Wednesdays are lighter for me at work, which was welcome, since I pushed it hard Monday and Tuesday, and so didn’t feel the best again on Wednesday. I also was able to talk to my therapist which was great. Among other things, we discussed progress I am making on mindfulness and acceptance. I love therapy.
Lily was still soldiering on. Trying to take it easy, but still having a lot to do to maintain the house and the children. She’s also still powering through on her German and other goals, like Greek. She’s so sad that she can’t do fun things with the kids like bake cookies or read books (if she talks to much she coughs). Also, yesterday she pulled a muscle in her chest from coughing so hard so she was in extra intense pain today each time that she coughed. I ended work earlier than usual and was around. I sure hope she can get better soon!
Here is a picture Lily got of Lydia who played dress-up with Clarissa. Lydia was going on and on about how patient Clarissa was as Lydia was dressing her up.
One of the highlights of the week for me has been watching the docuseries, “Hillary” with Lily and Georgia in the evenings. It’s on Hulu. Hillary is a very polarizing figure and many people have chosen to either idolize her or hate her. I’m aware that people can paint themselves in a positive light whenever there is something biographical, but the major indisputable data points in her life are so impressive, that I am now in her fan club. I think she would have been one of the most smart, strong, well qualified, feeling and compassionate presidents we have ever had. And I think it could have moved civil rights, healthcare, and education forward tremendously. It was such a powerful show and I would recommend it to anyone.
This morning I overheard Lily telling the children that the Leprechauns didn’t come because they are from Ireland and no one is traveling do to Corona virus. I re-in forced the story and said something like about how they are smaller than children and could really be hurt by the virus. Then Mary and Lydia got into a debate. Lydia said Leprechauns were magic so they shouldn’t fear a virus. But Mary insisted that Leprechauns lose their magic if a human sees them, and that would be disastrous with the Corona virus scare. To more thoroughly make her point, Mary pointed out how late Lydia stayed up the night before to highlight how risky it was for a Leprechaun to be in our room.
I love my kids. Really, Lily and I were just two overwhelmed trying to make life happen given we were both sick. Lily was still by far the sickest, and I was still recovering, but walking a fine line trying to help keep work and home afloat while still recovering from my sinus infection. We just dropped the ball on that one, but Lily had a great explanation. Lily was on top of things though enough to get lots of Lucky Charms, which the children ate joyfully for breakfast.
I got a lot of hard news at work due to Corona virus. A lot of deals are pushing to next quarter or later due to market uncertainty. While I was working (and trying to pop in on Lily from time to time), Lily was trying to rest as much as she could while still feeding kids, cleaning, studying her German and doing laundry as much as her energy would allow. Unfortunately that meant sometimes she was pushing it too much. After work, I tried to take over as much as I could so she could rest. I was actually feeling decent because I turned a corner during the day and started to feel better from my sinus infection. I even played with Clarissa! While I was chasing her wearing her box, completely out of the blue she said, “I am a robot” in a robot voice. I almost died laughing because she has heard me say that before, but I thought it was so funny for her to pull it out in such a hilarious moment. Here is a video of me chasing her.
I’m worrying about Lily. Her lungs are not any better. I’m trying to cut corners at work to be more available for her and at home, but I sometimes use the time to just rest because I’m still recovering and I feel she just needs more rest. I cannot wait until the weekend when work will be over, and I can just truly pamper her and help her get closer to recovery.
Monday I woke up feeling not the best and Lily was still sick, but I decided to still do my work day so as not to miss the one-on-one with my employees and because it is end of quarter when a lot of important things are happening. I tried to pop in on Lily from time to time, but she was active taking care of the family. Once off of work, I tried to really spare her. She is so sick, and her lungs just don’t seem to be getting better :(.
Last night I had crazy chills. I was shaking vigorously. It made for some crazy awesome cuddling with Lily. She probably felt a little oppressed as I tried to steal every ounce of body heat that I could from her. Also, it was a bit concerning.
I woke up in the morning feeling fairly decent. Lily did too. In fact, for a large part of the day, we both felt like maybe we were on the mend.
