All around us, various things are reopening. The swimming pool reopened for lessons (we're not going), the tai kwon do place is offering limited lessons (we're not going), the various local beaches are open (ew, lake beaches, we're not going). But, we did go ahead and have Lemon's first post-COVID play date. He has not been around another child his own age in 10 weeks or however long this has been now, but a friend's parent reached out to us to see if we might like to do something, and after some consideration we decided we could do that.
Lemon and his friend were definitely excited to see each other. Being that they are first-grade boys, the excitement mainly manifest as using smaller things to hit bigger things, repeatedly. But, all the things involved were inanimate, they were outside, and they were wearing masks and staying somewhat far away from each other most of the time. So, I think it basically went as well as could be hoped and we'll probably do it again some time. I got the feeling that Lemon has kind of lost the knack of socializing with someone who is not his brother, and he was pretty worn out after just 45 minutes. Just in terms of school preparedness, assuming there is school in the fall of course, it would probably be good for him to have some kind of semi-regular contact with another kid or two over the summer.
The other thing we are doing while things are semi-open is the dentist. Both kids are due for cleanings this summer, and again after some debate we decided to go ahead with that as well. The dentist's office has implemented a lot of new precautions that make it seem like it will be pretty safe, and I do think it's important to keep the kids teeth healthy, especially as Lemon's adult teeth start to come in. Plus, things are relatively good right now, and there is certainly no guarantee that anyone will be wanting to set foot in a dentist office in, say, February. So I figured we'd better just get this cleaning in now in case it is our best chance for a few months.
And, after putting it off for a while, we had the plumber come today to fix a faucet. Much though it was fun to have the kids flood their bathroom and the basement below at the same time, we decided that it was worth it to implement some improvements so that the flooding is now restricted to just the bathroom.
After putting it off as long as we could, we also finally bit the bullet and withdrew the kids from summer camp. We'd already basically decided, but put off actually contacting the camp since that made it seem so final. But, with the incentive of losing our deposit, I emailed the camp yesterday. I'm still sad about that, they were supposed to have such a fun summer there. But, hopefully, next summer.
Other than that, quarantine baking madness continues apace. I received a lovely new mixer from Papa Bear and Nona as a belated mother's day gift, so I have been putting that to good use. More importantly, of course, it came with a nice box. Or maybe I should say, the kids got a nice box that came with a bonus mixer inside? Anyhow, I look forward to putting it through its paces over the coming weeks and months. I just wish I could get together with all of you to share all these things! Hopefully soon...
