J&M got Maui'd!

So my parents are staying over at our place for the week while some renovations are taking place at their house. The timing was not very good, but I guess it could have been worse. Actually, I should not say that. If a lock down is declared before construction is complete, that would mean that they will be here a lot longer than a week.. (which means that we won't have to cook either..) The next two weeks are key really. If we can nip this virus in the bud, we should be able to keep cases from exploding, but I'm pretty sure that we need to maintain social distancing for the rest of the summer..

So with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, March break has become a full three week affair. However, none of us here are affected by the school closings so this was pretty much a non-issue. In fact, most of the closures have not really affected me much as I was already working from home, and we were planning on keeping Elsy away from daycare until this whole thing blew over. Still, things will get worse before they get better, and we have number two to worry about..

So I got a call in the middle of the meeting I was running from daycare telling me that Elsy had a fever and I had to pick her up. Oh goody. I was not too surprised, as Elsy was complaining of being cold in the morning. I never took her temperature though. Her forehead felt normally warm. In any case, I had to rush out after the meeting to pick her up and the afternoon was a bit of a loss. Let her veg on the couch and watch television while I took the time to do some chores and finally toss out the tree that's been in our living room for over a month. It was much lighter than before, now that it was tinder dry, but it was also extremely stiff and needles were flying off of it with every step I took. I needed to get it out of the house ASAP. Those needles were actually painful if stepped on, or grabbed, or.. anything now that they were bone dry. (Tree pickup day was the next morning, and I had forgotten - so it was lucky that I tossed the tree that night.) The next day was spent...

I had planned to put the Christmas tree out this weekend as it was starting to look a little dry and brown. I was able to remove all the decorations and lights, but the weather had made putting the tree out a little annoying so I left it in the house until less wet and icy conditions come about. Oh, did I not mention that we had a Christmas tree? Like.. a real tree that you had to water and the like? Must've slipped my mind. Anyhoo, the whole experience was not as bad as I thought it would be. I was surprised how cheap the tree was (we purchased it from Ikea), and the fact that the tree fit inside my car surprised me quite a bit. I never noticed the smell, but apparently my mom enjoyed it. Getting the tree set up and decorated as not as enjoyable, and even the take down so far has not been as onerous as I had expected. The pines on the ground were barely an issue and clean up so far has been quite cathartic. The whole ordeal has left me not dreading next year's tree chores....

Elsy's vocabulary and ability to communicate has been growing in leaps and bounds over the past year, but something that she tends to do a lot is to reverse certain words in phrases or syllables in words. One of her most common phrases is to say "got for" instead of "forgot". Daddy, you got for my gloves. Or saying "is it" instead of "it is". I don't think is it time for baht baht (bathtime). I do subtly correct her by answering with the proper word or phrase, but I know sometimes people will hear one thing and say another assuming that they are the same. I am not worried, but it was interesting to hear.

As I was getting dressed this morning, I noticed one of my golf shirts was hung on the closet door for some reason. I put it back in the closet because I thought Maggie had hung it up from the clean laundry. I was wrong. Elsy came in to the room after I put the shirt back and told me. I picked a shirt for you. Where did it go? Of course I had to grab it off of the rack and ask her if that was the shirt she had wanted me to wear today. Yeah, that's the one! So, now my kid is picking my clothes. I guess it is a logical progression: Mother > Wife > Daughter. Anyone but me I guess is the lesson of this story.

Maggie and I went to the Halloween Haunt at Canada's Wonderland last night and enjoyed ourselves. The weather cooperated and the night was very mild for this time of the year being in the mid-teens (temperature and many of the attendees). We were able to get onto one ride early on before the park filled up. The place was just as busy if not more so than a summer weekend day! Today we brought Elsy with us to Camp Spooky and the attendance was not as bad as Maggie had described the last time she took Elsy to this event last year. The weather cooperated again, being sunny, dry, and rather mild for this time of the year. To celebrate, we had our caricatures drawn with all three of us in the drawing. The quality of the work was not the best, but when number two comes along we will replace it with (hopefully) a better one. While we were waiting for the drawing to get finished, I was holding Elsy behind the artist so that we could watch him colour. Then it hit me. I felt something lik...