Author: lilydarais

On Sunday I ran to the store to pick up my Clicklist and get some stuff I forgot to tell Abe to get on Saturday. We are going to try not to go back to the store for over a week (or whenever we run out of fresh fruit.) Until the pandemic is over, my personal grocery goal is to only Clicklist fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, dairy and proteins once a week or every ten days. We have to eat down our store of stuff in boxes and cans. We have a TON of that! So no more going into stores physically. It’s just too stressful.

Abe Zoom chatted with his AXB group for almost two hours in the morning. They are such a good group of friends. I was putting groceries away while listening to him chat and just felt so thankful we have friends, support, and ways to stay connected during this time.

Then I lay reading and sleeping on the couch while everyone else did home church. Abe is such a great discussion leader and religious teacher for the kids. He is so wise, so kind, and so loving.

We all had gyros and fruit for dinner, after which Abe played “nobody leave the couch” with the kids. It’s their favorite game. And it’s so cute to watch! Here is a video!. The game ends when Abe is able to get all four kids on the couch at the same time. It is quite a challenge, but today he did it when he pinned everyone down except for Clarissa, who I brought to the couch for him to clinch the victory :).

The kids are so lucky to have Abe for a dad. He is incredibly fun and energetic. And my contribution to the evening was rounding everyone up and having them all watch the Audrey Hepburn War and Peace until almost 10pm. It was one of my favorite movies growing up, and I was so thrilled that my kids–and Abe–seemed to really like it too! (Well, Clarissa fell asleep in the first ten minutes…and Mary and Ammon disappeared to play after an hour…but Lydia was engaged and asking questions the whole time. Lydia, you are a daughter after my own heart. I love you. And all of your siblings too.)

In the morning we did errands. Abe wore a mask and sanitized diligently and it was sooooooo incredible to have bananas again! We go through them so fast and haven’t had any for several days. It’s been rough.

Then we came home and I took a nap. Ammon joined me. He’s so snuggly.

Clarissa ended this moment by coming in and jumping all over us:

Afterward we swept, vacuumed, and mopped the whole basement. It’s so filled with dust from the construction that breathing felt hazardous. But after all that cleaning and having the windows open, it is amazing. And Abe moved our bed down there, so we now have our new bedroom! It is soooooo beautiful. Normally we go to bed by 10:30, but as an exception we stayed up late in our new bedroom watching Unorthodox on Amazon Prime. We set up Alexa and our baby monitor so we can still hear the kids, but we feel secluded in our basement. Abe said it felt like we were newlyweds because we have the whole floor to ourselves. It’s so fun!

Our new room, closet, bathroom, and laundry room in the basement are all finished! Abe moved a desk into the bedroom so he can finally have a work space in the home that isn’t a chair in Ammon’s room or the garage. He was thrilled:

In the evening I Zoom chatted with a bunch of Thrive friends. We stay in touch regularly through Marco Polo and text every day and obviously I just saw a lot of them at Oprah, but it was still so wonderful to visit in real time. I just love those women. And I am grateful that Zoom let’s us have girls’ nights even when we are quarantined. Thank you, technology!!

Gosh, all the days kind of blend together these days. Wednesday Lydia had her harp lesson. Our schedule is going great, so I’m thankful to have that. We end each day by watching several episodes of I Love Lucy together. Abe always makes sure to point out the sexism to the kids and also talk about ways the show is progressive. Lydia is especially enamored with Lucy and looks forward to this time of day all day long.

All of the kids love to dress up. Mary and Lydia make each other and Clarissa incredibly imaginative outfits out of scarves and blankets. Here’s Mary modeling one of their creations:

Also they dress Clarissa up like a doll. She is very patient with the process and it’s totally normal for her to parade halfway through the day down the stairs in nothing but ingeniously tied blankets and scarves. Or they put her in all sorts of dresses. Her favorite thing to say and do when so attired is throw up her arms and yell “I’m the princess!”

Halfway through the day the girls dressed Clarissa up in a size 5T dress. She’s so tall that it doesn’t look too big on her (at least to me!). Here she is jumping and chatting to me while I “napped.”

Actually I napped a lot on Sunday. Clarissa was a very welcome visitor. Pneumonia is a beast.

Today was Lydia’s 9th Birthday! Lydia has been an absolute dream child this year and often times I want to kind of pinch myself when I think of how she is blooming. She is kind, creative, intelligent and delightfully interested in learning new things. We have been practicing German together every morning on the way to school and she is such a great language buddy. She reads a ton, loves art, dolls, history, languages (especially German!) and her family. She is a great friend, a peaceful, cooperative student, and she’s incredibly, unbelievably honest. This is one trustworthy child, and we are so lucky to have her in the family. Also, she gives the best, most affectionate hugs before I drop her off at school. We love you, Lydia!

Okay, that said, Lydia was kind of a brat on her birthday. I think she’s stressed herself past the point of civility trying to reach her personal goal of reading five hours a day for her school competition, and maybe that’s maxed out her capacity for politeness. Also, when she is in brat-mode, I hear my own voice coming back at me from all of the times I have been at the end of my civility rope and snarled at her about innumerable silly things. So I spent the whole day in the presence of my shadow self emerging regularly from the mouth of my newly-nine-year-old daughter. That was an education. Whoooeey.

