Lucy launched herself onto me while I was still in bed this morning. Pinch, punch, first of the month. No returns! Alexander was next on the list, and we all piled into his room and got him while he was still groggy with sleep. He was not amused. He started this weird tradition in our house and Lucy is now determined to best him every month, I think this was the first time she’d done it.
Change of Routine
For the first time since Lucy’s cough started we’ve had a change of routine. Tracy was back at work on the ward today. So she left just after eight for the hospital. Before she went we rehearsed the preparations she’d made for minimising the chance of bringing any infection home. She’s identified work shoes that stay there. There’s a change of clothes every day just for coming home, and a washable bag to put her uniform in. When her shift ended she got changed and washed her hands. On getting back to the house she used an antibacterial wipe to clean the steering wheel, gearstick and door handles in the car. Then she came in, had a shower and put the uniform and change of clothes on a very hot wash.Meanwhile we had a pretty relaxed day at home. I’ve maintained Wednesday as my non-working day. I didn’t really do any of the things I’d hoped to. I did have a go, but my computer wasn’t behaving. In the end I had to reboot it, which is pretty unusual for a Linux machine.
Food
We ate too much today. Breakfast was normal, bit lunch was home made sausage rolls. They were really nice, and it was hard to resist the temptation to eat more of them. Then in the afternoon I did some science with Lucy, and we needed four jelly sweets. The best we had was a large packet of fruit pastilles, so we ate a lot of the spare ones…
Earlier in the month I’d promised to buy everyone takeaway on payday. Tracy forgot this yesterday and made us a lovely dinner. So I did it today instead. I checked before lunch what the kids wanted and then asked Tracy by text. She had a mixed kebab from the local kebab house. The rest of us has pizza from the pizza project. So we supported a couple of local businesses.
School at Home
Lucy and I did a fair few things today. We started with some reading, both of us read, and then Lucy picked one of the activities off her list from school. She acted out a scene from the book for me. After that it was time for writing, and she wrote a book review for The Bolts. It was accompanied by a drawing of the cover in her book. That took us up to break time. After break we did some maths, involving finding some coins and doing sums with them. At 1130 Lucy did dancing with Ote via the YouTube live stream. Today it was a Greatest Showman dance, which she just loved. So much so that she watched it a second time when it stopped.We double handed lunch with topic, by watching Horrible Histories Rotten Romans. We also had a bit of a chat about the Romans too. After that we did some checking on the seeds we planted at the weekend, the pansies had sprouted, but the rest of them hadn’t. I don’t expect that we’ll see many shoots for another few days, but I wanted to check that they hadn’t dried out. Then it was time for science.
Science in Progress
In the pack from school was a set of science experiments from the Glasgow Science Festival. So we picked one to do, which was measuring what happens when you put gummy bears in liquid. We didn’t have gummy bears so we substituted with fruit pastilles. The first step was to measure them and weigh them. Mostly they were 10mm high and 20mm in diameter and weighed 4g. Then we put 50ml of water in three cups. In one we added 4g salt and 4g baking soda in another. The fourth cup got 50ml of white wine vinegar.Tomorrow we need to drain the cups and measure and weigh the fruit pastilles. Before that we need to have a think about what we think might happen, and why. Then we need to compare that with what we measure.