Corona 2, Biggs 3

Things are on the up-and-up around here. Paul turned a corner on Friday.

Seen here picking a family movie. We decided to divide and conquer. Paul and I caught up on the comedy news while the kids watched the Paw Patrol movie.

We narrowly avoided scurvy by sending Crosby to the Denn's organic food store:

I was humming and ha-ing about having neighbors pick-up up things for me when I remembered that our carpool friend, Ella, saved her positive parents two weeks ago by running errands. I gave him a grocery list and he wore his phone watch in case he needed help. He returned in 15 minutes, no problem. The grocery store is kitty corner from our house. I love that nobody asked him why he was grocery shopping. An eight year old buying veggies, eggs, and yogurt with sprinkles is pretty normal apparently. He went again on Monday for more veggies and ice cream; that also helped morale. 

I had Crosby wear his phone watch while in quarantine just to see how much he moves. It turns out the kid gets 10,000 steps a day even when he can't leave the house. He also was doing this:

Literally climbing the walls. Thankfully our carpool neighbors tested negative in-time for us to test positive so we've switched the kid duties this week. Sigh.

Our neighbors carried the team by dropping off donuts, freshly baked bread, additional corona tests, fresh fruit, and even freshly baked homemade pizza. Val especially helped turn the grumpy tide by introducing the boys to Kraft Mac and Cheese.

Hugo helped me make dinner - pull chicken out of the oven, put peas in the microwave, mix the cheese in the with the noodles, plate everything, and bring to the table. This is one of the happiest moments of his life: eating a meal he made himself after not having to go to Kita for an entire week. Boxed Mac and Cheese just blew his mind.

As Carmen tested negative on Monday, I organized our awesome neighbors to get the littles to school today. 

Niv upped his baby walking skills to a U-bahn Kita delivery. 

Carmen will be picked up by her favorite baby friend:

Tilly seen here in party mode.

Paul and I are still positive and can't leave until ten days or we test negative, whichever comes first. I think I'll likely have one more day at home with the littles before I can take them to school on Thursday.  

Paul went back to work yesterday. We sat down today before work to map out our summer. He is comfortable taking one day off in addition to a couple flex days. My life feels a little bit like the end of my last blog post where I talked about crawling into the warm spot ie an analogy for enjoying the small pleasures. That night, I went to go to sleep in the warm spot, which unfortunately was a wet spot. Cue 20 minutes of sheet changes and starting the next day with three loads of laundry. Let's just say we have some work to do to really get back to health.

Corona 3, Biggs 2

As of the posting of this blog, that is our current covid tally. We've had a couple near misses with covid in the past with close contacts but this exposure at Kita couldn't be avoided. The all day end-of-the-year Kita trip to the Dinopark turned out to be a super spreader event.

Cute little adventurers on their way to get some Covid exposure on the 2 hour round trip bus ride to the Dinopark.

Unfortunately, we came into this round beat down. Paul has a bunch of projects at work, all culminating in a business trip to New York this Tuesday. Per usual, when Paul needs to put in extra hours, I ask that he take entire weekend days so that we can get them back as flex days. It is still a sore spot as I usually have to remind him to take the days off more than once or they never get rescheduled as days off during "less busy" periods. 

Monday I woke up not feeling great, which unfortunately is kind of normal these days. Carmen is ready to ditch the diapers at night, but still hasn't grasped that she can use the potty by herself at night without my help. We are combating her waking me up by waking her up an hour after she goes down to use the potty, but she often wakes up around 5 am to go again. In any case, Carmen, Hugo, and I all tested negative so off to Kita they went.

Throughout the day I felt progressively "weirder". I couldn't help but feel reminded of going into labor where I never really knew if the Braxton Hicks contractions were the real thing or not. As my cousin Chase once told me, "you'll know". After I fell asleep putting Carmen to bed, "I knew" something was definitely off and sure enough:

Much less exciting than a pregnancy test.

Yup, 12 hours before Paul is scheduled to fly to his biggest meeting in three years, no go. This is the part of the story that gets personally frustrating. As I run the "health" department of Team Biggs (although Paul runs the "safety" department), I knew this was an automatic - "no one is going anywhere". Paul was slow to catch-on and even committed to presenting virtually at the conference the next day.

