Well the nightmare has happened

I woke up bright and early, as usual, thank you Zahkya, and I had everything ready for school yesterday. The kids were dressed, Tristyn’s snack was packed, his water bottle was clipped to his bag and ready to go. Then my husband reminded me it was late-start-Monday. Every Monday they start school an hour later to help the teachers get ready for the week. So, that’s awesome. Time to destress about getting to school .. I had an entire hour and everything was ready! Wrong. It wasn’t even 18 minutes later I got a text message from the school:

Dear students in Mrs. G’s kindergarten class. We have recieved notification that your student may have had direct contact with or may have had direct contact with or may have been exposed to someone with positive or probable COVID-19. We will need your student to stay home until Sept 7th and if they have zero symptoms your student may return to school.

District 6

Tristyn is one of two students in his class of 23 that have worn masks since day one. They wear them all day every day except at the cafeteria when they eat. A mask mandate went into effect yesterday too so now K-8 should be wearing masks. I’m hoping that Tristyn remains symptom-free and that mask helped protect him.

Now we are on virtual learning for the next week. Mrs. G made a packet that I picked up and she has videos and lessons every day on an app called Class Dojo. It’s pretty awesome to be able to keep up with videos and pictures of the kindergarten class and to be able to see what he’s doing throughout the day but now we are using it for his teacher to do videos virtually. When I told Tristyn he couldn’t go to school for a week he cried. Not the reaction I would have expected a month ago: however, I’m very excited about his excitement and enthusiasm, and motivation for school.

This school thing in a pandemic world is hard. I can’t imagine all the parents doing this for an entire year already. What a nightmare. No wonder our kids and their parents are so stressed out. I can see why now and it’s only my first day.

I just got a notification that my library book is available to pick up. I usually read all my books on my phone using the kindle app. I realize that my kids watch me and they model after me and even tho I’m not “really” on my phone, I’m reading a book using my phone. The image still doesn’t fit, it’s still an image of their Mom on a phone. So I’ve gone back to reading physical books. That way they know what I’m doing, they know I’m reading a book and it’s made a huge difference. They are less interested in their iPad’s and games and they have started picking up their books more often. A constant reminder that I’m always being watched and I need to model what I want to see in them. I love books. I love reading. I want them to love it too.