything on his own, so I am only vaguely aware of schedule.  His class seems to have a zoom on most of the time so they can ask questions if they need to.  I know they are reading Maniac Magee and they will read it together in small groups.  They have writing assignments using Utah compose that grades their essays each week and they also practice writing based on news articles in a Newsela program.  They are learning US history this year.  But I mostly know that Seth spends a lot of time chatting with his friends and trying to play video games with them during breaks.  But at least he is attending and participating, which is somewhat more than some of the other kids are doing.  They have an activity this year called College of Knowledge where they work on learning lots of information, doing lots of reading, lots of creative and science projects.  Seth's goal is to get a doctorate, so he has a lot of work to do for that, so hopefully that will keep him busy.  Both Logan and Seth have Speech for 20 minutes 2x a week.  Seth also has ELP 2 days a week.  He didn't participate in the Spring, but I am making him this time.  He hates pull-out courses, but I think he will like it okay and it's good for him.  Seth jets out of the house as soon as he is done with school so he can go play with his friends.  So, he has 4 hours of play with friends each day, which is definitely more than he would have if he had regular school.

On Wednesdays, the boys are all asyncrhonous (although Logan does have a morning meeting).  Logan and Noah both need some help on this day - Noah pretty much with everything.  It's supposed to be 4 hours of work, but it's a little faster for Noah and a lot faster for Seth.  It just depends on how well I can help depending on how Jack is doing.

So, I spend the day like this.  Get the boys started.  Take care of Jack.  Put him in a baby carrier and then walk back and forth among the boys and make sure they don't need help and they are staying on task.  Give them snacks.  Put Jack down for a nap.  Give Noah some more one-on-one help.  Do work on my work.  Feed Jack.  Pick up lunch at the school for the kids.  Make other lunches because they don't want the school lunch.  Help Noah with asynchronous stuff.  Help Logan.  Nurse.  Naps.  Work.  Get kids outside.  Make sure kids aren't doing prodigy.  Etc.

Andrew works on his work completely on his own.  I finally checked on him and there were a couple missing assignments, but I assumed so.  It's confusing because he only has zooms for his class either M/Th (morning classes) or T/Fr (afternoon classes), but he has assignments for all his classes every day.  For math class, he was having upwards of 4 assignments per day.  And if you forget to check off some of the assignments, you are counted as not being there.  So, there were a couple of absences, too.  It's a lot, but Andrew is doing well.  He has 9th grade math, his MELP classes for language arts and history and science, plus PE, Chinese 2, and Psychology.  He read "Stamped" for history this week and "To Kill a Mockingbird" for Language Arts.  They are focusing on physics for science class.  He has a lot of his friends in his classes, so that helps a bit.  They had a back to school night on Zoom for the middle school.  His first teacher never started his zoom meeting (well, apparently he did after 11 minutes, but at that point, we weren't watching anymore).  But we did get to talk to the other teachers.  It sounds like his classes are having around 100% participation though so that is pretty good.

In other news, Katsu made a celebratory sushi dinner on Monday.  Noah starting itching like crazy and we discovered hives over half of his body.  We gave him benadryl and called the doctor.  They told us to call 911, but I thought that was excessive, so Katsu took him to the ER at primary children's instead.  They treated it quite seriously with an epipen, steroids in an IV, more benadryl, oxygen, etc.  He never had any oral or breathing symptoms so I wasn't too concerned, but am glad that they treated him well.  Noah was a real sport, even with a shot and with an IV.  Once the epipen wore off, the hives came right back.  They went away with benadryl but they wanted to keep Noah to watch him through the night.  In the morning, he got to eat a yummy breakfast with bacon (he still likes to talk about it) and then they released him.  He still had hives for most of the rest of the day.  We had a follow up with our doctor and then an appointment with an allergist.  He will have allergy testing this week and we'll see if we can figure out what he is allergic to.  We have a couple epipens now, but we have to remember to bring them with us all the time.

A week ago, we had Jack's baby blessing.  We did the blessing at Grandma Clo's house with the whole family (Elmers, Karen, & Corey's family).  We had to zoom with our bishop and so we also invited my parents, Katsu's dad, and our siblings (Kiyo & Sarah & fam were there).  It was really nice to be able to have people watching from all over the world.  We found Jack a cute white outfit that he was able to wear and he was pretty fussy beforehand, but he calmed down during the blessing, thankfully.  Katsu blessed him and Andrew Elmer, Lee Elmer, and Corey Crookston were all able to participate in the circles.  The blessing was good - he would have compassion, get along with his brothers who would show him how to be kind, he would be able to enjoy the things that life offers, he would be able to put himself in others shoes and help them.  We had cake and ice cream and also celebrated Katie's birthday.

