Lucas Camilo

Since March Krista has been X’ing off the days on our kitchen wall calendar, marking the time since school was closed and quarantine began. Late last week we officially passed 2 months that we’ve been hunkering down at home.

Our experience has been a weird mix of resignation at settling into a not-so-bad routine, contrasted with recurring anxiety and longing for more spaciousness. Its hard to grapple with the horrifying way that the way the crisis has played out politically, and recognizing the short-term and longer-term economic impacts for many people in this country is devastating. The possibility of political change come November, and the opening for a major societal transformation moving forward, means we can maintain some hope. But hey, this is Lucas’s blog and he would say this line of politics talk is… “booorrrring!”

So how are things for the kids? As Lucas’s online school gets a little better — especially the accessibility which certain teachers, therapists and district tech experts have been supporting us on — we can’t help but think at times that homeschooling is well suited for him. Lucas’s certainly believes that to be the case. Sure, there have been glitches, and he still doesn’t love being on Zoom or Microsoft Teams with big groups of kids, but given that he’s already set up to use a computer for all of his schoolwork, there’s actually a lot of potential for remote learning to continue to improve. For example, his twice a week after school Spanish class shifted to online back in March — and with only a couple other kids on there its become a favorite for Lucas, and he’s learning a lot more than when it was in person. Plus, now that all kids access homework online, the systems have gotten a lot better.

Meanwhile, we’ve developed some of our own teaching techniques, including having Lucas pull a list of 10 words a day from the books he reads. Then he looks up the definitions himself online and adds them to a testing program called “Quizlet” that allows him to practice defining the words until he’s mastered them. By now he’s learned hundreds of new words since coronavirus hit. The only problem is that he’s always looking for new words… he’ll lie in bed listening to his audiobook at 6 am (while Krista and I try to get a few more minutes of sleep) and every 3 minutes yell out “Daddy, I’ve got another one!”

Another good development is that Lucas’s love of music continues to expand. His latest interest is jazz, and we now get to listen to a different jazz album every morning while he gets ready for the day (instead of heavy metal, as was the case a few months back, and the switch is making some people around the house very happy.) He also made a special Mother’s day jazz playlist for Krista, Nonna, and Gramma.

Ida is taking things pretty well too, for a five year old. She gets restless and frustrated at times, especially when Krista and I are tag teaming Zoom meetings and can’t give her our undivided attention. But she’s also got quite an imagination and can spend hours by herself making up fantastical stories with the help of stuffies and/or the hundreds of plastic figurines scattered around our house (thanks Aunt Ashley for the hand-me-downs :) She’s learning to ride a bike, gets deeply absorbed when being read chapter books, and loves creating — art projects, made-up cookie recipes, wild outfits, and more.

Finally, we sometimes escape and find moments and places of refuge outside… a visit to the beach on Whidbey Island where my parents live, or a trip to Jefferson Park on a windy day to fly THREE kites simultaneously (see video below).

We are sending you all – family and friends, near and far (including those of you we only know through this blog, who we mean to respond to but somehow always get called to help a kid before we do!) – our love and solidarity and hopes that you are surviving and thriving through this plague.