Remember those days when we couldn’t fathom being out of school for three weeks? I felt so bad for those poor sods in Washington state. How would they survive? I was completely convinced we could not make it, having barely made it through two-week holiday breaks before we practically threw the boys onto the playground from our moving car.
Last Monday the boys went back to school for the first time in a year. A YEAR. It was so exciting! They were giddy. Unfortunately for administrators, there’s no parental credit for beating the one year anniversary by a week. This is fourth grade, we’ve already learned to round up.
We’re in the morning cohort which involves getting to school precisely between 8:05 and 8:15AM, watching your upperclassmen walk with appropriate masked, social-distancing across the soccer fields, then driving home, getting out of the car and going inside and drinking the rest of your coffee and then getting back in the car and picking the boys up precisely between 11:05 and 11:15AM. Fridays are a minute of Zoom school.
The boys were so happy… on Cloud NINEteen all week. As in it felt like 2019. Back before time froze. And we were just part way into third and fifth grades.
This weekend we held a sequel of last year’s birthday slumber party with Big Jackson, Cruz and Kai. Our pandemic pod. Chinese food and McConnell’s served on the plywood counters of our latest kitchen construction project. No one can be believed when it comes to the reporting of bedtimes as numbers are thrown around like nerf bullets. Jacob may have been the first to bed at 2 or 3AM. The other brothers never did go to sleep, until it was time for me to pack them up and deliver the zombies back to their parents.
Today was Jake’s second Coronavirus birthday, having the luck of being born the day after we went into lockdown last year. He chose a lunch of tacos and cake in Santa Barbara followed by enchiladas and chocolate dipped strawberries for dinner.
He fell asleep as soon as we got back in the car, his head back like the old carseat days. And Nate just folded forward and slept facedown in his own lap.
At last, the slumber part of the party.