This past weekend, we went to apple picking at Burgesses in Alpine and then drove the Alpine loop.  It felt like a long time ago since we had apple picked (though I guess we did in Capitol Reef) and it was fun.  Jack wasn't too impressed.  What the boys really loved though was the peach ice cream and the apple cider slushes that we got afterwards.  Then, we drove the Alpine Loop.  We were doing pretty well, but then once we got near the top, Jack started crying hysterically.  I think the altitude must have bothered him.  So, I think that is going to rule out going to Bryce Canyon anytime soon.  But it was beautiful.  We were able to get out in one place, but no time or place to pull over for hiking - this time anyways.  Afterwards, we met up with our friends the Garcias from Michigan (they live in Arizona right now).  We went to Hatch Family Chocolate and got some ice cream and chocolates and had a nice time (well, except for the kids constant interruptions) visiting with them.

The Saturday before, we also went to Seth's soccer game - everyone besides Andrew.  Oh, right - because Andrew got a bad bee sting on his foot and couldn't put on shoes.  (He got these horrible blisters all over his foot - it was a pretty bad infection).  Seth also got some bad bee stings and fell off the trampoline (that was the same day as Noah's visit to the ER).  It's been so crazy.  The air has been pretty smokey many days - either from California or from fires here in Utah.  

... And I think that was most of our 2 weeks.  So busy.  Plus seth's soccer.  Plus Katsu riding his bike to work and starting to go into work most days of the week.

Another week of 2020, feels like another year

 Another busy week.  Monday was supposed to be the day before school ... who knew.  I don't remember much.  On Sunday or Monday, Katsu gave all the boys and I blessings before starting the new school year.  We had burgers and chips for Labor Day.  And we got the yard ready for some big winds that were coming.

Monday night, the winds blew and blew and blew.  The rattling windows woke us up throughout the night.  Tuesday morning, we woke up and watched branches fall down, trash cans blow down the road.  The temperature had dropped to feeling like freezing (although really in the 40s).  Katsu prepared a delicious breakfast for the boys - two different kinds of omelets, grilled cheese sandwiches, everyone got dressed and ready.  And then the power went off.

Which is somewhat of a difficulty when the first day of school is all virtual.  And it was supposed to start in less than an hour.  After some texts, the school day was finally cancelled right before it was supposed to begin.  So, we spent the day watching the storm and the wind.  We did a read aloud and almost read the whole book of "A Fourth Grade Nothing".  Katsu went into work to deal with his freezers.  We put refrigerator food into a cooler with dry ice to try to save it somewhat.  Katsu went back into work.  We remembered that we have an ejector pump that runs on electricity, so we might have sewage problems if we kept using the basement plumbing.  The house got deliciously cool - 63 degrees.  We had an early night to bed with candles and blankets.  

Wednesday, still no power.  And school was cancelled again.  More of the same.  Jack did the slowest roll over from his back to his tummy.  Katsu went to work and came home.  I went to work and did office hours - trying to furiously charge phones, get work done, talk to students, and get home to feed the baby.  Jack took a bottle, though did not love it, while I was gone.  And then the power came back on.  For us, but not for everyone.  

Seth went off with friends.  Biking around the downed trees, he got stung by two bees.  One on his hand and one on his ear.  They swelled and swelled.  His hand just about doubled in size.

The aftermath of the storm continued.  Huge trees are down all over the city. Thankfully no huge ones in our yard, but in our neighborhood.  A huge one in front of the elementary school.

Thursday morning, we got everyone ready and even a couple onto Zoom to start school, when they announced that school was again cancelled.  Noah had already drawn a picture of how scared he was to start first grade and then had a short Zoom meeting.  

Another day at home.  Seth had soccer practice.  Katsu had work.  We picked up Seth's two new pairs of glasses, which he said he hated and didn't want to wear (much to the chagrin of the optical shop woman).  I made him try them on at home and he realized how much better he can see, and now hasn't stopped wearing one of the new pairs.  I picked up our farmer's box for the first time and we had tons of fruit.  We got the boys headphones at Target and picked up a jumperoo for Jack from our Buy Nothing group.  Andrew was thrilled that football restarted.

