COVID-19 Day One

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With COVID-19 rampaging through our country, Eric and I have made the decision to stay at home for the foreseeable future. With the exception of Eric's work, we will not be going anywhere in the hopes that we will not contract the virus or spread it unknowingly to someone else.  Schools are closed, businesses are shutting down and life as we know it is on halt.  These are crazy times.  Anxieties are high and life feels overwhelming.  Our school district is on spring break this week, so we won't need to start online learning until next week.  We are trying our best to keep a routine with the kids so things feel stable at home.  I have good moments and moments where the fear takes hold.  I think everybody does right now.  Knowing this is an historic time in our world, I'm going to do my best to journal the high points of our days in quarantine, so years from now we can look back at 2020 when the whole world was put on pause.  Here's the high points from Day One:

- Governor Evers banned groups over 50 from gathering (think churches, conventions, some businesses, etc)
- We started a great job jar to offer the kids to earn some incentives while we are at home.  Nolan's teacher uses this, so we thought the consistency would help.
- We spent our day doing puzzles, reading books (trying to read 100), drawing, and playing games.  Frozen II was released on Disney+ and we watched that.
- YMCA closed

Calm before the Storm

Last summer, for our birthdays, we bought some tickets to Sara Bareilles' Broadway show, "Waitress," which was coming to the Wausau Grand Theater in March.  We also booked a special room at the Jefferson Street Inn downtown to make a fun getaway weekend out of it.  We never in a million years would have expected we would be on the cusp of a global pandemic.  Corona Virus, or COVID-19, started in China and has been slowly but surely making its way around the globe over the past few months.  Cases were now starting to pop up in Wisconsin, and on the Friday that we were supposed to leave for our getaway, the announcement was made that all Wisconsin schools were to be closed for the next few weeks.  We faced a terrible dilemma.  There were no cases of COVID near us, but we still didn't feel comfortable attending a show filled with thousands of people drawn from all the surrounding areas.  We were devastated, as we had been looking forward to this for months.  We decided to head to the hotel anyway and enjoy some time away before all this madness started.  We had a great time lounging around with no schedule and treated ourselves to a delicious dinner out.  Little did we know that this would be the last time we would do these things for months.  As soon as we got home from Wausau, our family (and many others) began a journey of months of self-isolation as our whole world shut down for the Corona Virus pandemic.  The next many blog posts will be about what our family life was like during this crazy and unprecedented time.   

Eleven Months

Loves trying to eat dog food, Miles, throwing food on the floor, sticking out his tongue, peanut butter toast, sloppy joes, "flumping" onto his fuzzy baba, drooling, pacifier
Weighs 25.8 lbs
Has 8 teeth
Wears 18 month clothes

Bus Notes

Our kids have such an awesome bus driver!  He wrote Nolan the note in blue for his great behavior on the bus and Nolan wrote him back.  Hooray for the support staff who take their responsibility of being a role model seriously and offer great learning and encouragement to the kids who are around them.  Thanks for a great year on the bus, Rob!

Crusing Baby Buddy

This past weekend Simon started walking behind his push toy.  He's so cute as he toddles along, with his butt sticking out far behind him and his legs barely bending.  He gets such a huge grin on his face and is so proud of himself.  I can't believe how quickly time is going!

Wausau Date

After several weeks of being stuck at home due to illness, I decided to take Nolan and Livi down to Wausau for a date with mommy.  We spent a while wandering around Target, looking at the toys and enjoying some popcorn.  They each got to pick out one item to bring home.  After shopping, we headed to Olive Garden for a nice meal together.  They LOVED the breadsticks and had such amazing manners.  I was so proud of them and really liked that we got to spend some time together out of the house!

Visit to Grandma and Grandpa

Grandma Edie has been feeling pretty yucky and weak lately and recently Grandpa Arnie took a turn for the worse.  He has been in the hospital for the last several days with pneumonia.  They later found out that he actually had a blood clot in his lung, which was part of why he wasn't healing very quickly.  Anyway, Mom asked me to come to visit them so we decided to head to Eau Claire for the weekend.  Mom and I went to Durand on Saturday to help Grandma with whatever she needed while Grandpa was in the hospital.  We stopped by the hospital first.  Grandpa was in good spirits and I was able to get him laughing a little, which was nice to see.  With a little coaxing, we were able to convince Grandma to go out to lunch with us to the Durand House.  We had a really nice meal there together, but afterwards Grandma was feeling really tired so we took her back home to nap for a while.  Mom and I ran some errands and when we got back, Grandma had taken a turn.  She was coughing really hard and couldn't seem to stop.  Knowing that she has been undergoing chemotherapy, we knew it was important to get her checked out because even a cold could prove very dangerous for her.  We took her to the ER at the same hospital that Grandpa was at.  They took really good care of her and ran some tests.  Grandma kept apologizing for being there...evidently she didn't think pancreatic cancer and uncontrollable coughing were worthy of medical intervention, but her doctor disagreed and wanted to check her out.  It took several hours and I spent my time going between the two of them, keeping them posted on what was happening with the other one.  They did a CT scan of Grandma and found that she had fluid leaking into her abdomen and up into her lungs which is what was causing the cough.  They increased her diuretics and hoped that within a few days, she might be feeling better.  We finally left the hospital a little after 9pm.  Mom decided to stay with Grandma overnight, but I headed back to Eau Claire.  (I didn't have my contact stuff.) Unfortunately, we didn't get to see Mom again before we left to come back to Rhinelander.  This road of Grandma's illness has been a rocky one, and Mom, the nurse and caretaker, has borne more than her share of hospital visits, doctors appointments, and late nights of worry.  I know she gladly does it, but it is hard sometimes.  I'm glad I was able to be there with her this time.