Normally once Christmas is over, it’s back to the usual. Only this year is so weird that “back to the usual” has no meaning. It’s the second week of “Christmas break” and the limbo of time before reality sets back in…in which we are allowed to do whatever we want on whatever time line we want.
As in, breakfast at 8:30 (when school would normally be starting!) followed by art and crafts and wii games and basketball and as many play dates as possible while the weather holds out.
That’s mainly what we have been doing.
I let the kids read in bed all morning long while Kyle and I take turns working out. I just started a new program on beachbody (#mbf) which I am LOVING. It’s not a new program, but it wasn’t released to the on demand streaming service until a few weeks ago and Kyle and I are both hooked.
Eventually we eat breakfast and then when Kyle goes to work we settle into a relaxed morning of fake home-schooling.
What I mean by that is, we do all the fun workbooks and activities they love to do without any time pressure or agenda. if they give sick of something we move on. If V wants to spend an hour sewing, she does that. If he wants to do several pages of a money / math workbook, he does that.
And in between that, I read them books, we play wii sports, and I give them a snack.
By 11, though, it’s warm enough for me to shove them in the yard, so that’s where they remain doing whatever they want until lunch time.
After they eat, it’s quiet time for (fingers crossed) an hour, while I eat my own lunch and tackle random errands.
Most of the time they go back outside then to rejoin whatever game they left (with the neighbor kids) before they came in for lunch – it alternates between basketball and soccer, but never the normal game with normal rules. I’d like to attribute that forced creativity to the fact that everyone is masked with his/her own ball, but I think their “new” ways of playing are more likely because they are silly 5, 7, and 9 year olds.
Anyway, usually they will play outside for the rest of the day until it starts to get dark. Some days we have been walking or riding our bikes to meet friends at one of the many parks around our house, which means that I get some friend time too.
A few friends have gotten their first vaccine and I’m so jealous. It makes me excited to know that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel…I am so proud of all of my colleagues in the medical field.
By the time we have come in for the day, they are usually exhausted and in need of a warm bath.
Once they are in jammies, I will put on a movie or they will play board games while I finish getting dinner ready. Kyle has been coming home earlier than usual so we get to hang and chat a bit before dinner. Sometimes he’s even home in time to bathe them, although I think they like when I do it better because I give them bubbles and dye the water and use paint soap, etc to prolong it (especially if I’m into a really good book and can just sit there reading while they play). Kyle has them take showers individually most of the time, so it makes sense that baths are more novel.
They are also FINALLY getting into puzzles as much as I am. Well. Maybe not quite as much as I am, but definitely more than before. An hour could easily slip by for me while in the throws of a 500 piece, but not everyone has that kind of obsession.
And then we eat and they go to bed with books upon books and an hour or two later they fall asleep.
Our library is still closed, so we are at the mercy of whatever we got in our last haul (thank goodness it was a big one), as well as what we can find on the library app on the kindle.
And then Kyle and I go in the hot tub, watch tv, and eat tons of chocolate.