I spent the rest of the week playing catch up with work.  Lots of stress trying to figure out how we are going to get it all worked out.  It's too much money to hire someone to take care of all 5 boys plus digital learning, so we are pretty much stuck with having to do way more work than there are hours in the day.

Katsu and I started a new series on Netflix called Away which we are enjoying.

Seth had a soccer game on Saturday and Katsu managed to find new shoes for the older boys.  Andrew now wears a size 12!  Seth ended up having to get women's shoes, because they had no shoes in his size.  We did get him some new snow boots off the Buy Nothing site.  We picked up our library holds that we'd been planning to get on Tuesday, but the library was closed for hold pickup all week (I don't think they had electricity).  We had about 30 holds.  Logan has already read all but the last of the books I got him - all Geronimo Stilton.  I put the next 10 on hold, at least the ones the library had.

Sunday, we went to the Red Butte and hiked up to the old quarry house.  On the way down, Andrew got a bee stuck in his shoe and it stung him.  It took quite a bit of effort to get the bee out of the shoe.  Seth was experienced and helped Andrew get the stinger out.  Andrew spent half the day in a Benadryl induced nap.

And so another week goes ...

Finishing up the summer

 The last two weeks have been busy and slow.  Busy as the university starts up.  My class has been up and running for two weeks.  My students seem to have difficultly understanding the asynchronous concept and have needed a lot of instruction.  For those who "get" it, though I have really been enjoying the discussions I am having with the students.  I get to interact with everyone, not just the ones who like to volunteer in class, which has been fun.  I only have a couple more lectures that I need to film for the semester.  Unfortunately, my schedule has shifted for the spring due to a lot of very annoying drama and nepotism, and I need to teach another class for the spring.  I decided to keep a small group of graduate students as well because I don't want that class to fall away.  So, now, I need to prep another class, so there has been a lot of stress going along with that.  But I'm going to have to wait until the kids get settled into school before I can even think about that.

We have tried to do a few fun things before school starts.  Katsu spent a lot of time making delicious meals before we get down to our time crunch once school starts.  He took the boys to Seth's soccer game and to see Black Lives Matters murals downtown.  Katsu and I went on a walk to the new-ish eclair shop and tried out some eclairs (coconut cream and raspberry lemon).  He really loved the raspberry lemon - very strongly flavored.  It was a fun walk and Jack slept in a sling the entire time.  

This past weekend, we went on a quick trip to Logan.  We still had not made it to Logan since we moved in.  We weren't sure what exactly we were going to do, but we mostly wanted to see how Jack would do with a longer drive.  He slept pretty much the whole way there.  Then, we stopped and saw the Logan tabernacle (from the outside) and then walked to the Logan temple.  I really liked the architecture and was surprised to see the temple was actually open with a wedding party outside.  I fed Jack and then, we drove to Richmond to try to find the Pepperidge Farm thrift store.  It's currently closed, but they had a trailer outside that we found and bought lots of goldfish crackers and some seconds, huge bags of Milano cookies.  The boys were also feeling pretty excited about our finds, so then we made our way over to the Fat Boys malt shoppe.  It wasn't open, but they had a drive-through open.  We decided to get the Yasso bars, even though we weren't sure what they were.  Apparently, they were buy-one-get-one-free, so we ended up with 3 boxes for $10, so we got 75 greek yogurt chocolate bars.  After eating a ton, we ended up needing ice for the cooler.  At that point, we decided hiking was probably out (plus, it was super hot), so we decided to go get cheese at Gossner's and then go home.  I nursed Jack while the boys went inside and bought tons of cheese.  We were shocked at how much bigger it was than when I went as a kid or when we went with Grandpa with Katsu and I.  Overall, the kids loved all the food.  We hung out with Grandma for awhile before we went home and, miracle of miracles, were able to fit all the ice cream bars in the freezer and they hadn't melted.  It was a nice change of pace.

School starts for the boys on Tuesday and life is going to be crazy.  I am starting to get a little stressed and I think it's rubbing off on the kids a little bit (most particularly Seth).  All the boys have met their teachers and have gotten their computers.  So, now they are having these huge matches together on Prodigy (a math program).  Meeting the teachers was unique.  

