campermom, the situation you’re describing is the one a lot of us have been in for 6+ weeks now - and why it’s so completely unsustainable for parents to work from home while taking care of kids and trying to help them with schoolwork. My DH is also working from home but we both have all day meetings most days - and that’s why we had to hire someone for mornings. Is that a possibility for you?
Oh.
I haven’t been off. I just haven’t had the load of IEP meetings I normally do. I’ve written SO many evaluation reports with my kids in the room—so so stressful and provided virtual direct services to kids in my basement throughout all this. These IEP meetings just weren’t expected on top of everything else.
No he is unable to do any work at home and he also has drill this weekend. I’ve thought about sending my youngest to daycare.
I've enlisted beau as my virtual quarantine babysitter. He is currently video calling the kids and they're playing Animal Crossing together with his son to keep mine distracted while I work. Game changer!
campermom, If daycare for your youngest is an option, it might be good to give you a break at least a couple days a week. You might feel like you can catch up a little easier.
We are thinking about sending our two youngest back to daycare for at least half days in the next couple of weeks. Our daycare is still open and they aren't allowing anyone inside the doors so you drop and pick up at the door. They're sanitizing the rooms and toys and washing all the blankets every day. Our county has very low numbers.
I feel like I will lose my mind if I don't have some kind of help with child care soon. We are both still working full time hours and aren't comfortable with our parents helping out since they're high risk and don't believe in social distancing.
DH thinks we will just send them outside all day now that the weather is getting warmer. You can't send a 2 year old outside unsupervised and there is no way she will remain in the house if she sees her sisters outside.
Post by mustardseed2007 on May 1, 2020 9:54:22 GMT -5
Our pool arrived. We blew up the ring and started filling it and after putting gallons and gallons and omg probably 10 bathubs in it, DH says "Oh it's not level...we need to empty it and start over".
Oh I know campermom - you haven’t been off but haven’t had a full workload, right? Now that you do, I think it makes sense to explore your options so you don’t go insane
I would totally send my youngest to daycare if it were open! My niece has been going to daycare the whole time in Maryland. There have to still be thousands of daycares open nationwide, and we haven’t heard about a single cluster of COVID cases among parents or teachers related to a daycare outbreak.
campermom , mellym , ours are not open. But if they were I would be sending the kids. Particularly right now, it is finals week at the university starting Sunday, and policy only gives me 48 hours after the exam ends to post their grades. So, somewhere in there I need to grade 70 final exams, along with all of the usual stuff, and term projects. Like, please take my money and watch my children. DH is still working overtime at his job, so no real help there.
campermom , mellym , ours are not open. But if they were I would be sending the kids. Particularly right now, it is finals week at the university starting Sunday, and policy only gives me 48 hours after the exam ends to post their grades. So, somewhere in there I need to grade 70 final exams, along with all of the usual stuff, and term projects. Like, please take my money and watch my children. DH is still working overtime at his job, so no real help there.
I installed nextdoor again solely so that we can get rid of stuff.. So far, I'm down 4 bikes, a lamp, a mirror, and a roomba and all it's replacement parts. I should probably be trying to get some money out of it, but I'm at the point that I just want stuff gone, so I'm posting everything for free.
I have a year's worth of goodwill donations stockpiled, and they're not accepting donations, so I'm trying to work up the motivation to organize it by size/type and try to get rid of it. Or maybe just hold off until 2023 when they accept donations again...
k3am, to get rid of clothes, I work with a local agency that provides clothes to foster kids. Often they are moved or removed quickly without any belongings, and it can take time for funding to come through for the families to go buy new things. So anything that is in good shape goes right to this agency. In different times, they have a closet where people can go and take what is needed. Right now they're taking summer clothing donations and putting together packages. The women are working out of their houses right now. I just got rid of 3 bags of stuff, and they were so happy to take it.
Maybe there's a local place near you? Here they're called foster closets.
I have many bags of items waiting to go to Goodwill. I'm running out of places in my house to store them.
