Beautiful Days, Getting Hot, & the Beginning of Week 15

The Fordams

• Mostly trips to Sugarland Run where Zach and Frank have biked and I meet them to walk/run
  
• Sigga said, "This is the most active family I know."

Susan & Zach (before surgery = pre-6/15)

• We would go out in our super-hero costumes. He'd bike as the Flash and I'd roller blade in my Wonder Woman shirt, cape, and black spandex. I found a parking garage that was great if it was hot or a little wet!
• The fountain at our first roller blading/biking office park "near Mommy's doctor's office." 
• Running into his school friends (Niko, Kathryn, Stella & Hopie) at Lake Anne, generally making friends - Elliott and Bear
  
• Music from the song book and played Eye of the Tiger, Born in the USA, Don’t Stop Believin’ and Livin on a Prayer. He likes Eye of the Tiger and Livin' on a Prayer best 
• Drawing with help from Youtube (zebra, penguin) 
  
• Summer Camp on ABC Mouse; Week 1 was South America (sloth video!)
• Milkshakes and kiddie ice cream sundaes. I bring my own nuts because they don't offer that as a topping! :)
• One day Zach thought we should dress "ridculously," so he wore orange on orange and me pink on pink. 
• Movies: Frozen 2 and we watched Lindsey Lohan's The Parent Trap and Zach enjoyed it! Concept of twins came up. He wants one when he's "born again."

Frank & Zach

• Lego challenge = Lego pizza and Lego track for his Blaze Monster Truck
• The biking (bubbles and snacks) and up to 11.5 miles!
  
• Visits with Grandad
• Nature at the S-turns park nearby. They bike and race, sit on the rock, check out high water, see turtles and fish, play hide and seek, and Zach loves to play peek-a-boo with the fishers

Zach of Note

• Lovin' the bubble bath Auntie Em got him
• We played baseball golf. We used tricycle as golf cart and took T-ball around to different locales like golf holes! 
• Ticks! Yikes!
• Birthday parties galore! The week of June 8, it was Cora (6/8), Zahra (6/9), Kathryn (6/11), and Hance (6/15); We brought our own cupcakes to Cora's birthday and went to Kathryn's, which was totally fun for Zach but a little too crazy. 
• Water play. He loves it.
  
• Chicken on a Motorcycle has become a fave Story Pirates episode
• He can tell Alexa to play his songs on repeat :(
• Balloon badminton
• PJ Masks undies
  
• Zach is really great about sitting at the table and eating with us. He loved my rhubarb refresher!
  

Zach's Words & Songs

• Joke book. Our fave: Why was 6 afraid of 7? B/c 7 - 8 - 9. :)
• We're learning some past tense (fall - fell, take - took, etc.)
• STOP
• He can spell everything he sees with very few mistakes. 
• I told Zach one day that Peso was proud of him while we worked on learning path, and he said, "Mommy, he's just a toy." 
• Zach realized that his book, Dog on a Digger, did not have words, and he found that fascinating. I then introduced the books Journey & Return (gifts from Zahra's grandmother) to him, and he's loved them. 
• Books: Urgency Emergency, Chloe Zoe books, Black Panther and long Spider Man book that we read over multiple reading sessions, Journey & Return, Serena Williams book

Sleep Update

• It's going fine. He struggles with the 8:30pm-6:30am schedule, but mostly does pretty well and is working toward sleeping at those times. He mostly gets 9-9.5 hours/night max, and once in a pretty blue month he'll sleep for 10 hours. 
• He does a pretty great job of quiet time. He gets a 1.5 hour nap, and we get about 2 hours of quiet time. Pretty remarkable, actually. 

What's Zach Whining About?
Turning off his shows, washing his hands, and taking showers

Good Food 

• Ongoing: scones from Great Harvest
• Kabobi by the Helmand dinner was yummy!
• Cultures from Potomac Vegetable Farm 
  
• Birthday dinner on a beautiful Saturday one month early on June 13. Sat outside with Auntie Em. Delightful.
  
• Garlic scape pesto with asparagus and with zucchini
  
• Peanut butter: pb cookies, smoothies with banana. Yum!
• Red chile pork from Territory and many pork sandwiches with cultures and cherries and baked crackers and cheesy chips. 
• Auntie Em's amazing waffles and sourdough discard blueberry and lemon curd muffins
• Cherries! Zach has learned to eat around the pits. He said, "Mommy taught me!"
• From the website Auntie's Em shared (https://www.aicr.org/cancer-prevention/recipes/), I made the rhubarb refresher.

