Lockdown Naps

 There's been less of this now that we aren't doing the kita, school, to home loop:

This beautiful weather ride was just the start of a chaotic day. But we survived, and spent the next day in our PJs to recover. Anywho, Hugo has found his groove napping in other locations:

The "I'm too tired to walk home from the park, and zzzzz"

The "I'm mad that I'm not in homeschool with Crosby, so I'll wait outside the door and zzzz"

The "I want popcorn for dinner. I'm so mad that you're not giving it to me that I'm going to sit on this chair and zzzz". I don't know how he went to bed for 12 hours with no dinner. #Hugoskills

The "I'm bracing for poop and zzzz"

OK, I know this photo doesn't have anything to do with napping but I found it while looking through Paul's pictures. Monkey business makes a little man tired.

Forget Feng Shui, Let's Talk Sleep Optimization

Exciting news here! We got a king sized bed. I did not take a picture of it, because anyone who cares about interior design would be horrified. Let's just say it does not fit well with an oddly shaped room, crib, and "quarantine" bed. We upgraded for a couple reasons a. we're not going anywhere this winter break b. Paul is moving back to sleeping with me after over a year apart and c. the boys took our queen mattress.

You won't find this Ikea hack online. ha! This set-up came out of trying to figure out how to keep Hugo from getting out of bed in the middle of the night. At the risk of jinxing it, this set-up is working great, and has the additional perks: 

1. Hugo wakes up, sees his brother, and then grabs his awake alarm clock to see if it's morning before getting out of bed.

2. This queen set-up makes bedtime so much easier. We start by snuggling Hugo and then can just roll over to snuggle Crosby.

3. The bed this direction is actually longer than a king. So, we have been known to get four of us on the bed.

4. Using the queen here meant that we had *no choice* but to get a king sized bed for PB^2.

5. I mean look at this cuteness:

With that, I'm heading to my king sized bed to sleep. Sweet dreams!

Homeschool is cool

That title is mine, not Crosby's. ha! Mr Cool says that he doesn't like school, but he went happily before this second lockdown. This second school closure started a couple days before winter break and will go until at least the 12th of February. 

I did not realize this before moving here a second time, but Germany is significantly behind with respect to digitalization in most aspects I see, ie government paperwork and school assignments. The city of Berlin built an online platform back in the spring which is mostly a place to put kids' assignments. The first four homeschool days the system did not work, but it appears to be more consistent now. While some schools have some kind of online instruction, ours essentially does not - except for one hour a week. (Which I've missed half the time - whoops. Today is Crosby's birthday so I gave him a pass.)

My goal is to do two hours of instruction for Crosby a day. We are not winning any awards for most dedicated, but we are preserving our sanity - which is the main goal. This is kind of how our day goes:

There aren't a lot of assignments I can do sanely with Crosby when the other two kids are awake. During Carmen's first nap, Crosby practices his German reading.

My friend Anja just happened to give us these early reading books a couple weeks ago. Crosby reads the words and Hugo chimes in with the words that correspond to the photos. The German teacher also has assignments but she also said 45-60 minutes a day of reading is sufficient. 

After Carmen wakes up, we try and get out of the house with the goal of running some errands and/or getting out some energy. When I have a little extra energy, I grab an only-child neighbor kid to come with us. Mari keeps the boys in line.

In the early afternoon, our Oma Friend, Leanne, comes over for 2-3 hours. We found Leanne through the babysitting platform provided through Paul's work. The subsidized babysitting has been a life saver.

Leanne hangs with Hugo and Carmen (if she's awake) while Crosby and I work on his Spanish, Math, and German assignments. 

Crosby's "first language" is German, so he does not have too much Spanish homework. Here he is watching a book being read in Spanish on youtube. The weekly Spanish songs have been really funny. He loves my falsetto on this one. 

The German homework has been mostly doable with the occasional help of Google. We also had to ask a neighbor for help on this one:

Apparently it's Überholverbot. That's German - using a five syllable word to teach first graders the letter ü. Speaking of new words, I also learned the word Lebensmittelvergiftungen. It means food poisoning. Carmen, my neighbor Val, and I ate from the wrong food cart. The silver lining is our helper friend Shannon was available to come over and cook and do Origami with Crosby. This mommy does not craft, so I was very thankful for Shannon's patience. This week we're back to the Math workbooks with our SEVEN year-old. Phew.