At home life with Anna has been quite interesting. It’s been a bit difficult because of course, she has no clue why we can’t go outside anymore. She has no clue why we haven’t been going to her therapies, her horseback riding, swimming, to the park, and her favorite- restaurants. Frequently she asks, “where am I going?” or “am I going horseback riding?” She’ll name her therapists to try to guess which one we are supposed to be seeing that day. All the while, I keep thinking how I explain “coronavirus” and “shelter-in-place” to her. For now, I just tell her plainly, “we can’t go anywhere-we can see your therapist/teacher online”. She hears the word “coronavirus” a lot and in fact, my son says he’s sick of hearing the word around our house. She has also become very good at singing ABC’s while diligently washing her hands.
A terrible, awful thing our country is facing on multiple levels and my prayers are with all of us as we desperately try to stay safe and survive amidst this chaos. We have no choice but to try to make the best of our situation. It’s been quite stressful as we try to figure out how to do online classes and homeschool our children. Stressful because children can’t go to park to run around and play like we were able to before.
As a result, we’ve been trying to do many indoor activities. Anna still does
TalkTools therapy first thing in the morning as part of her routine, nearly every day. After that, we do “reading time”. Then, she prepares for handwriting by pulling small rubber animals out of putty for increasing hand strength. We practice letter and name writing as well.
We balance work with fun. Being with her brother and sister has afforded a lot of play time with them- hide and seek, tag, playing ball, pretend play as a doctor, mommy and baby, playing dollhouse, etc. We’ve also been baking with her sister.
The highlight this month however, was Spring Break and Easter! Although we couldn’t go anywhere, I think that the time we were able to spend with each other at home was invaluable. We had a home Easter egg hunt in which I put paper eggs on the end of a popsicle stick and put it all over the house for the kids to find which they enjoyed very much. Then, a “find the golden egg” mystery hunt around the house with clues leading to other clues until each child found their “golden” egg. The children started their own Easter parade around the house while daddy joined in as well. Lastly, we made pizza, baked a cake, and of course, dyed our Easter eggs! The fate of Anna’s hard boiled Easter egg was, of course, that she ate it soon after she made it! In all honesty, it was actually one of the best Easter’s I have ever had. Amidst such a tragic time, there are such glimpses of life, hope, and joy, and I’m extremely thankful for that. Pray this will crisis will soon be past us.
