The outside world appears to be doing its best to encroach upon our little plot here in Madison, what with the pandemic raging unchecked in our state plus the endless stream of political crises and scandals. Nonetheless, we are doing our best to keep things vaguely normal-seeming for the kids, who obviously know about the virus but remain fairly oblivious to the machinations of the institution heretofore known as "the world's greatest deliberative body."
Virtual school has entered its third week, and with that the teachers seem to have decided that it is time to increase the expectations on the kids, who were perfectly fine with the previous expectation level and were totally exhausted today after being pressed to finish assignment after assignment. Hopefully after a couple of days they will get used to the new workload, although part of me shares their wish that the teachers had just stuck with what they were doing last week and let the kids have a bit more fun during the day. On the one hand, I see the benefit of keeping them occupied (and hopefully learning) for more hours per day. And on the other hand, they're so happy running around outside. It's hard to spend all day in the basement in front of a computer, as Papa Bear and I can readily attest.
A definite benefit of being home all the time is Lemon's continued weight gain. He is almost 65lb now, which seems impossible given how long we struggled to reach 50. We have a clinic visit coming up in a few weeks, and I think to my amazement I am going to raise the topic of further cutting back on his tube feeds. He is eating so much by mouth now, and I really want to give him the space while he is home to learn how to keep up with more of his caloric needs by eating. He is interested in some day not having the tube anymore, so any progress we can make towards that goal will be exciting for him.
Other than that, we continue to try to make the best of our largely home-based life. Mud, rocks, cooking, baking, coloring, reading, and wondering what all this will feel like when the temperature drops and the number of hours of daylight falls. Papa Bear recently bought a Nintendo Switch ("for the kids") so they have been enjoying that and I suspect will get a lot of use out of it once winter comes. Anything to make life a little more interesting and fun, I suppose, as long as I am not expected to while away my own winter playing Mario Kart!