It is at this point where I informed loved ones that I had covid and most people wrote "I hope your symptoms are mild". I think the best prayers are for sanity, swiftness, and a quick return to negative status. Even with the help of three vaccinations, these were the worst head and body aches of my life. Thankfully I had some Hydrocodone left over from a similarly lame period of my life, so I could use it to get some sleep. Tylenol and IBprofin were not going to cut it.

On Tuesday I woke up, took some Hydrocodone and sent Paul downstairs with the kids. Every hour Carmen was knocking on my door, and I was like, "seriously, Paul? Why can't you watch her?" When I went down this was the scene:

"Daddy has been sleeping all morning." Crosby

So yeah, I've pretty much been on kid duty ever since. Paul still looks like that, but he did find some energy to present for an hour that night. I should count it progress from the Thanksgiving five years ago when he worked while he had the stomach flu. He was typing and barfing into the bucket next to his desk while I was downstairs with Crosby on a holiday. German work culture is more humane, but Paul has not totally assimilated. 

When I couldn't move, I had a couple activities for them in the morning - baking muffins and making play dough (recipe from Dudu). 

Now that I am feeling better our isolation modus operandi is:

- get some energy out in the morning:

They know I am making them "exercise".

- Let the boys watch a screen while Carmen and I nap. 

- In the late afternoon we watch a family movie. An adult needs to be present for Carmen to sit for a movie. She's still too little to focus otherwise. 

Quick reviews:

Sing 2 was awesome. There was one part that could be a little scary with a grumpy Lion but could be fast forwarded. The music is so good and the jokes for adults are silly.

Good Guys was also a winner. We didn't love the books as much as Dogman. But, I know I would love Good Guys when I saw this review from Sojourners.

Paul watched Pets 2 with the kids while I "took a break" to do laundry and put clothes away. I think they liked it.

The silver linings of this whole bummer of a week is that Carmen has hand, foot, and mouth, so even if she didn't have covid she wouldn't be able to go to Kita. Additionally, our first visitors of the summer are coming next week, and we're hopeful we'll be out of isolation before they arrive.

I wish I could say that the kids really stepped up to the plate and helped. There were moments of:

Crosby entertaining the littles. 

But for the most part they couldn't remember that they needed to be quiet/relaxed/peaceful because Mommy's head hurts and Daddy is sleeping. Paul says their behavior was their usual. Thankfully during the night they didn't wake me up. (knock on wood) They might have little goldfish brains but they know not to poke a hibernating mama bear. On that note, I need to move one little bear out of my bed into hers, and then sleep in her warm spot. 

Sleeping on the go

My last blog post had a couple good photos of Hugo sleeping in uncomfortable positions in the stroller. His usual place is still the bike. Sadly since my last post, we have had two sleep related injuries - one fat lip and one black eye. In both cases he whimpered and went back to sleep. 

Neither strawberries nor a lollypop could keep him awake.

Technically this isn't him sleeping, this is his "best behavior" at the Ritz. Le sigh.

Thankfully Carmen has moved from asking Hugo "are you sleeping?" to now just declaring loudly, "Hugo sleeping".

A sleepy bunny after a home church adventure.

Thankfully this time he let me position him to avoid more sleep related injuries. 

The classic scooter snuggle.

This week Paul is heading to New York on a business trip. I'll likely be joining the nap crew to build-up strength for the week. Stay rested out there. 

Long Weekend in Dečin, Czech Republic

Late May/early June has some great possibilities for two long weekend travel with Ascension Day (always on a Thursday) and Whit Monday (ten days later). Back in the glory days, ie when we weren't tied to the school schedule, we maximized our holidays and planned a two-week trip to Portugal.

Back in the days when we only had one mobile child.

These days life is a little too crazy for back to back weekend travels, so we went the first weekend to Dečin, and the next holiday went on a local adventure using the new Nine Euro travel ticket to a near-by Asparagus Farm. 

Dečin is on the Czech side of the Saxon Switzerland or Saxon Bohemia Mountains. Switzerland is in the name because the region does indeed look like Switzerland.  