Noah met his first grade teacher, masks on.  He did some assessments (and passed with flying colors) while I filled out paperwork.  His teacher seemed mostly concerned about meeting his needs since he is reading so well.  Noah has gotten his room cleaned up (miracle of miracles as it's usually such a mess from all his playing and many many art projects) and even moved his desk in there himself.  He drew all over his school white board today with regular markers, but thankfully they came right off.  I think he's more or less ready to start.

Logan is having Seth's 3rd grade teacher this year.  She was very very safe with mask and plexiglass.  Logan took a couple assessments and learned his way about Canvas.  His teacher was happy with his typing skills and also that he has been working on multiplication this summer.  He is wanting to be very prepared and has made sure he can log into his computer and onto Canvas every day and explores around so he is ready.  He also figured out how to use his school email and emails me when I am nursing the baby or doing office hours messages about wanting to eat ramen, or what is for dinner, or that his brothers are hurting him.  Basically one email a minute.  He is still a rabid reader - he finished the Michael Vey series, but has been rereading those and just started enjoying the Geronimo Stilton books.  I put many on hold at the library, so we need to go do a hold pickup from the parking lot.  Logan spent last Saturday figuring out how to connect with his friend on Fortnite and has been happy to play that.  But the days of video games every day are soon going away ...

Seth met his 6th grade teacher.  He always clams up and is super quiet and respectful to his teacher, but we'll see how long that lasts ... Again, he did his assessments super fast and passed with flying colors.  We had some issues with his password, but got it figured out and he explored Canvas, too.  He seems some what ambivalent about going back to school.  He also met with his ELP (gifted) teacher, on Zoom, with me.  I informed him that he will be participating this year and I think it will be more as a class instead of completely self-directed, so I hope that works better.  He also has Speech twice a week (as does Logan), so we'll see if we can manage to make that work out ... so much to coordinate with virtual school.  He has been doing soccer, but his coach seems kind of flaky (which is annoying since we pay so much).  He got a goal his last soccer game and assist the one before that.  And he is having fun with his friends.  He is still spending as much time with his friends as possible.  He had another sleepover on the trampoline at his friends house and came home covered with mosquito bites.  Which he is not so happy about.  Seth wanted waffles this morning and I assumed I was going to make them, but I woke up and he had already made the batter himself and after Katsu did the first few, Seth made the rest of the waffles.  His were better than mine - very crisp - so I think he was more thorough about putting the batter better in the waffle iron.

Andrew went with me to orientation on Wednesday and got some goodies (school supplies, mask, yearbook).  We went and met with each of his teachers.  Found out that only 2 of the high schools offer Chinese, so we'll have to think some more about which high school he should go to.  He got some good books to read (Stamped and to Kill a mockingbird) from his history and english classes.  His math teacher seemed good - he will be doing Math 1 this year (9th grade math).  He has PE first and for advisory.  He has psychology (why it was labelled technology for tough times, who knows) last.  And he was excited to find out that he has both home ec (which I think they call family and consumer science) as well as food science next semester.  Although I think he wished it was more split out.  Andrew really loves to cook and eat.  He made banana muffins by himself this week.  We have been talking to him about maybe being a food scientist and studying chemistry or chemical engineering in college.  I think it would be a nice mix of his talents and interests.  Andrew is still loving being with Jack and spends lots of time with him.  He even put him to sleep in his crib the other day while I was doing office hours.  I think he is ready to be back to school.  Can you believe that one of his classes has 4 Andrews in it?  The poor teacher.

Jack is just being an easy newborn.  He sleeps a lot, but still not liking the crib.  He did just take a 35-40 minute nap in the crib, so that's not too bad.  He goes to sleep around 8, and then wakes up once (somewhere between 1 and 4) and then wakes up at 6 or 6:30.  Sometimes he goes back down for a nap for a little bit at that point or sometimes not.  He is probably nursing about 8 times a day.  He loves his brothers, the sling, books with high contrast pictures.  He does not like sudden movement.

Well, two more days until the world falls apart, lol ... Katsu is going to be home on Tuesday, but after that, he is planning on going back to work 4 days a week, although home late afternoons so I can work.  Basically, it'll be a perfect store with about half the time we need to accomplish everything.

Our schedule this week (don't you envy us?)  And it's still missing some things like Seth's ELP ...