What’s JB doing this summer?
April 13, 2021
I’ve been thinking on this a lot for the past couple of months. Nicole and Maggie’s question prompted me to get on it!
We know we’re not traveling this summer. So many reasons:
- As of last week, there is an expectation that the state will mostly open up on June 15th, but…we’re not on any vaccination lists yet. Kaiser will tell us when they have enough vaccines, for now it’s nowhere in sight.
- Smol Acrobat is just an infant in the first rounds of their own regular vaccinations so we’re not risking their exposure to anything right now either.
- There aren’t any vaccines for JB’s age yet either.
- We have family who are vaccine hesitant for a variety of reasons that include complex medical histories and the mess that the CDC has made of messaging. I hope that they will change their minds as this year unfolds but I know it won’t be before summer. So we cannot rely on herd immunity.
Besides all that, my soul is NOT ready to plunge into the frantic make-up socializing that is on the horizon as people get vaccinated and burst out onto a social scene like the freaking Kool-Aid man through a wall. (See: the people who aren’t getting vaccinated and we won’t know who they are.)
We’re staying home and staying remote, then! I used Spring Break as our test case for the summer.
JB is pretty good at keeping themselves occupied but we have to work so we wanted to have some plans for their social interaction that doesn’t depend on me or PiC.
I put together a light schedule: a daily dance class through Outschool, a weekly workout class through Outschool for a couple of months, Spanish classes through Overcome the Barrier four days a week (thanks to a Nicole and Maggie commenter!), and lessons with their tutor for four days. That’s three things a day with a good amount of time to do chores and play.
Initially I was looking for something more comprehensive, like what the local YMCA used to offer, but they don’t seem to have organized any remote camps for this summer. The summer camps through NIU (also found via N&M) looked cool but alas they start at grade 3, and JB is only in kindergarten.
I was a little worried that only three short activities a day wasn’t enough but Spring Break went well. It struck the balance I was looking for between keeping busy and not overscheduling. Though they would have enjoyed reading and watching TV all day most days, I’m sure, I didn’t want their brains to fall out watching TV so this all worked out.
We had a demo of the Spanish class to see how they run a class. Unlike my experience with trying to teach them languages, JB loved it, so we decided to experiment with having them take 3-4 lessons a week from now until the summer. You can book a variety of ways: one off, a monthly package, a six month package, in 30/45/60 minute increments, for 2-5 sessions a week. I picked the 30 minute 3x a week for 6 months package. The sessions must be scheduled one by one which is both good (flexible, yay!) and bad (I have to schedule every single lesson, more work boo).
It turns out 45 minute sessions work well so next thing will be figuring out how many sessions a week makes sense. I figured if they pooped out, I’d take over the package and do some lessons myself. You know, in my COPIOUS amounts of free time. (Thank goodness they love their lessons.
I set up a trial package of weekly private remote dance classes to start in April. If that goes well, we’ll keep those through the summer.
We’ll have their tutor through the summer as well to work on math and language arts. That’s where the real learning has been happening all year. We know they’re academically ready for first grade so if first grade is also abysmal, well, at least we know they’re getting an education somewhere. Of course I have no clue what the first grade school year will look like either.
They do crafts and reading, biking and playing in the backyard kicking the soccer ball around, so that and household chores and playing with Smol filled in the gaps each day.
I wish we could have a bit of vacation but honestly there’s nothing appealing about the idea of traveling with an infant that doesn’t sleep. Vacation can wait until next summer. Fingers crossed that things are a heck of a lot easier next summer.
While this pandemic has been a horrible thing for so many who have lost loved ones or suffered from isolation and economic hardship, its been a nonevent for retired empty nesters with ample funds. The only travel we had to cut back on was air travel for one overseas trip to hike in Switzerland. But we made up for that with thousands of miles of road trips to every part of the US to fish, hike, trail ride and camp. Social distancing is super easy when you are going to remote locations. Now that we are fully vaccinated nothing poses an undue risk though we gladly comply with masking where required to keep those still at risk from needless stress. My 66 year old wife even ran a full marathon last week, almost all of those were cancelled last year. This summer will just be more travel and team tennis and fishing and volunteering. Pretty much just like last year. MM
I appreciate your willingness to carry on masking even though you’re vaccinated! So many people refuse to mask or get vaccinated and it’s disheartening and uncomfortable.
We have two different plans for the summer, and what actually we actually do will be based entirely on the local cases per 100,000 and positivity data.
Plan A is more of what we’ve been doing since we brought our kid home from daycare last November: kid playing in the yard, reading books, doing kid learning apps, etc. Me not working because I cannot parent and work at the same time. We can afford this for a time.
