Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Terah's date night and request and Garage deep clean

The sledding with friends mentioned in the last posting happened! We were delighted to all feel well enough to enjoy a wonderful day with our dear friends from Canada that had spent the week in the in-law quarters upstairs. We hadn't dared to invite them down before attempting to purge our home of germs. The kids had so much fun inside and out, and it was so good to reconnect and catch up! Those visits only come around every few years so we tried to savor the time together and I tried not to think about the fact that Alida could be a teenager before it happens again - hopefully it will be sooner!!
As a side note the snow was really beautiful and the wind kept kicking up clouds of it. What was not so lovely about the snow/ice and the subsequent melting is that it attracted the ducks even more to our front walk. They loved the puddle that formed as the snow melted and could not be dissuaded from using that as their hang out spot. The problem is wherever ducks hang out, they also poop (a lot)! I sure wish our front walk didn't have to be a congregating spot for them and often the chickens. Sigh! I do not find it to be a particularly welcoming thing for guests to have our front walk splattered with chicken and duck poop but can't seem to keep up with clearing it off OR with shooing them away...

So last Friday night we took our healthy, giggly, spunky 4 year old out on a date! It was her time to cash in her Christmas coupon and it was so wonderful to see her feeling great again! I'm not sure who was more excited. I was so excited I dreamed about it the night before but of course it was all mixed up and we had brought Kali on a 2nd date rather than Terah. I was happy to wake up and realize we had time to get it right! Many times during the day she asked if it was time for her date. It was the first time, but hopefully not the last, that both me and Jason went out with JUST her! She soaked up the undivided attention! 
We enjoyed an evening of going to You Made It pottery where she selected a bowl to paint. While fun it was not the kind of thing I would want to do often with a four year old. You had to paint what you wanted on the bowl 3 times (so there were 3 layers of paint). She loved the first round, concentrated and made it through the second round and was clearly ready to be done by the third so I had to think of ways to make it fun and silly. From there we made our way to Bella Luna where we played Dutch Blitz while we waited for our pizzas. Not completely filled after that course, we crossed the street to Bella Gelato for ice cream and some rounds of Set. It was a full and very fun evening for all three of us! 

On Sunday we enjoyed another sabbath hike with friends. While on that hike Alida announced that we were having a family meeting and that she would be facilitating. So that's what we did that evening and she did great facilitating (some of us had been suspicious that "facilitating" meant something more akin to being the boss of the meeting, but she clearly had observed and taken in what the role of facilitator was all about). At that meeting one of the agenda items was discussing Terah locking their shared bedroom door and then not unlocking it with her play keys upon request. This, understandably was annoying Alida. So Terah agreed not to but that was when we learned...that she wanted her own room. 

My how our kids throw us curve balls! Our 16 year old has no interest in her own room, our 8 year old would be scared in her own room and now our 4 year old wants her own room. She said she wanted her own room to have a private place to wrap presents for us. Now there would be much easier ways to accomplish that goal! But she also wanted to sleep in it, and wanted no one to come in but me. This idea had Alida in tears (completely shedding her facilitator role). Change is hard for her, she was worried Terah would be scared or fall out of bed, and she didn't think she would sleep as well. In the end we agreed to try it for one night. I fully assumed she would make it 5 minutes and change her mind. Nope!

After the first night, she said she was going to do it every other night. So last night was her second night in the guest room (to be hers in the future?). We moved the mattress onto the floor in hopes that I would sleep better not being worried she would roll out. She has just said she plans to sleep in the guest room again tonight so that negates the every other night plan. Not sure where this will lead but we are taking it a day (I mean, a night) at a time... Life with kiddos is so very full of surprises. The last thing I wanted as a kid was to sleep in a room by myself. I would have LOVED to co-sleep with my parents! I spent many a night being scared. It's lovely and surprising to see Terah becoming a confident and independent sleeper. I just wasn't expecting her to want to move to the other side of the house. We haven't made any major furniture shifts just yet. Seems a little early for that.

So now, for the other and final bit of major news. Monday and Tuesday of this week were slated for the deep clean of the garage. I promise I was not wanting to miss out on the "fun" but Monday was an office day for me and the girls were with friends. So that meant that Mom, Dad and Jason could work without distractions. They got the whole garage emptied out and cleaned. This was a major accomplishment in and of itself! The end of the day got a bit more stressful as night approached and the weather prediction was calling for rain as early as 4 a.m. the next day. So it was a bit of a mad run to get all the stuff yet to sort and clean back into the garage, common room, and wood shed. So it wasn't a perfect deep clean but it still had the desired effect!
Jason spent most of Tuesday sorting things, Mom was in the wings to help clean things, Dad was in the wings to carry things and helped with chores, and I was in the wings to help sort things and make decisions but was mostly working for CJP. So, in short, Jason really bore the brunt of this project - especially the mental (and shall I say emotional) work of this! It's so hard to know when to throw/give something away and when to retain it for the possibility of needing it and avoiding buying a new one. Knowing that "throwing stuff away" is really just moving stuff to the landfill (it doesn't really go away), deepens again our commitment to try not to amass stuff in the first place. 

