The First Month of Face-to-Face School

Assuming the kids go to school today, this will be the first "full week" of school they have had since face-to-face started at the beginning of the month. Since a full week in the building is currently just two consecutive days, today will be only their fourth day at school.

So February has been frustrating.

Of course, nobody could have predicted the snowstorms. That doesn't make it any less sigh-inducing that school was canceled three Tuesdays in a row. (And since last Monday was an already-scheduled day off, they didn't step foot in their school building even once last week.)

Next Monday and Tuesday are also at-home days for the kids in order to give teachers a little more leeway as they schedule their second COVID-19 vaccine.

All in all, I still wish the district would have opted to keep the kids in Zoom school full time until the classrooms could be open full time. I'm sure they're getting a lot out of their two days in the classroom, but I'm not sure it makes up for the lack of teacher instruction the other three days of the week. (Of course, many kids throughout the district were showing up to Zoom school only a little or not at all, so these two days are better than nothing.) Asynchronous assignments can go only so far.

Ironically, we didn't get one snow day last school year, but that was more than made up for when school buildings closed for 11 months thanks to the pandemic. Luckily the weather is supposed to reach into the 40s this week, so hopefully the snow will melt and I will be able to see our front yard again for the first time in 3+ weeks.

President Books: 2021 Update

Another Presidents' Day, another presidents' book. More than a decade into our quest of reading a book about every U.S. president, we managed yet one more in the last year. This time: Lyndon Johnson.

I finished "Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President" by Robert Dalleck in October. I normally avoid abridgements at all costs -- it feels like cheating! -- but this one was created by the author of a multi-volume biography, and I wasn't willing to expend quite so much time on LBJ. Even so, I seem to remember it was several hundred pages, so it was a compromise.

Before the book I hadn't known too much about Johnson except for a bit about his fight for civil rights. The book was eye-opening in many ways -- his early life and entry into politics come to mind, and especially his struggles during Vietnam. It also gave a glance into what we'll read about next, with Nixon.

I expect Nixon will be interesting but not exactly a fun read, so we might have to wait until the cold weather and snow go away before we choose the next book. It's hard to read about corruption when the temperatures outside are already so depressing.

Atticus Loses His First Tooth

It was cold yesterday, and Atticus's coat was zipped all the way up when I picked up the kids from school.

"I have a surprise for you when I get home," he told me.

"I can't wait to see it," I said, wondering what kind of picture he had hidden away in his book bag.

But then he told me the surprise was hidden under his coat. OK, that's different, but all kids have their whims.

When we got home, Atticus promptly asked if I was ready for the surprise and unzipped his coat. And was I ever surprised -- it was a tiny tooth necklace, with his first lost tooth inside!

The tooth had been loose for a month or so, and very, very loose recently. So the tooth itself wasn't a complete surprise. Him keeping it a secret that long was, though!

He said he noticed it was gone shortly after lunch and found the lost tooth on the floor next to his desk. Good thing his class ate lunch in the classroom instead of the cafeteria today, followed by indoor recess, or that tooth could have been anywhere! Day #2 in the classroom, and his first tooth is already gone.

Kind of the First Day of School, Again

THE KIDS WENT TO SCHOOL YESTERDAY! For the first time ever, both kids are in school for a FULL DAY. And for the first time in 11 months, they had a day of classes in a school building at all.

Of course, it's only two days per week at the moment, but I'll take what I can get in this pandemic season.

Masks were the fashion accessory of the day ... required, that is. And a big snowstorm this weekend meant that outdoor recess was a no-no, but it wasn't a snow day as we had feared.

The kids will be doing asynchronous school work the other three days -- that is, homework without the supervision of a teacher (aside from the unified arts classes of art, gym, music and library, which will be live on Zoom).

So the jury is still out about how the kids will adjust to this new normal. But I'm adjusting fine. I scheduled an interview for yesterday morning for a story I'm writing, and then wrote the story immediately after. I'm not sure I've done that in YEARS. And more articles are already in the pipeline. I could get used to this.

He said he could see ...!