Summer really feels as though it is drawing to a close. After a stretch of hot weather, things have cooled off again, with temperatures dipping into the 50's at night. The first few leaves have started to turn. And, school (such as it is) begins a week from tomorrow.
I still feel like we did the right thing, setting up our little education pod, although now I am having the beginning-of-school jitters. Neither of my children is particularly good at online learning. We had a get-to-know-you conference with Lemon's teacher on Zoom and, consistent with past performance, he was attentive for the first 10 minutes or so, and then went to see what treasures he could find under the bed. The schedule our district has laid out is kind of insane-sounding in terms of the amount of time the kids are expected to be doing various Zoom things.
We met with Lime's teacher this morning and at least she reassured us that for kindergarten, they aren't going to be doing anything close to what the schedule says in terms of screen time. Which, in a sense is good in that I think that is a more accurate reflection of what kindergarteners can do, and bad for parents who had some aspiration of getting work done while their kid was engaged with "school." And I am feeling very lucky that we were able to hire someone to be in the room to help the kids with all this so that we can actually work and don't have to rely on them being welded to their screens all the time.
Meanwhile, we are trying to do some of the regular back-to-school things, like buying new shoes, since both kids had outgrown their shoes from last year. We went to a local shoe store, where almost everyone was masked, and we were in and out of there faster than I would have ever imagined possible. We measured feet, picked out things to try, got the boxes with the right sizes, tried them on, and wore them out of the store (don't worry, Papa Bear stayed behind to pay) within 15 minutes. The kids are so excited about them. It's funny, with our sort of circumscribed lifestyle these days, even the little things like new shoes are a big thrill.
Speaking of thrills, we grew a pumpkin and made it into a pie. A true late summer miracle.