Today I was at work again and they wrapped things up! So other than hanging one thing and doing a few minor projects that came out of this one (maybe tomorrow), the garage deep clean is officially done. It's much cleaner, less cluttered, more organized, more roomy and lots of little projects were accomplished in the garage and in the house with things found in the garage. I'm not sure yet if Jason will say it was worth the 2.5 days of work, but I think soon he will! And I hope for some of the upcoming projects that I can have more hands on involvement so I can more fully "feel the magic" of the deep clean process. 

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Christmas and a discombobulated start to 2020!

Yesterday marked 2 weeks since the first of our family fell ill! It was Christmas Eve and Alida woke up only to throw up minutes later. She was washed out most of the day, fevered and mostly laid around while the holiday hubbub happened around her. We all felt so bad that she was sick when the holiday fun was getting underway. Little did we know!

Christmas morning she was up and perky and seeming more or less back to normal - that gal is robust! We enjoyed a relaxed day just the five of us, opening stockings, putting a puzzle together, making a Christmas brunch, playing games, etc... It touched me once again how Alida had bought a chocolate bar for Nora's stocking and also put in an orange heart she had made. She is always sure to include her. I'm so grateful how having Nora's stocking up with all of ours brings her up in conversation many times around the holidays, especially with Terah. So it was a special day but at various points I just noted that I was feeling a tad off. The Christmas treats weren't tasting quite as good, and initially I just tacked it up to having too many of them. But by evening it was clear that I was not completely well. Everyone else seemed ok...so far!

Long story short, I spent the next two days doing more or less nothing - other than trying to stay comfortable. Then Terah got sick. Then Jason got sick. This happened right at the time that Jason's entire family was coming to Ktown for the Benner Christmas. There was no chance they wanted to be in our home! I felt so bad that we took at trip to MedExpress where they loaded me up on medications, but didn't even test for the flu. In the end, after a consult with a doctor friend, it seems very possible that we actually had the flu, despite all having gotten flu shots for the first time in years. In short, it was miserable!

Kali and Alida were well and would shower, put clean clothes on and go join the Benner family fun. Jason, Terah and I were at home hacking and fevered and almost feeling too bad to even feel sorry for ourselves for missing out on the fun. Then we had a 24 hour period with no fevers and, while still coughing, were feeling up for family time. So we joined for one evening and the following day. Many games of Dutch Blitz, a walk up the hill, reading stories, eating together, and no doubt sharing a concoction of germs from the various colds and illnesses that were present in the house.
By the time Benners left and we were ringing in the New Year, Terah was sick again - high fevers, washed out, complaining of her belly (and sometimes throwing up), coughing, snotting, etc... (you get the picture). And then Kali got sick. So 5 for 5! Kali mostly just laid around and read and didn't require much parental attention - Terah had most of my attention and worry! And so it was not until yesterday that we had a fever-free day and a day without complaints of her tummy hurting. We even took a snow walk to friends last evening but by 8 p.m. she was begging for home and bed. So she is still on the mend but much better!

So the long dreamed of and awaited holiday break for rejuvenation and rest included a lot of laying around but not exactly the kind that feels all that rejuvenating! It was really the most discombobulating illness I can remember having - I don't remember being so sick since I was a kid. The whole world felt like a different place and I wasn't sure how to make sense of it. I found myself thinking so much of friends who have dealt with/are dealing with chronic pain and illnesses. I clearly would need some new tools and resources for managing life with that over the long term - as the two weeks that just passed felt incredibly long!

We did insert a few bursts of productivity, trying to feel some semblance of normalcy and also trying to make little strides in our winter project list. That included going through all our shoes and developing some new patterns of shoe storage, as well as purging our collection. This may seem like a small task but it is one of those with profound impacts in the day to day!!! That got the "cleaning/organizing bug" in full swing and so we did tackle the attic deep clean. That probably added to my discombobulation as the attic is where so many sentimental items were tucked away and the hardest kind to go through and decide what to keep and what to part with. 
This past Sunday came after days of not doing all that much and it was a beautiful day out. Jason and I felt like the most Sabbath-like thing we could do was work together on something outside. We ended up stripping old bean vines off trellises, moving around trellises for the new growing season coming and worked on some winter cut back. Jason also got to weave Terah's turtle shell together and the top comes together now!! Oh, and Jason planted onion seeds so I guess that means the 2020 gardening season is officially underway!

And now here we are at January 8th! Yesterday it snowed and in addition to a beautiful coating on the world outside, we decided to work towards a fresh start inside our home too. While the girls played out in the snow, Jason and I cleaned our house together. It needed it! And it was an act of faith to roll up the sleeping bag Jason had been using for many nights in the living room and to attempt a germ-purge of our home. We said it was our day to get "re-combobulated." Time will tell if it worked but it felt very good to do and I felt more "normal" than I had for some time at the day's end! I'm sure hoping we all can fully mend and stay healthy for awhile! It's a gorgeous sunny day and I have a feeling there is some sledding with friends in our future!