Lily worked on her German, listened to audio books and helped around the house. I cleaned the upstairs with the kids (Lydia grumbling much of the way). After putting Clarissa down, I rested a bit while Lily studied German next to me and then I wrote in my journal and worked on odds and ends like my property tax bill.
At 2:00 we had home church. We had hymns, I blessed and passed the sacrament, and we did a reading from Matthew 7, and had a short session, like a testimony meeting, but more just sharing thoughts we wanted to share. I thanked everyone, especially Lily (who doesn’t care much for the church) and Lydia (who was bored out of her mind) for supporting my desire to meet together, and worship, and think of God and how we can live our most inspired lives. Lily shared that she liked the part in Matthew 7 about seeking and finding saying that to her it meant that if we are curious enough and really want to know something, we can find the answer. Georgia shared her thoughts about what it means to her to partake of the bread and water, how it reminds her of Jesus and her desire to be like Him.
After church at home (since regular church was cancelled due to Carona Virus concerns), Lily and I started to feel not so great. We took it easy. I rested a bit and then managed to get dinner on. I even got help from all of the kids (except Clarissa 🙂 ). Mary even made place tags!
After dinner I watched Mr. Rogers with the children while Lily talked to Swathi and got great medical advice. Then we talked to my family who also also were very helpful and even looked up the hours of a local clinic for us that was (thank goodness) open until midnight. As soon as we hung up with my parents, Lily and I decided to go see a doctor. Lily had already seen two doctors. I had only been sick since Friday. But especially with Georgia living with us, we want to play it on the safe side. Lily just called me and said they are going to test us both tonight for Carona Virus. I’ve been trying to be diligent about handwashing and I even wore a face mask for a little bit, but I’ll be so much more at ease just knowing what I have. I’m going to go in as soon as she gets home. We will get results in 2-3 days because they are backed up on processing tests.
On a COMPLETELY different note. Our family pictures came back. They are so great! Here are some highlights!
I woke up feeling quite sick on Saturday, but it was a beautiful day, and a fun, cozy, and still productive day. All in all it was a very good day.
In the morning, I met with two of our new renters to show them the house. Then I went to Sports Clips, but I didn’t go in because there was a sign on the door saying not to enter if you were sick. Lily suggested I don’t go, but I really wanted a hair cut. When I saw the sign, I had to throw in the towel. I’ll be shaggy for another week I guess. Lily likes me better that way anyway 🙂
While I was gone, the youngest kids ate breakfast under the table, each on a pillow.
In the evening, we all watched Captain America as a family. It was so good!
After the movie, Lily and I had a long chat with Georgia. We have felt difficulty connecting because Lily and I are in such a different place spiritually than Georgia. Lily and I shared a lot of our feelings, and Georgia shared some of hers. I think we all felt it was better to have harder conversations than to not be having conversations. We love Georgia so much and are grateful for her meek and mild spirit that helps make dialogue possible. We love you Georgia!
This morning I woke up at 3AM feeling sick. I lay in bed resting, reading news, and passing the time until I got up at 5:15 to go to basketball. About to put my shoes on, I thought and chose to cancel basketball and also call in sick to work. It was the right call. I crawled back into bed, fell asleep and got up around 9:00 and have been feeling sick all day. I’m pretty sure I have what Lily has had. I have sinus pressure, a cough, body aches, and very mild chills, and perhaps a very mild fever, but there may be no fever at all. Whenever I take my temperature it seems to be either no fever or a very mild fever. It mostly just feels like a sinus infection. Still though, I got some good advice from family members, and read up on the CDC website and I’m doing my best to follow their instructions on what to do when you are sick with Corona, even though I don’t think that’s what I have.
I followed my energy throughout the day. Sometimes that meant laying flat on my back. Sometimes that meant being productive like putting groceries away, filling up our 150 gallon containers with storage water, working on coordinating condo repairs etc. Lily went out to various stores and stocked up on lots of food. It’s amazing how all the store supplies are disappearing.
Also, Moroni, our contractor, made amazing progress on our basement today, and it was fun to admire it.
