Category Archives: Griffin

Griffin, Maggie, Oliver, Photo

A Bit of Hope

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As mentioned in prior posts, Oliver was in preschool this year for a few months at the beginning of the year. Now he is back at an outdoor preschool for three mornings a week.

Griffin and Maggie, however, have been in full distance-learning since last March. They’re used to it now, but it has been a major blow. A normal day in their Montessori school would involve 6-7 hours of constant interaction. Working with classmates, moving around the classroom, attending mini-lessons from the teacher, playing at recess, lunch, the school bus, etc.

Now they’ve got Zoom meetings, independent work, and an occasional minecraft game with their friends. I’m not knocking the school; they’re doing a great job. But the social gulf between this year and last is enormous.

It is with joy, therefore, that we dove into a program at their school where individual classes come to campus once-a-week for a few hours of all-outdoor social time. Maggie had her first day yesterday and Griffin went in this morning. (We only have a picture of Griffin at this point.) Hopefully this is the first step on the long road to normalcy.

Griffin with his friends at school together for the first time in 11 months.
Griffin, Video

Griffin’s First Piano Recital

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Griffin has been taking weekly piano lessons at the Walker West Music Academy since February of 2019. He had a few lessons in person and then, as the state locked down for COVID-19 in mid-March, started doing them remotely via Skype. He had his first recital yesterday evening; it was a virtual event where he played “Oh! Susanna.” One fun element of the virtual format was that friends and relatives from around the country could attend. We hope that he will get a chance to do more of these. See below for a trimmed video of Griffin’s portion of the recital. Listen for Oliver who makes an unintended cameo part-way through.

The full recital is available on YouTube. The audio gets a bit funky due to the streaming, but it’s fun to see all the different kids at different levels of skill.

Andrew, Griffin, Maggie, Oliver, Photo, Sarah

Unwelcome Guest

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This week we discovered, to our dismay, that we have an interloper in our midst: COVID-19. Here’s how things have played out for us thus far:

  • Tuesday, November 3 — receive a call from Oliver’s preschool that there had been a positive case in his classroom. Everyone must stay home for 2 weeks and get tested for COVID in 5–7 days. We’re concerned, but not super-worried.
  • Saturday, November 7 — We take Oliver in for a COVID test. He hasn’t had any symptoms, so we’re hopeful that he’ll be negative.
  • Tuesday, November 10 — We receive the call that Oliver tested positive. Yikes! We discuss with the doctor how we should quarantine within our house. It sounded more plausible on the phone than it turned out to be in real life. Sequestering an almost-four-year-old isn’t easy.
  • Wednesday, November 11 — The rest of the family goes to a drive-through COVID testing clinic. The tests are easy and everything was impressively fast and professional. Results expected in 2–4 days.

Meanwhile, also starting on November 3, I noticed a bit of a scratch in my throat. Not quite a sore throat, but it wasn’t 100% either. Sarah had similar symptoms. I reported this in my health monitoring app for school and they told me to stay home on Tuesday (which was a teach-from-home day anyway). On Wednesday, I felt 100%, so I went to school. Same on Thursday. By Thursday evening, however, my mild sore throat had returned. I attributed it to the dry air, but I reported it on the app in the morning and, out of an abundance of caution, I stayed home again. Sarah was in a similar boat but we weren’t too concerned. This sort of thing happens as winter kicks in.

Once we got the call about Oliver, of course, we started wondering if our throats were indeed related to COVID. Indeed, every stray itch seems like it might be an ominous sign. We can’t be sure until we receive our test results.

At this point, we feel grateful that we are all healthy. Oliver has no symptoms at all. The rest of us have a few mild question marks, but certainly don’t feel sick. We are hopeful that we are either negative or that we’ll be in for a mild brush with the virus. Of course, we are 100% quarantined. I’ll post more as the situation evolves.

And, to my delight, as someone who appreciates a properly dark joke, a friend and colleague from the Bahamas shared this meme with me today (the Bahamian flag is at the bottom):

Andrew, Griffin, Maggie, Oliver, Photo, Sarah

Halloween 2020

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Our COVID Halloween wasn’t as bad as we might have expected. Indeed, at one point today, the kids exclaimed, “This is the best Halloween ever!” A few weeks ago we reluctantly told the kids that we weren’t comfortable going trick-or-treating this year. But, since Halloween was on a Saturday, we could spend the whole day doing Halloween activities. To our surprised delight, the kids were like, “Yeah! Let’s plan a schedule!” And they did. Starting with pumpkin pancakes in the morning. Then making piñatas, hanging lights in the yard, making rice crispy treat monsters, building a fire in the backyard, having our bubble-friends over, eating dinner, smashing piñatas, and finally watching the Over the Garden Wall animated series in the backyard curled up in blankets around the fire.

