Love In the Time of COVID-19

Social Distancing is nothing new to me. I am by nature anti-social and I work alone in my home at the keyboard. Even when I have downtime, I am usually at the computer for some reason or other.  Now that everything is closed, I actually have more human interaction than normal. My wife is home all day now and our five year old foster child is as well. If I had known this was coming, I probably would not have step forward to be a foster parent. He moved in the week before Thanksgiving. We are making do the best we can.

I remember when I was a kid, I used to love it when we lost electricity. We'd light candles and sit closely around a table to play cards in the darkness. The change of routine was fun. I doubt that if it continued for a week or months, I would have still enjoyed it. Our kid is still in the enjoying-it phase. Our challenge now is trying to maintain the attention of a five year old, educate him and be nurturing, while continuing to do our jobs. Both of us are still employed so we hand him off to each other and do what we can. My employer is a health care provider in New York City so I don't think I will be losing my job anytime soon. My work day isn't very different for me than other times since I started telecommuting 13 years ago. The big difference is that I now, occasionally, have to type with a five year old climbing on my arm. This is a new talent, I am developing. Poor guy. He is getting a little stir crazy.

We have two things really helping us now.  The internet is truly awesome and the weather is starting to get good here in northern Vermont.

The Scholastic Corporation's educational web site has been an awesome tool. They have educational games that keep him occupied learning. His teachers are keeping in touch and giving assignments via SeeSaw. When all else fails and we are both too busy to do anything with him, Hulu, Netflix, PBS and Disney Plus have all come in handy.  He learned quickly how to use the remote control. I've also been teaching him how to use a PC so I pulled out an old laptop from the closet. He is using Microsoft Word to type words he knows. Each day I teach him something new like fonts, colors, wingdings, bold and type size etc. It is amazing how much fun he has with this. He is also staying in touch with friends via Marco Polo which is a lot of fun.

We are finally having mostly good weather days now in Vermont. We expect snow this week, but it should be light and it is supposed to heat right back up afterwards.  On our neighborhood email forum, my wife posted a request for a kid's bike. Within a few hours, we had two free kids bikes for him to use. We have been teaching him to ride on the nice days. Today has been in the 50's (F) so we went for a short walk / ride with the two dogs, two adults and the kid on his bike. Each day we see the same people. Vermonters are coming out of hibernation.  We maintain our distance. On cold days we have the Wii Fit to do yoga and balance games.

This is definitely not what we planned when we took on a foster child. We are learning as we go.Deep breaths and taking some moments for yourself is essential. Each day we make him take 30 minutes as quiet time in the afternoon where he has to play quietly in him room. During quiet time today, I decided to write in my Blog. Times up ...I hear his door opening.  Have a good day.