Lily is still sick too and Ammon, Mary and Clarissa still have coughs so we are still in recovery mode. Lily is still powering through her German and finding ways to be productive even though she is not feeling well.
The highlight of the day was when my dad, Suzanne, Jere and David came over. It was great to see my brothers for the second day in a row, and I always love seeing my dad and Suzanne.
We all had such a good time. We showed the family how Ammon comes down the stairs in our house. Here is a video.
Lydia and Mary drew with their uncle Jere.
Dad and Suzanne treated everyone to Slab pizza and it was so delicious. My favorite slice was their bbq pizza with egg on it.
Clarissa “ate” three pieces of pizza meaning she ate the cheese off of them. After she would finish the cheese on a slice, she would point to the crust and say, “this is yuck, can I have more?”
This was a picture taken 16 years ago right before my dad married Suzanne. Suzanne had the awesome idea to completely recreate the photo. My dad even wore the same shirt today!
Here is a picture of us checking our orientation. We wanted the pose to be just like the original picture. I’m excited to get the final product from Suzanne!
Here is a picture of the March birthdays.
While we waited for the surprise cookies and ice cream to arrive, I shared the cute notes Mary made for us when we returned from Bora Bora (insisting I give her a piggy back ride and have a dance party for being gone so long) and then Clarissa sang Into The Unkown from Frozen II. Here are the clips of her singing:
Then we celebrated March birthdays with cookies and ice cream from “The Chocolate.”
Lydia and Mary got the ultimate piggy back ride from Jere.
Clarissa got in on the piggy backing action too!
All in all it was a really good time. We caught up on each other’s lives. Talked about Jere’s job at Salesforce, David’s work at the University of Vermont, Olivia’s new job, and many other things. It was so so so fun to visit.
After everything died down I sorted some pictures for Lydia and Mary to put in their safe-keeping bins. Here is a cute one from Mary.
And a cute one from Lydia.
Also, here is an adorable note Mary made for Lily this week.
I am very confused by Carona virus. I genuinely don’t understand how serious it is, or how seriously we should treat it. Is it worth shutting down our entire economy and lifestyle over? Today was a big whirlwind for me.
I made it into the office today, and on the way in I called one of my direct reports to tell him I would be late for our coaching session because I was taking care of our sick family. “We have the Carona Virus”, I said, “just kidding.” He didn’t laugh and when I got into the office, I understood why.
I didn’t realize how serious things had gotten with Carona virus during my days out of the office. Within one hour of me being in the office, we received instructions to head home to begin an indefinite “work-from-home” period. I also learned the NBA cancelled its season, the stock market went down 10% after already sliding previously, and that March Madness was cancelled.
Throughout the day it dawned on me, that we are entering a period of extreme abnormality. Trader Joes and Walgreens were both out of toilet paper. Stores were packed with people stocking up. Events were cancelled everywhere.
I just learned today (Friday) church is cancelled Sunday.
I spent Thursday being plugged into work, and learning more about the Carona virus situation and working to help my team stay focused and connected by creating a group check-in and check-out call ever day. When I finished with work, I took the kids (Lily was still sick) to GoodWood Barbecue to see my brothers and my mom and Jay. It was amazing to see Jere and David, and particularly David because I haven’t seen him for probably two years. He wasn’t sure if he had yet met Clarissa. I’m so grateful I’ve gotten to see Jere more often (Jere and David are too of my all time favorite people), and it was such a treat to see David on this occassion. We caught up about life, work, the higher education crisis, Olivia, living in Vermont and more. Also, it’s always great to see my mom and Jay!
The kids were mostly well behaved. After returning home, I passed out on the couch and shot this video of Lily playing cutely with the kids. I’m not sure if the video audio is working, but Lily spent a fair amount of time ordering things to eat and drink from Ammon and Clarissa and after each order they would disappear into the hallway to make it and then they would bring it back to Lily. Clarissa has really been into wearing capes recently! I then helped Lily put the kids to bed and clean the house. I went to bed at 11:30 or so and had great pillow talk with Lily (and even helped quiz her on German and Greek!) and had no idea I was about to wake up three and a half hours later sick…………
Lily is starting to do better, but we decided it would be best for me to stay one more day to help her get fully on her feet before I go back into the full swing of work again. I was a bit tired from yesterday (this parenting stuff is exhausting!) and I was late taking Lydia to school, but otherwise the day got off to a good start.