I'm so glad we have a 5th bedroom (our guest bedroom) that we're not using right now (because no one can come to visit). It is filled with bags of things I need to donate or sell. Apparently a few Goodwills in my area will be opening up for donations, so I need to figure out the closest one to me and plan a drop-off.
covergirl82 we normally store stuff in our guest room and also my little office/walk in closet with windows. But since DH and I are both working FT from home, both those rooms are now occupied! I do have a couple bags stuffed under the desk in my office, and another couple in our couch (our new couch has a storage area in the chaise).
Post by mustardseed2007 on May 2, 2020 14:06:23 GMT -5
UPDATE - you can attach a hose to the pool and for some reason the water comes out of it that way (It feels to me like there wouldn't be enough water pressure for that to work by somehow it does...but I'm a physics and science idiot so what do I know). So we were able to water different plants in our yard and then put the hose in a drain that drains to the street.
THANK GOD.
We also let the kids play in it first. They played multiple hours so that at least was good.
UGH. Target did not give us all the pieces to the swing set. When my parents picked it up, they even asked two separate employees if it all fit in one box. They swore up and down that was all of it. Turns out... it's not all of it. And the store we picked up from claims they have no idea what to do and have no info for us. So I've been on hold for an hour, got disconnected, and now I'm on hold again trying to track down the missing pieces. I'm NOT happy.
DH was in a grumpy mood so I declared it family fun day. We went to a large park with a small river running through it and small limestone cliffs. It was very cute. We also went to the dog park. Then we got BBQ takeout. We tried to eat it in a park but they didn’t give us silverware so we brought it home and ate in our backyard.
So while family fun day didn’t go as smoothly as hoped (dog slipped her leash and trotted to the car which was pretty funny that she already knows her car and how to get there since we’d only been to that park that day). We didn’t realize she was headed to the car so it was scary at first. So I ordered a harness. The gear we were given by the shelter was not the best. Now I also know to bring dog treats on those kind of outings.
But I think everyone is in a better mood now. DH is making cinnamon rolls and a mess. He’s the world’s messiest cook/ baker. The cat got some outside time. I have to keep them separated since the dog likes to chase things. So it’s a juggling act but they all got outside time. Not sure what else we will do- maybe a beer and watch our taped masked singer tonight.
This is an experiment that I don’t think has fully played out. In many pandemics closing schools had its place. In this one, maybe less so. Not every city closed schools during the 1918 pandemic - I guess Chicago schools were open but had way less kids attending which maybe made that work for them.
It’s a moot point for me because we have 3 weeks of school left. Many places have 6 weeks left though. Summer camp and fall school is where my brain is at now. If we reopened Monday, and it was compulsory I wouldn’t send them because we have had increasing number of cases here. We are going up. But that answer might change in a month when cases go down.
Interesting that they would reopen the littlest kids. I find them to be more germ factories than big kids. Of course their parents probably need the most help.
My issue is masks for kids. They are hot! I’m not sure my kid could wear a mask for hours and hours, but they are mandatory in my state at least for the month of May.
In terms of tests, I guess I don’t know what tests need to go on right now. Aren’t SAT/ ACT usually in the fall unless they are making it up? Surely states can waive state tests. Other countries have way more involved tests that would need more help.
In the end, we will open up- we have to eventually. But I don’t know how and I don’t know when. Workplaces are still work from home or staggering hours, but eventually in phase 5 or whatever most things will be back to normal. I think some plans have childcare/ schools in their phase 2 which isn’t so bad.
waverly I’ve totally accepted that my kids will be out of school for the rest of the school year (7 more weeks for us) and summer group care may not happen. But now that people are taking about the real possibility of distance learning for next year too - it strikes me as crazy that we’re undertaking such a massive social experiment (3 out of 4 kids worldwide not in school) based on such little research/knowledge of very different diseases like the flu.
What does the article say? It won't let me read it unless I subscribe.