Visits, mostly by phone or Zoom 

• Almost daily breakfast calls with Gamma and Daddy Bob 
• Kathleen
• Katie & Suji
• Mary Kay, Kathleen, and Kate happy hour on Zoom
• Emily R.
• Greer
• Early birthday dinner with Auntie Em

Fun and Not So Fun Stuff (Personal and Professional)

• Hiking - I went out hiking one more beautiful Sunday to Buzzard Rocks and beyond. I pack up coffee and cereal in a jar and eat it on my way out or when I arrive at the trail head. I love soggy Cheerios! Lost a water bottle on this hike. 
• Unlocking Us episodes!
• Always, walks and runs before surgery and walking walking walking after surgery. In fact, I joined Auntie Em on a virtual mission to "hike" the Camino de Santiago is Spain. I love the movie, The Way, and now I'm adding mileage daily and getting postcards that teach me a bit about my journey!
  
• Zumba on Zoom pre-surgery - so great
• AMP - great call with Erick, Joe, and Ashanti. Love those guys!
• Black Lives Matter has led me to add important black voices to my Instagram; I started a 21-day challenge (https://www.eddiemoorejr.com/21daychallenge) and have been listening to the podcast, "It's Been a Minute," watching "Black-ish," and watching/listening to "The Next Question" series. Ordered Stamped and I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
  
• Surgery: I thought I'd go in for a nice outpatient surgery and be home on Monday night. Oh, no. My bladder is "slow to wake," so they admitted me to the hospital overnight, and the bladder had still not awakened by Tuesday morning. (Makes sense, I now remember this happened with my C-section. :() Also, as bad luck would have it, the cell service for my phone and Frank's were down on Monday night, and I couldn't talk to him. I did get Emily on the phone thanks to the nurses! On Tuesday, they put a catheter in and sent me home for two days. Catheter came out on Thursday. Yay. Luckily, I tolerate pain well, so did not take pain meds for long. The gas from anesthesia stayed in my body for a full seven days. That was more uncomfortable than painful, but I thought I'd be "good as new" in two days. Ha! Into week two I was still feeling tired and taking care of myself and Zach part-time was all I could manage. Thanks to Gamma and Daddy Bob for hosting Zach for 4 days!
• New podcasts galore: Life Kit, It's Been a Minute, Nutrition Diva
• Started watching Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist and the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
• Binge watched Little Fires Everywhere
• Movies: watched part of Dirty Dancing and Princess Bride
• Read Paper Towns, The Glass Hotel, Summer of '69
• Grateful for: Though my surgery was hard and not what I expected, I am grateful that I am having to slow down and rest my body. I love my walks, but they are less intense than my exercise regime before, and I think that's a good break at the least. Also, my body is changed. This was a big deal, and I didn't really realize it. I may actually cut back on alcohol as is advised for the kinds of cancers I'm predisposed to and that are impacted by the estrogen I'm taking. That would be good.
  

Memorial Day & the Beginning of Week 10

The Fordams
Family hikes on the Cross County trail and at Algonkian and Seneca parks have continued on several Sunday mornings. There has been terrific cool weather!

Susan & Zach

• We went out for weeks on a nearly daily basis for him to bike and me to rollerblade. We went to an office parking lot and Algonkian Park. In fact, he went to Algonkian Park ten times in eight days. I went with him 8 or those 10 trips!
• I cut his hair on an early hot day, and we went out for milkshakes afterwards.
  
• I found out that Permission to Feel has an app, Mood Meter, and it's been amazing. I ask Zach on a daily basis about his energy and pleasantness or happiness. Almost every morning Zach is high energy and high happiness/excitement/pleasantness, so I called him enthusiastic, exhilarated, excited!
• We're working on our emotional education and vocabulary. I need to work with Zach on understanding difference and his default frustration of calling things "stupid." We play jokes on Alexa to improve our mood.
  
• Zach and I watched Aladdin. So fun!
• We have snack outside on the back porch sometimes. I made a tent.
• I try to just go with it a fair amount. We play under the sheets in his bed. He has animals, mtn lion and tiger, who are his puppies and one of his other animals is a cat. Sometimes we're a mommy and baby cheetah. We perform concerts outside. I'll turn on music on my phone or we'll sing and pretend to play the guitar on his play golf club and play baseball bat. Just head over to Lake Anne if that's what he wants to do.
  