After dropping off Lydia, I went to Trader Joe’s for cereal and then came home and blitz-cleaned the house with Lily before the cleaners came. Here is a picture I snapped while cleaning of a wall in the girl’s room that keeps getting cuter and cuter.
After that, I took Clarissa to Lydia’s school to teach art to the students. I had every intention of preparing, but I used my spare moments to coordinate family get-to-gethers, and work on condo repairs (and get a burrito), and when I arrived at the school with no time to spare, I realized I was winging it again. It went well enough and Clarissa was perfect. I really enjoy those students and it was so fun to see Lydia in her classroom. On the way home, Lydia practiced advertising various things. She’s been having fun advertising various things. My favorite thing was when she tried to advertise or sell me TVs that do commercials every 5 minutes instead of every ten minutes to help build character. We agreed that only Calvin’s dad would buy one (from Calvin and Hobb’s) since he likes to talk about how hard things build character. Here is Lydia selling a huge minivan.
After getting home, I passed out and napped. Then I had a solid 45 minutes to work on work, and then did some blogging.
When commotion resumed in the house, I put my laptop away and got back into dad mode. That involved (my favorite part) playing with the kids. I re-fell in love with our home today. And one of the reasons why is because of the circular loop track on the main floor of our house that makes for great games of chase.
Here are three videos Lily took of me and the kids playing, “Nobody leaves the couch”. I win when I get all three kids on the couch at the exact same time. It’s really hard. I often don’t win. My best bet is to get Lydia and Ammon on the couch at the same time and then just trick Clarissa into coming to the couch while I pin down Lydia and Ammon.
Video 1. In this first video, you will notice Ammon sliding down the stairs to come join the fun. You only catch part of it, but I hope to capture him doing his butt slide down the whole staircase sometime. It’s adorable!
I also helped Mary with her piano practice (she’s getting so good at Allegro), folded a basket of laundry (I’m so deficient in this area, Lily always does the folding and putting away) and made dinner. The salmon came out great!
After dinner, I was so tired, I just relaxed on the bench at our dinner table. This is yet another reason why I love our new home. This bench at our dinner table has pillows. I can literally over-eat, and then without even moving my place, I can gently melt into a horizontal position on pillows to digest my food. I love it 🙂
Below are some pictures of us passing the evening.
Ammon:
Lydia with a scowl as she plows through her goal of reading 5 hours per day. She has been so grumpy, but darn-it if that girl isn’t committed to her goal! She has over one third of her class’s average just in her reading minutes. She really wants to win and go to pizza pie cafe with the principal!
Here is Lily also working on her goals. In this picture she is studying German. She’s discouraged because she’s still towards the beginning of her journey when the mountain just seems too high to climb, but I know she can do it!
After being with family, I went outside to decompress by shooting some hoops. My shooting was awful, but I still loved being outside. While shooting I got to see the sky lit up beautifully with a sunset. To have such an amazing view on my basketball court is yet another reason why I love this home.
After coming inside, I got the kids all ready for bed. By this point, I was dying from exhaustion and barely moving from the burpees I did earlier in the day. When I gathered everyone for scriptures, I felt bone tired, ready to collapse. Then Mary came over to me and gave me this note. It completely melted me and I held her tightly and told her reading that note was the happiest part of my whole day. And I had a great day. Little moments like that make me really feel like God is there.
After scriptures I passed out on the couch for 15 minutes. I know it sounds like I rest a lot, and I do!!! Maybe other people don’t feel they need to take breaks the way I do, but man this parenting stuff is exhausting! I always get deeper respect for Lily and her daily ins and outs whenever she goes down and I step in. Now I’m blogging with my sweetheart. Just being with her is my favorite thing in the world, and now it’s rivaling Mary’s note for my favorite part of the day 🙂
While we were on our Denver trip, Lily’s sickness took a turn for the worse even though she was on antibiotics. Even though it is end of quarter, I decided to take a day off to help her and the kids get healthy. Honestly, I should have been more checked in during the last two weeks, and perhaps things wouldn’t have gotten so bad, but being with Lily and the family in Denver so much really helped me to be more aware of just how sick Lily and others in the family were.
