This weblog tracks my kids’ early years. Each entry is a snapshot from their childhood.
Please pardon any type-o’s, misstatements, or factual irregularities. This blog is written by an often dazed dad, normally after 11 pm when he should really be in bed if he had any sense. Even the basic quick edit is not a regular practice here.
Claire is dealing with the *@&#*#&! coronavirus now too.
Here’s a quick photo to capture this historical moment (Claire’s doing fine). She’s been hanging out on the couch for about 48 hours. A milkshake and some chicken soup are helping with the recovery.
The frog hat (from her sister for her birthday) isn’t just glamorous but is also is reported to “actually” make Claire feel better. ☺️
As a side note, Claire thought it was funny that while we were watching Demon Slayer, there was a “COVID-19 Testing” broswer tab open in the background. 😂
Molly was exposed to the virus at school and tested positive, so we needed to separate her from her sister. Molly immediately volunteered to set up a temporary bedroom in my office. So I pulled out my little office futon and threw some sheets on it. I told Molly to let me know if she needed anything else and went downstairs.
Half an hour later, Molly came down and showed me this video, which she recorded and edited on her iPhone. ☺️.
Notice how Molly calls the futon a “slidable couch.” 😆
Molly plans to do her remote schooling in here too, so she got herself all set up for that as well. All indications are that she’s fully camped in my office and not planning to move out any time soon. 🤦🏻♂️
Inspired by her sister’s early (and quite lucky) success on YouTube, Molly decided to go ahead and start her own YouTube channel. She’s old enough now to be like, “I’m just going to do this, thank you very much.” After some initial basic help from me, she figured out almost everything on her own. 🤯 Here is her premier video, a silent Roblox screencast.
I was curious to see how serious Molly was about her YouTube channel. Now, four months into this experiment, she has amazed me!
Like a true productivity expert, Molly has set mini-goals for herself. For example, “post three videos” or “get 10 subscribers”. I love that she intuitively knew to tackle her progress in small chunks like that!
At this point, Molly has 27 videos posted on her channel! The newer ones have sound. They have captions. They are nicely edited. And I helped her with none of them. I’m really proud of Molly for sticking with this.
Her videos are all about video gamer screen captures.
Most of Molly’s videos get only a handful or views and likes, or in some cases none at all. But she still sticks with it. She’s capped out at 31 followers and brainstorming ways to get more viewers.
If you had asked me a year ago if I wanted to spend all of Thanksgiving week locked down at home with the kids, not seeing any family or friends all week, I would have said, “Uh… no.” But things have changed. The girls and I had a pretty amazing pandemic Thanksgiving to ourselves.
It was so good, in fact, that I forgot to take any pictures of the kids, so this is going to be a mostly photo-free post. 😉
For nine days, we all chilled and barely left the house. The kids got lots of rest and down time. I worked most days, and the girls settled into a relaxed groove alternating between relaxing for a while, and then hanging out for a while. 🤔
At the end of the week, I asked the girls if they ever got bored. “Yesss!” they both said in unison. “But it was good!”
A few highlights:
Molly set up a pillow fort in her room dedicated to reading Fever 1793.
We had some seriously crazy games of Uno. I didn’t know that game could get so crazy. 🤷🏻♂️
We watched Jojo Rabbit, an astonishingly beautiful, sad, and funny movie about a Nazi youth. 🙃 I assured the girls ahead of time that it was heartwarming, made fun of those stupid Nazis, and it even had a funny Hitler. 🤔
I took a walk with Claire during which we exclusively discussed nuclear power and radiation poisoning. 🤷🏻♂️
The girls discovered the joys of my PC and worked out a peaceful PC-sharing system. I did not have to get involved. ✌️
Claire and I joked a lot about the “most definitely” Roblox guy on Twitch. 😆
I told Molly I was going to have to serve 81 meal portions over nine days, if you could three meals a day for all three of us. That is a lot! I told her I thought we could get that down to 54 portions if we all just skip one meal a day. “Noooo nooo! No!” Molly said. “You’re trying to trick us!” 😆
So we cooked a lot.
We made our favorite “Very-aki” chicken from memory. We made what Claire described as a “modern Mexican Thanksgiving meal”. Between the apple crumble dessert and making Claire’s apple birthday cake, we peeled, cored, and shredded 6 pounds of apples. 😮
Best Thanksgiving ever!
Note the “most definitely” that Claire added to the wall chalkboard. 😆
Claire’s been following this dude on Twitch who does Roblox stuff. Claire cracks up because he always says, “Yeah, yeah, most definitely.” It’s never just yes and no. The negative counterpart is, “Absolutely not.” Claire is compiling a montage of this.
Claire and I say “most definitely” to each other way too much. Like if I say, “Claire, are you ready for dinner?”, she will respond, “Yeah, yeah, most definitely. I’ll be right over.” 😆
The funniest part was when we were all planning to watch Schitt’s Creek as a family and Claire had to pass. She texted me from upstairs.
By the way, Molly’s official stance is, “I don’t like most definitely.” When asked to explain further, she says, “It’s just so annoying.” 🤷🏻♂️
Both Molly and Claire recently discovered the game Among Us. They showed me how to play, and pulled me into some games.
Most of the real action is in chatting to figure out who the imposter is. Here’s a sample of us goofing off. In this chat, Molly is “Millie” and I’m “TheSuit”. 😆
Claire and I love the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel. We’ve watched it together a few times over the years. In the movie, the pastry from Mendl’s not only looks delicious, but it also plays a major role in a prison escape.
The iTunes Extra” included instructions for making the infamous Courtesan au Chocolat. Instead of just idly watching these tantalizing instructions, we decided “Let’s make and taste a Courtesan au Chocolat!”
It’s the perfect pandemic lockdown activity. 🤷🏻♂️
Claire did almost the entire recipe herself. The kitchen was a mess, but the result was amazing. It’s a light, creamy, slightly sweet pastry. It tastes even better than we expected. We did not include pick axes to get anyone out of jail, but maybe we will next time. 🤷🏻♂️
Way to go on making this happen, Agitha — I mean Claire! 😀👍😋
After a few years of on-and-off attempts to ride a bike, Molly is finally doing it!
Molly got a ride-behind bike for her birthday and got a little experience pedaling with me around the neighborhood and even across town. And then she got inspired to try riding on her own. I was a little skeptical this was going to work, but Molly was determined to make it work.
Here are the results of a little trial and error on Alpine Road. Here is footage of literally the first time Molly really rode her bike on her own. 😄
I was so excited, I kept saying stuff like “Molly, I’m so proud of you. This morning you couldn’t ride a bike, and now you can!” or “This is the start of a whole new thing for you!”. And Molly basically told me to calm down. “Dad, every day hundreds or kids learn to ride a bike.” 😂 But you could tell she was proud.
Here’s some footage from a week later once she’s really got it down.
McG Kids 