It might have been my favorite Halloween too…

Griffin, Maggie, Photo, Piper

Puppy, Week 2

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We’ve had our puppy for two weeks now and we want to tell you about the second one. She has gotten to like us much better and is way more attentive. She loves playing with Coco, the dog across the street, but is scared of Josie the Great Dane. Piper has gotten bigger. She also has more of an appetite. She loves the liver treats and also she goes on some walks. We got her a bigger crate also. She is still the cutest thing ever. And she gives us delight. What else can a person ask for?

Griffin, Piper

Invincible Tick

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Warning: This is a bit grosser than the average post on this blog. Skip it if you’re squeamish.

Once upon a time our puppy had an engorged tick in her ear. We saved it in a plastic bag for a few days because we thought it might be a Lyme disease transmitting tick but we think it’s a dog tick. And it didn’t die so we drowned it in alcohol and it still didn’t die so we pinched it in a clothespin for a few days BUT IT STILL DIDN’T DIE!! And it is still alive today. We might pop it but it would get too much blood everywhere so we named it the invincible tick.

Griffin, Maggie, Oliver, Photo, Piper, Video

Introducing Piper

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The latest addition to our family is Piper, an eight-week old goldendoodle puppy. We picked her up on Monday, June 15. Griffin and Maggie describe her like this:

We just got a puuuuuppppy!!!! She is a goldendoodle and she is a really great sweet dog. We named her Piper and she loves to play but doesn’t really like her crate yet. Piper loves outside, especially the bush. And she loves digging besides the house. She sleeps a lot and she rarely barks unless she’s scared. She is the cutest thing ever!

Piper’s phlox lair.

The “bush” that they mention is a clump of phlox at the edge of our yard; she likes to nap in the shade there, nearly invisible.

We had been idly considering a dog at some point in the next few years, but were in no rush. Like many people during the pandemic, however, we realized that the requirements of social distancing and a summer without many of our usual activities is an excellent time to focus our energy on a new project. Puppies are a lot of work, but we’re enjoying the journey so far.

Pictures from our first few days together followed by two short video clips:

Playing in the yard on a hot afternoon.

More backyard fun.
Griffin, Maggie, Oliver, Photo

The Day After School Ended

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Hi there. Today was an awesome day! We woke up at 7:30. We did our video games. Then we had an awesome breakfast of waffles, eggs, sausage, and raspberries. After that we went to SPA (my dad’s school) and my dad went into the building while we played in our hammocks. Then my dad went home with Oliver and made a picnic lunch. Then they came back and we had made a caterpillar home! Then we rolled down the big hill and went home 🏡.

The hammock. When Andrew found the kids here, they exclaimed, “This is paradise!”
The caterpillar home.
Griffin

Griffin’s Week at School at Home

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This week was pretty good. I did my human body systems work which is a project that I’ve been working on for a few months that is about the eleven human body systems and I’m on my final draft.

I also worked on my conference prep essay. This is an essay which we have to write about our year and work habits and big work and lessons and lots of that stuff. Normally we would have written this by March 19 (I’m pretty sure), but it’s different this year because of the coronavirus. We already had the conference but for some reason I still have to write this. 

I also did a lot of TerraCycle work. We’re trying to create a presentation slideshow that will teach people about TerraCycle and how it will help save the Earth. Here’s a PDF of our current draft of the presentation:

TerraCycle-projectDownload

It was hard to stay focused because Oliver and Maggie and Daddy and sometimes Mama were always loud somewhere. Especially Oliver because he’s always asking me to do stuff. 

I also went to a few state parks and I learned a lot at them. We saw a garter snake at Lebanon Hills and Mama said that I could try to pick it up but it got all coiled up like it would try to bite me. We looked it up later and learned that it will poop and make it really stinky if you pick it up. Also they’re really fast. I’m adding this because I learned a lot of facts there, so it counts as school.

Example of my work journal from Monday.