Zach of Note

• Frank and Zach are still doing lessons via ABC Mouse. There are songs for each letter, and the letter "O" song video talks about oozy eggs that make us queasy. He went around for days saying "queasy." He also could identify the Statue of Liberty because of ABC Mouse TV (educational videos). I read books from the ABC Mouse library which is pretty fun. They have a lot of additional Curious George, and we can search for books around topics. 
• He and I had quite the routine with Alphablocks, letter tracing, and Spanish, which has kind of fallen off, but not before he started writing the letter "H" on his own. Writing, not tracing! We also got a Spanish language matching game that was a lot of fun.
  
• In Alpahablocks, I learned something! When “e” is added to the end, the vowel becomes long. Plan becomes “plane.” Cap becomes Cape, etc. Tap becomes tape, kit becomes kite. 
• We did Spanish with Nancy and Edguardo, Tanner and Judie, and Suji, Katie, and Vanessa. Tried to talk with Sofia too, but not yet!
• Podcasts are still our friend: Story Pirates and Eat Your Spanish. 
• I bought a puzzle and dominoes that were hits briefly. 
• On Fridays, we still do show and share with Amanda mostly. 
• Video chats have slowed down. We did get back online with Lola and Eva and we called Sean and Lizzy
• We video chat with Gamma and Daddy Bob several mornings a week

• Zach is still a bike riding champ. He went out on a dirt bike course at Lake Fairfax, where he fell and got a good, muddy scrape. He and Frank have done 8+ mile bike rides. Sugarland Run is a popular trail. See below. 

• Balloon volleyball made a brief comeback.
• Zach is taking pictures with our old digital camera.
• We have done some good playing in the rain. We just get out in it. We wore our bathing suits one day, and Zach thought that was a BLAST!
• One day he also picked out our picture coasters and said why he liked each. The cairn - looks like a person with legs and eyes; Lake O’hara b/c of lake; Paintbrush Canyon b/c of mtns, fire truck b/c well fire truck; Norse God b/c he looks like he’s falling; WV fall color b/c it’s colorful; and Zachary from WY b/c it has his name on it.
  
• In early May, a man with dementia went missing from the hospital. All day, police combed the area. Zach was weirdly afraid of police officers. They drove past us on their motorcycles and went up the golf course path and he didn't want to go the way they had gone! He was afraid he might be mistaken for the "white-bearded" man.
• An amazing Saturday in early May: Zach rode the course at Lake Fairfax, and we went to the concert by Teresa's neighbor. So fun! 
• Took Zach to CT to ride his bike and ran into other kids and parents from his school. What a disaster!? I was so traumatized. 
• Octonauts toys. Not sure about that at all. 

Zach's Words & Songs

• We’re saying “pretty please with a cherry on top” or “pretty please with a heart on top” and “easy breezy lemon squeezy.”
• How do you say "pirate" in Spanish? “Pirata”! 
• Trying to do some work on how we're all different. Zach saw a little person at the park one day and responded as you might expect. 
• He actually did some writing one night, the letter "H." 
• Started watching Frozen 2, and Zach wanted to know who the villain is. We're 40 minutes in, and he's still asking, "Where's villain?"
• Throughout a day he says, “puh, ‘p’ is for puzzle.” He’s into letters and sounds like he wasn’t before. He likes reading the Curious George story on the alphabet. Before Quarantine, he had no interest in that one!
• We track "pizza server" cars

Sleep Update
I'm really tired of talking about this. Still a huge frustration. 

• He's getting better at staying in his room from 8:30pm-6:30am. I wrote out the numbers for him to wait for in the AM and at nap time. Staying in his room until 6:30am and at nap time until 15:30pm is going better. 
• Also, I listened to some podcasts on quiet time, and I think Zach is actually pretty great at quiet time. 
• He's really creative in his room on his own. 
• His computer (pretend) is situated so that he looks out the window while he "works." 
• He saw this heart (belo) from his window while settling down for his nap, and he took me to "find it" after his nap. 
• He wrote on his own one night. 
• His animals "dive" off books. 
• He's made one of his books a toy. You tap it with a Noah’s Ark piece and it downloads a thorn. Sure.

Good Food

• Ongoing: scones from Great Harvest
• Founding Farmers queso. AMAZING! 
• Whisk dark choc sea salt cookie from CAVA and CAVA always
• Local beers
• Territory burgers
• Zach starting eating tomatoes and lettuce with lemon dressing!
• Asparagus and strawberries!
• Blue cheese, fig, and fougasse bread. Yum!
• Overindulging in popcorn! Still haven't finished the Sound of Music....
• Zach got out my wine for me one night and said, "I thought you'd want this."