Honestly, I love dad days. It was really sad that Lily was sick, but home is where I am happy and I had a really good day.
In the morning I sluggishly got myself and the kids ready (I was still tired from the drive yesterday). I made Mary put on tights when she came to the car looking like this:
I dropped Lydia off at school, cleaned the car, took Lily to the doctor and then took Mary, Ammon and Clarissa to the doctor. For Mary, we were mostly interested in her pooping problems. We learned that she is constipated, so her colon is constantly stretched so her brain doesn’t know when it is time to poop and when it is not time to poop, and additionally sometimes soft poop will squirt around the hard stuck poop and obviously sometimes it will all finally come out in a huge poop. Sounds exactly like what I’ve been observing with Mary. We got a recipe of laxatives to loosen her up over the weekend and to use repeatedly until she’s cleaned out. I joked with her that she will be like the Hippo we say at the zoo that shot projectile poop in a wide spray when it pooped.
After all the doctor stuff we came home and Lily and I fed the kids and I rested some with Lily. I also gave Lily a short foot rub before it was time to pick up the Lydia. The day was also a little crazy because I was committed to keep all my one on ones with everyone on my team at work. One on ones are an area where I have cut corners in the past, especially when I was a player coach, and I’ve decided they are one of the most important parts of my job, so I made sure to connect with every rep, even if it was during crazy moments (like Clarissa tantruming in Trader Joe’s because she didn’t get a sample which she thought was applesause, but really was gnocchi with marinera sauce).
After picking up Lydia, I took Mary to her eye appointment, got more sickness stuff at CVS, picked up dinner at Spicy Thai, picked up Mary and headed home.
Dinner was great because all of the kids ate a lot of food. They were motivated by my insistence that they finish if they wanted their fortune cookie. Ammon’s cookie literally read, “Keep your mouth shut” or something like that. It was supposed to be some ancient Asian wisdom. Mary commented that that was great advice for Ammon who wines a lot. It is true that he has been wining a ton in this stage. It was just me and the kids for dinner. Lily and Georgia were having some mother-daughter chat time
After dinner, I found myself outside with all of the children except Lydia, who has been reading FIVE HOURS PER DAY in order to win her reading contest at school. She has also been exceptionally grumpy lately. Perhaps it is all the reading throwing her off balance? At any rate, I’m extremely proud of her commitment. I also got a sense for her competitive nature today. When we were in CVS she was telling me about a girl at school who is so annoying to her because she is perfect in every way and seems to do everything better than her, but then Lydia said, “but I bet she wont read as much as me in the reading competition.” 5 hours is literally the maximum they are allowed to read.
Outside with the youngest three kids, they all started to jump on the trampoline while I lie on the ground digesting my curry like a comatose snake after a kill. It was so fun watching the kids on the trampoline. Eventually, I got the new bluetooth speaker dad and Suzanne gave me and I played music for the kids to jump to. They all took turns jumping to their favorite songs. Here are some adorable clips of them jumping.
Today we spent almost the entire day driving home from Denver on the breathtakingly beautiful I-70.
We did, however, have a lovely breakfast first and stop a juice stop for the second time to get some health juice and immunity booster shots to help Lily and the kids and I with our health. The immunity booster shots were not for the kids, and for a good reason. They had TONS of ginger. Here is a video of me drinking one.
After lunch we charged forward to make it home by around 9:30 PM. I drove the whole way to help Lily recover. Today she was incredibly sick, sicker than I’ve seen her ever except for on rare occasions. On the drive home, we finished the book Holy Envy by Barbara Brown Taylor. She and Richard Rhor capture my own spirituality perfectly (and they have influenced it greatly). One of my favorite things about Lily is all of the beautiful learning she exposes me to.
