molly

A Very COVID Thanksgiving

| patmcg

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. 🤔
  • We played some Among Us and had some good laughs.
  • 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. 😆

Among Us

| patmcg

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”. 😆

Molly Rides a Bike!

| patmcg

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.

Two Tortillas, and I’m Good

| patmcg

Molly’s current favorite meal is two tortillas from Taco Cabana. This “meal” fills her up for hours.

And she does not want anything else. Beans? No, thanks. Rice? Nope. Beef fajita tacos? God, no.

Water on the side, maybe. She’s a monk.