I can't do this through the summer and fall. I mean I will if I have to, but something has to give. I would probably be looking at homeschooling with a different family for him. I know a couple families who do that and I would beg. He deserves an education better than me trying to teach him and us both crying. He can't read yet so online learning is ridiculous for him. I can't help him every step of the way with a 2 year old and working full time.
What does the article say? It won't let me read it unless I subscribe.
I can't do this through the summer and fall. I mean I will if I have to, but something has to give. I would probably be looking at homeschooling with a different family for him. I know a couple families who do that and I would beg. He deserves an education better than me trying to teach him and us both crying. He can't read yet so online learning is ridiculous for him. I can't help him every step of the way with a 2 year old and working full time.
It makes the case for sending kids back to school in the first phase of reopening, starting with younger kids. Because the virus doesn’t generally impact young kids ...
'Nor is there evidence that children who do end up catching the disease are silent spreaders who pass it on to their families. Researchers in Iceland and the Netherlands have not found a single case in which a child brought the virus into their family. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the European Union’s public-health agency, said last week that child-to-adult transmission “appears to be uncommon”.'
For the millionth time, the reason schools can't just go back all willy nilly is because while kids seem to be less susceptible to Covid-19, they are also the most likely to be asymptomatic carriers. They will bring it home to their families. They will infect their teachers. If you don't have teachers, you can't have school. I agree there needs to be some way for parents to go back to work, but people (employers) really need to start thinking differently. There is zero chance that schools are going to go back in the fall looking anything like they did pre-Covid. None.
"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
erbear, I’m just hopeful that we’ll learn a lot from other countries who reopen schools and other childcare programs between now and the fall - whether kids are really asymptomatic carriers or not. That’s what I thought was interesting about that article from a reputable source.
No one is suggesting Willy nilly. This all has to be a very careful layered approach. I don’t work at a school, but I do work at an institution whose building is closed right now that offers educational programming. We’ve definitely been talking about what the future will look like. And planning for phases of slowly getting back to normal.
No one knows for sure what that timeline will be. This may vary enormously by state governor orders, and what is happening with the virus in the region. Because so much is unknown schools will have to have a lot of contingency plans. But to just say oh we only plan to do elearning until January is ignoring the other contingency plans. I think most schools want to get back if safe to do so. It might look different, and I’m overwhelmed with my own planning, so I can’t do the schools also. Nor do I have the knowledge or inside info to do so. But luckily we have a good school administration, so I know they are all discussing this.
I am very confused by everything. SIP and closing schools was intended to flatten the curve and.. it’s pretty flat here. We are ground zero for the first identified CV death in the US (early Feb), and our county has 140 hospitalized cases, with covid cases taking up less than 5% of our hospital beds and about 50% of beds empty. 0% of cases are on ventilators and 88% of our ventilators are available. Yet there is no end in sight? And SIP to flatten the curve is now apparently SIP until a vaccination is available?
I am very confused by everything. SIP and closing schools was intended to flatten the curve and.. it’s pretty flat here. We are ground zero for the first identified CV death in the US (early Feb), and our county has 140 hospitalized cases, with covid cases taking up less than 5% of our hospital beds and about 50% of beds empty. 0% of cases are on ventilators and 88% of our ventilators are available. Yet there is no end in sight? And SIP to flatten the curve is now apparently SIP until a vaccination is available?
Yeah we are pretty flat here too. I understand the wave process to reopen as we will see spikes I am sure but out hospitals are fine according to my nursing friends. They have closed down all of their exra covid units. But we are starting to reopen. Slowly which I'm okay with as long as there is forward process.
I really do think that people forgot along the way that this was not to prevent people from getting sick. It was to allow the hospitals not to get overrun. We were successful here. We j Shut down the same day the first positive case showed. We had a week of getting close to capacity and now we are shutting down the extras.
We do have one city still spiking like crazy, I think because testing wasn't available and now it is, even they are not concerned about the capacity issue.
My grandmother is a high risk person and she thinks at this point it is on her to make the decisions for herself. She isn't comfortable going out right now. She will wear a mask out and about. She isn't comfortable with family visiting and I will respect that. I would hope everyone else would too.