Even though Lydia and Abe were the only ones well, we dragged ourselves through Denver on a birthday death march, trying to keep the day appropriately festive to celebrate our beautiful daughter.

We started at the Denver Biscuit Company. I read Lydia the menu two days before and the idea of biscuits captured her imagination. They were really great but took FOREVER to come, so we just devoured them on sight instead of photographing them

After the biscuits, Abe bought me an immunity shot from a nearby juice store. It tasted like a cross between vomit and fire, but I loved it because it felt so powerful that I can’t imagine it didn’t do something good.

Then we drove to the Denver Children’s Museum and allowed the kids to play, play, play.

Here is a video of Clarissa trying to hold as many balls as possible. She also got into multiple scuffles with Ammon regarding ball possession and/or whose turn it was at the different stations. She was (mostly) good with the other kids.

Afterward we headed next door to the Denver Aquarium and had lunch with the mermaids. The mermaids swam up to them, made faces and blew them kisses. They were enchanted!

We did not realize it was daylight savings time until two days later, but for some reason we couldn’t understand at the time, everything seemed to happen really late. For example, we finished lunch around 3pm. Clarissa had not yet napped and was an absolute mess, so we drove to the American Girl Store while she slept. All of the kids except Lydia fell asleep, and when we got there Abe took a little nap in the car with them while I took Lydia inside to pick out her birthday present.

She picked out a Truly Me doll that has a similar coloration to Lydia and a matching dress. To be honest, I was kind of against the Truly Me dolls for many years because I like American Girl dolls for the ways they excite a love for history in children. But Lydia was so excited…so I got her the doll. And she named it Lydia Anne Darais Jr. Ammon is EXTREMELY into people’s names and made sure to address the doll as “Lydia Darais Junior” for the rest of the trip. He talked to her a lot.

After we got her doll and she played with it quietly in the car for a while, the kids woke up and it was time for dinner. It felt like we just ate lunch, but it was a good thing we drove straight to Casa Bonita because the lines to get into that restaurant are like the worst Disneyland lines imaginable. Mary was feverish and so sick that Abe had to carry her most of the way, occasionally setting her down to curl up in a ball on the floor. Clarissa and Ammon were literally climbing the walls of the line and Lydia was impatient to get inside and see everything we’d looked at online. Finally finally finally we made it inside and it was worth it! Lydia declared it the best restaurant on the face of the earth. It has cliff divers, dancing gorillas (people in gorilla costumes), pirate shows and cowboy fights. Also there were warm sopapillas with honey at the end. Lydia was very, very happy by that point.

After dinner we drove home and got everyone in pajamas. Then we watched A Dog’s Way Home as a family. We didn’t even know the film would be set in Denver, but it so appropriately was! And we all thought it was the most delightful film.

And that was the end of Lydia’s ninth birthday. Happy birthday, sweet girl! You are so loved. I hope you have lots of happy memories from this special, special day.

Today I basically lay in bed the entire day dying of the virus/sinus infection combo that has taken over my body. Abe was a hero and took care of the kids all day. My mom was also helpful even though she is recovering from her own surgery. Thanks, Mom!

Lydia made tapioca pudding and pancakes today. She loves Saturdays because they are baking day for her.

Mary was adorable and worked up the courage to sing to everyone. She is sooooo shy so she practiced first by singing to Nana from the closet, then came out to sing to Nana directly, and then sang to the whole family. I think she sang about how much she loves our family. (Sadly, I was in bed for the performance and missed it.) She and Lydia have been talking a lot about how much they love our family, which is a HUGE relief to me. Sometimes I worry that my early strict-parenting years scarred them for life, so it is beautiful for me to hear these conversations.

Clarissa has this funny new habit of getting stuck curled up on her closet shelf. She cries until someone comes and rescues her. We will have to get a cute picture next time.

I hardly saw Ammon at all today. In fact I don’t know if I have spent more than ten seconds with him all day, but I assume he’s been happy. (When he’s not, it’s hard to miss. He is a fantastically loud whiner when he’s upset.)

I got my ballot in the mail and to my shock it was for the Republican primaries! I did some research and found out I can’t vote in the Democratic primary because I haven’t registered my party change soon enough. Damn. But I guess I have changed a lot in the past decade, so that Republican ballot was kind of a nice reminder to me that I can change.

Abe did a lot of Qualtrics work while Clarissa was napping, and while the kids were awake he was in fully-present-dad mode. He supervised Mary’s piano, helped her with her eye exercises, played with the kids, made meals, cleaned the kitchen and is now currently cleaning the upstairs with the kids so that they can earn a movie with him. He is amazing and deserves another vacation!

On Friday I worked out for an hour even though I felt sooo ill. I am addicted to closing my activity rings on my watch, but that’s not good because I think all the heavy breathing has made it hard for my body to heal. The virus or bacteria is working its way down to my chest. Yuck.

So for the rest of the day I did parenting-lite from the couch. Clarissa ran around and amused herself while I sat there all day studying German, ancient Greek, and listening to Marco Polo. Abe was a hero and picked the kids up from school. He stayed home and took care of them for the rest of the evening which was HUGELY helpful.

He also was hyper-productive at work and made a lot of emotional progress on his panic attack today. He has been suffering from panic since December, so that was big news.

I FaceTimed into my book club in the evening because I remember loving the book they read this month, Crossing to Safety.

And then Abe and I went to bed before 10pm. We were pooped.