new weird normal

It's taken several days, but our family has settled into our new, temporary routine.  

I've been working at home since last week, Robert has been a lot busier helping businesses work from home, and Rachel started her online classes this week. We still don't know if Izzy will be continuing her semester classes online or finishing the semester with her 3rd quarter grades. Last semester she started over with math, which is what I had to do when I started college. It's crazy but true. I started with first grade math and worked my way up to Algebra, which is as far as I needed to make it in order to graduate. I had huge holes in my education, and Izzy's the same way. She is almost finished with second grade math (in addition to wading through high school geometry). A couple weeks ago we were given permission and access to have her start over with English as well as math. She does a few lessons each day and Robert and I help her with the tricky stuff. Other than that, she's largely without things to do. She struggles to entertain herself and is quite social. It's been really tough for her so we're hopeful we can get some online learning of some kind or another set up for her. 

Even though I'm working from home, I've been waking up at my normal time, some time between 5 and 6, and have continued my morning yoga and quick jog with one of the puppies. Before breakfast, Izzy and I usually read a bit of the last book that was assigned to her for her English class, which is Malala. Izzy, Robert, and I have breakfast together and develop a daily plan for Izzy before Robert and I "go to work." One of us wakes Rachel up at 8. She has classes all day two days of the week and then it's very random. She will lay in her bed all day if we don't hassle her. This happened during winter break as well. She's been doing much better this time around, getting up when we ask her to, and participating in family activities. We usually all have lunch together unless one of us needs to keep working. Then we work for a few more hours before I round up whoever is free for an afternoon walk.  One of us makes dinner or heats up leftovers and I usually squeeze in another hour or two of work that's not library work. We have dinner and afterwards Izzy and I usually read a bit more Malala. 

I'm hoping we find out about Izzy's classes here in the next few days. We've also got to make another trip to the grocery store here soon, which I'm dreading, but it's a two-person job and we're out of quite a few things at this point.

What's everyone else doing during this bizarro time? I hope everyone has settled into a new, temporary routine and enjoying the unexpected extra family/pet time.

Here are a few pictures of our new normal:

When we go for walks we try to look for the unusual. My friend, Ann, who's a poet calls these moments her 'haiku moments,' so that's how I now think of them too.

Ella has definitely been enjoying the extra company. She's a big fan of Rachel.

If Rachel's not sleeping whenever I duck my head into her room, there's usually something unexpected going on in there.