March 11 - Ian apologized for having a bad day yesterday. I told him, “Don’t apologize for having a bad day. Everybody has those. It’s unavoidable. You can only control how you behave when you’re having a bad day. And hopefully, you have many more good days before you have to practice that skill again.”

March 17 - Today’s school lesson is how to clip his own fingernails and police the clippings into the trash. He was frustrated he couldn’t clip his thumb nail until I explained how levers work and he needs to press on the back of the clipper arm. Voila!

March 17 - Leftover chickpea chili for me, potstickers for the boys. I printed out their “Learning in Place” stuff last night and put it in binders for them and they’re looking through it and comparing assignments.

March 20 - All that school work you're stressing about for your kids doesn't really matter. Go get some sunshine.

March 24 - Ian’s laundry this week included 5 pair of pants, 4 pair of socks, 2 t-shirts, 1 pair of boxer briefs 

March 26 - Ian and I did the first Mo Willems doodling lunch over the weekend and after listening to Ian lament his lack of skills, I took his eraser away from him. He was so worried about getting it "right," he spent more time with the eraser than the pencil. The lunchbox notes I did last year were "hard" but so very satisfying for me. I think I'll start up some regular doodling time.

March 30 - This week: 4 pairs of pants, 6 t-shirts, 3 and a half pairs of socks, 5 pairs of boxer briefs. Not perfect, but trending positive

March 30 - Schools: “It’s Spirit Week! Dress as your favorite animal!” Me: “Put on pants and go in the back yard! In that order!”

March 31 - I washed both dogs before realizing there wasn't a dead animal in my crawl space but a bag of dog poop in the leash bin

March 31 - Tonight we made BLTs with the tomatoes from Seasonal Roots as well as glazed carrots from them. Ian was concerned a pound of bacon between the two of us might not be enough.