Exhibit A: Cliffs and Castles

Exhibit B: Scenic hikes with questionable safety precautions

As is our current modus operandi, we did very little research before this trip. The original plan was to go to Bad Schandau on the German side of Saxon Switzerland. However, three weeks is not near enough lead-up time to book a hotel or train in Germany on a long weekend. When we figured out that Bad Schandau wasn't going to work, Paul just checked the train route and found that one stop further across the border had similar good stuff for about 1/3 less. 

T'was a bit of a cluster on the train. The kids are seen here playing in the hallway next to the bathroom. We did get money back for not having seats available on our first class reservation, but we try to avoid this kind of hallway travel when possible. That being said, it is good practice for how we are traveling this summer on our nine euro pass. 

Recent photo from our full train back from the asparagus farm. The kids are flex.

Like I mentioned, we did very little research before this trip. I remembered our hotel being a 15 minute walk from the train station. That was an incorrect assessment. However, our trek across the the beautiful overpasses of Deçin yielded two more rested little people:

Whenever we travel we need to have at least two areas for kids to sleep. This trip it was the double stroller instead of the ergo and the travel stroller. Paul didn't love bringing this big thing on the train but I think our backs thanked us.

Yes, this is how Paul spent his Father's Day: schlepping big bags around town. Our regular pack light routine was thrown off because it was a rainy weekend (one rain gear bag), we were going swimming, and we weren't planning on doing laundry. In general, we always pack for a four day weekend no matter how long we go. So, our packing seemed a bit overboard but we used everything.

Lest you feel too bad for Paul on Father's Day, Crosby did make him this awesome card:

I bought him a travel pillow. Let's just say our budget accommodations don't reliably provide ergonomic pillows. However, this Airbnb had a great view and awesome host who provided us with an itinerary of our stay.

First stop, head to the lookout of the hill above the city that we could see from the window in our apartment.

We were happily surprised by our little hikers' abilities:

After that successful hike, we decided to go for another adventure to see the table rock where the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was filmed. We determined the Narnia movie series is too scary for Mommy but thankfully we can still handle the books. After a 1.5 hour bus ride to neighboring Tiske, we started looking for the table. 

Long story short, we hiked around for an hour or two but didn't find the stone table. When it started raining we decided to declare victory and head back for nap time. Our Tiske hike experience is a good analogy for our trip to Dečin. We didn't find the things that people normally see when they visit, but our version of exploration was fun for all parties involved.

 

Fourth Grade Safety

Today I received a forwarded email from the school about an opportunity for intensive swimming lessons for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders who have not yet reached the Bronze level swim certificate. The Germans are very concerned about children's swim regression because of the pandemic. This intensive summer swimming lesson website is available in English, Turkish, French, Arabic, and Farsi.  Germany has a unified swim level structure which a governing body agrees on the skills (here if you speak German). Here's a general overview:

Seahorse (Seeferdchen): Swim 25 meters, be able to retrieve something off the bottom of the pool

Bronze: Swim continuously for 15 minutes, swim down 6 feet (2 meters)

Silber (Silver): Dive in and swim for 20 minutes

Gold: Do all the strokes with some times associated

All children learn to swim in the third grade. The schools will bus the students to the pools. In Crosby's school, the pool is just a couple blocks away, so he'll walk there once a week starting next school year. I have also heard of schools that start earlier and go more often.

Crosby doesn't love the water. But one of the take-homes of the recent track meet is that he also doesn't like finishing at the bottom of the pack. As such, we are working hard (ie I'm taking him swimming when school is off and Kita is on) to get him to the basic Seahorse level before school starts next year. For a second I was shooting for Bronze but our last swimming session wasn't super great, so I think our goals need to be modest.

In the USA, forth grade safety means something completely different. Watching the political nonsense from the Uvalde tragedy makes me want to break all the Ikea furniture in my house and quiet hour noise ordinances. We are thankful to live in a country that prioritizes teaching children to swim instead of practicing active shooter drills. We will continue to blissfully enjoy the awesome parks and not worry about the safety of the best big brother.