Good news

Managed to scream at all three of my kids, separately, during my lunch "break" just now. I've actually felt I was on something of an upswing with the quarantine, etc, but it's had such a cumulative toll.

They had it coming.

"Cumulative toll" is right. Last week was the first week she got teary eyed and said she missed school. Not seeing her friends is starting to wear on her. I hate seeing it day to day

ebbin and flowin over here too but def in a bad ebb. my daughter was ok for most of this but has been a mess the last two weeks. our pediatrician said to let her play outside with other kids who we know are being responsible. did so last night and she's been perfect today. gonna try to find the right balance.

My kids have handled this whole thing amazingly well. Both are old enough that they do not need full-time supervision and understand technology well enough that they do not need much assistance with online learning. They miss their friends but have done well enough with facetime and whatnot. The one with PANDAS (by the way, this was never an official diagnosis, just a guess from the pediatrician based on the symptoms combined with positive strep test) is in some ways doing better than when she was going to school in person, because a major source of anxiety for her was exposure to people who are sick or might be sick.

My younger daughter has said that she wants to spend the summer working through the sixth grade math curriculum (she'll be entering sixth grade in the fall). She wants to do this primarily because her older sister is in seventh grade and it would annoy her to have her sister in the same class.

this was tailor-made for my kid. for those not aware, he's high-functioning autistic.

he's not real comfortable at face-to-face communications. I recognized early on that a lot- if not most- of his knowledge and awareness of pop culture and the world through the eyes of a tween/teen came from youtube, so I was very resistant to limit 'screen time', as is the popular rage. got me in a bunch of skirmishes with his support community, but the choices were have him 'learn' about things kids his age were doing via youtube, or run around the yard shaking a stick (his stim). But I digress.

He's always been great with written communication. Heck, he writes (and communicates) better than most business people I deal with. So distance learning and 'playing'- his lego social skills group went to a zoom format- have markedly (to my ears) increased his verbal communication skills. he talks way more around the house than he did 2 months ago. Could be a timing coincidence, in that his time to go to a new level just happened to coincide with quarantine- but my guess is that by being forced to more verbal online communication it opened up new pathways (and confidences) for him.

Great to hear Bucky!

Yeah, that's awesome. My nephew, in a similar situation, is having the same experience.

Interesting. Maybe the screen is creating a buffer that lowers the anxiety of social interactions. Being in a room with someone does seem harder than being on screen or on the phone. If there isn't research already on it, there will be soon.

Our youngest has a few teeth coming in and has been running high fevers the last 24 hours (103 pre-Tylenol).

We had a plumber come this week (see the Back She Lowes thread) and of course I’m terrified that we made the wrong decision to have someone come into the house.

I’m 99.9999% overreacting as he has been fine all day and no breathing issues and just fussy but goddamnit.

Lil vulture just made cucumber mont gimlets and they're really good.

TenuredVulture wrote:Lil vulture just made cucumber mont gimlets and they're really good.

I admire the efforts of everyone who posted upthread, but tv is the only one who can I say is parenting right with total assurance.

I kinda prefer mine with mint

Uncle Milty wrote:I kinda prefer mine with mint

It did have mint!!!

Whoa, they interviewed a woman who is married to a Marine serving somewhere in the VA part of the DC area. They had premature twins, which the military insurance covered, but the report noted that child care is roughly 2K/month per child. That is insane. I doubt the time value of money equation gets me to that figure.

It was roughly 1600/month for my son when he was an infant. Significantly cheaper as he got older.

Man, times have changed. Its tough because the level of care for and infant and the need for engagement with a toddler is a lot of work, so people have to make money or you will not get any quality, but it really is expensive. I went back and looked at things and I think that figure is pretty accurate for the DC area. We were in at about $1200/month for child care and $5000 annual for pre-school, so we were sitting on roughly $20K a year. Certainly I am lucky that my wife and I have really good jobs, and the twins part of that new piece is definitely a back breaker.

$2000 is not even $100 per weekday, and comes to roughly $12 an hour. And that's in the context of the parents deciding it's in their best interests to both keep working.

An au pair is $19k/yr. Many are certified in infant care. Many folks (including me) in my personal network have went with that option, or are considering it moving forward. I'd be happy to talk more about my experience.