Plan B is her returning to daycare. I signed her up and paid the enrollment fees in the hopes that it will be possible. It’ll be sunk costs, and I’m… not happy about it, but willing to do it.
My husband and I have both have our first doses– I lucked into being able to sign up because I pick up my husband’s prescriptions at a place that’s a retail pharmacy provider site. They offered to let me fill out the paperwork by hand in person when I mentioned it, and our appointments were two days later. (This particular retail pharmacy’s site was buggy to the point of showing dead links. No idea if this could work out for you where you are– I’m not in California.) That said, our personal vaccination status is not going to have any influence over when lift our own lockdown. This is partly because our daughter is too young but mostly because to me, if the local circulating virus levels are high, 95% efficacy still means a lot of breakthrough risk.
I’m still trying to figure out a nice way to communicate to my mother in law to stop asking for in person visits. She believes that her getting the vaccine means that she is now “immune.” I like her a lot, I don’t want to hurt her feelings. But her understanding of what the virus does is flawed, and I’m not rolling the dice with anyone in my household any more than I have to.
My fingers are crossed for you that daycare will be a safe option when you’re ready for it. We are also trying to figure that out ourselves.
Congrats on having gotten your first dose!
I might have a look into our local pharmacy to see if that’s an option but at the moment we appear to have online access to the booking site.
Our thoughts are the same with regard to lifting lockdown for ourselves. Until we have something for the kids, we’re not changing our protocols.
Is your MIL not willing to do outside masked meetups? Or is close proximity an unavoidable thing if she visits with you?
We are planning some things, but considering variants and infection rates, I realize my hopes my change. My vaccinated parents are visiting, and we’re going to an airbnb together for part of that. I’m considering another AirBNB type vacation for the 3 of us to get out of the house in late summer – but I haven’t figured out a good destination that won’t put is around crowds and is worth the money. N
Other than that, we’ll be WFH and sending LO to daycare. My work is talking having return to office (optional) at larger levels in July, and I’m somewhat interested, but waiting to see. T likely will continue WFH mostly – maybe some in person collaboration with students?
Let me know if you get comfortable with a visit at some point this summer, pending infarction rates, etc. I could leave unvaccinated daycare-attending LO at home. Totally understand if you are not ready, though 🙂
I’m excited for you finally getting to visit with your parents! I want a break but much like my pregnancy, what I want to get away from would just come with me if we were to go anywhere so it doesn’t feel worth packing everyone up.
Do you know if your officemates will get vaccinated?
We finally have a decent outdoor space so let’s figure something out!
Generally, there is enthusiasm for vaccinations at work – but I expect that any who feel differently are quiet about that. Participation in weekly surveillance testing is required to be allowed on site. If you get the vaccine, you no longer need to test weekly.
The road trip when my parents are here is largely so we don’t have to “host” for as long as my parents wanted to visit…. It is much easier for everyone if we are on neutral ground. We will have more hands to take care of LO, so it will be an actual reprieve. I’m less sure about a later summer vacation on our own, but we’ll see.
Yeah I suspect most people here aren’t going to be as vocal about their vaccine avoidance but there’s going to be an awful lot of them across the country. A four adult to one child ratio is pretty great.
Thanks for the links!
I’m fully vaccinated and DH has had his first shot. I’m hoping Pfizer will be available for 14 year olds next month (though I’m not sure where to get it!) So we would only be worrying about DC2 in that scenario.
My in-laws are fully vaccinated, but they’re taking care of my SIL’s kids (including the two babies) all summer still, so MIL and FIL have been making noises about visiting in the fall but definitely not the summer, which seems reasonable assuming prevalence rates go down by then. (Our college students have been very proactive at getting vaccinated… it’s the over 45s in our county that aren’t.) If that doesn’t happen then we will visit them for Christmas next year (!) So… basically no travel plans for us.
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You’re welcome!
Did they already conclude the vaccine trials for the 12-17 set? I hadn’t seen anything about that. We’re looking at local pharmacies now to see if we can get PiC in.
My rather ADHD son really appreciated having a schedule in advance — he made the most of his free time when he knew that it was bounded by other events. In those past-summer weeks when he had neither paid camp nor school, I’d invent “chore camp”, with a schedule and T-shirts and all. And he loved it! He’d invite his friends (who would think it was fun for one day, but then wouldn’t come back … heh-heh). I think I have pictures–yeah, here: https://miser-mom.blogspot.com/2014/06/chores-for-children-meditation.html
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I love naming it Chore Camp! I probably referred to it as boot camp last summer… But by George they picked up the spirit one way or another and continue doing at least a few helpful chores a week as mandated by us or that they come up with.