Visits by phone or Zoom with

• Kathleen
• Mary Kay, Kathleen, and Kate happy hour on Zoom
• Katie and family
• Emily R.
• Memorial Day Picnic at Auntie Em's with the whole family! We all loved it, and Zach wanted to do it over and over!

Fun and Not So Fun Stuff (Personal and Professional)

• Mother's Day 4-Miler. Finding my run route over the week before the race was so fun, and Mother's Day was a pretty perfect day

• Did a 2.23 mile run #runwithmaud
• Always, walks and Zumba on Zoom 
• Concerts on the internet (Indigo Girls (again) and Jason Isbell)
  
• Love, love, love Brene Brown's Unlocking Us podcast; An ordinary moment of bliss: Meals with my son, walks
• Enjoyed Never Have I Ever the show and Sweet Magnolias; movies: 20th Century Women; The Half of It; Love, Faith, Hope; The Journey of Natty Gann; watched Footloose with Auntie Em
• Hiking - I've gone two Sundays to Shenandoah River State Park, and it's been AMAZING!
  
• Auntie Em and her deltoid cyst and a second colonoscopy in three months. What an inspiration!
• Cleaning. It's not impressive, but I've done some cleaning. 
• AMP and Product & Engineering Summit proved a nice change of pace!
• People Team collectively received the Innovation Rockstar award!
  
• Culture onboarding sessions, presentation to DH, and product content map = :)

1 minute meditation: 

1. Settle in a relaxed posture
2. Take a calming breath
3. Pay attention to the breath
4. Air enters the nostrils, lungs, shoulders
5. Notice how it feels
6. Inhale, exhale
7. As you are there with your breath, take note that you are a unique individual, you are blessed with imagination, you are able to communicate, learn from the past, and plan for the future. 
8. For this, I am grateful. 

There have been some incredibly stressful weeks and the word tired is very common in my daily blog, but somehow, overall I look back on things positively. That's nice. 

Month One of COVID-19

The framework is a bit out the window since we're all at home all the time now. Zach asks, "Who's going to have me today?" He's always very excited when we "both have him," which means we are all together as a family, not splitting the day as on week days, where Frank has him in the morning and me in the afternoon. Very cute. 

The Fordams. All photos here.

• I created a schedule breaking the day into 1/2 hour increments. We don't really adhere to the original schedule, but Frank and I have a good split for the day. In general, I work in the morning, and Frank works in the afternoon. 
• I love eating all meals together. I love being together in such close proximity. I love that the virus has required us to pull together some resources and routines that will help with Zach in the future in general. 
• Frank and Zach are doing lessons via ABC Mouse. They play with his toys, Legos, trains, Hot Wheels. Sometimes, they have circle time. Zachary bear has participated as well as other animals. We are building items as part of a Lego challenge. 
  
• He and I do Alphablocks and letter tracing. I work on Spanish (with colleagues and family sometimes too!), dance, music/singing, art, and podcast stories. We've tried a lot of things and some have worked and some have not. See my blog post for work here.
  
• On Fridays, we do show and share with some of my work colleagues. Frank and Zach do soccer on Fridays too. 
  
• In week four, Mr. Ben started Zoom piano lessons
• Video chats are a huge hit. Zach has had video chats with Lizzy, Merrick, and Darshan. The family chats have been good: Francisco and family, Shaheepkys, and Lola, Eva, Agatha and FL. They read to Zach! We've only had one epic fail. 
• We got a lawn bowling set and badminton. The badminton has been more popular. 
• We took walks around the neighborhood looking for animals in the windows, and he got into tree climbing for a couple weeks!
• He decided he must have a "The Flash" costume, and he wanted us in on the super hero thing too, so I'm Wonder Woman, and Frank is Batman.
• He gets out on his scooter; he and Frank adventure somewhere new each week. Week 1, they watched the demolition of the Reston Fire Station. He has a "hideout" in the Lake Fairfax Park, and "hideout" starts with "H." In week 2, he started getting out on his bike, and he's a pro now, so in week 3, he and I started going out to bike and roller blade daily. Very fun. 
• We take family hikes on Sundays. 
• Easter was a blast with and indoor Easter egg hunt (he got a treat for every five eggs!) and books from the Easter bunny. Oh, and we got 12 GIANT bunny buns. We shared with Auntie Em, Sigga, and Mike & Mary.
  

Zach's Words & Songs

• Books: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and renewed enjoyment of I Met A Moose in Maine One Day. New books Piggie and Elephant by Mo Willems, Michael Sowa art book, Winne the Pooh, the Wednesday Witch, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, and the Dr. Seuss Mulberry Street book
• Singing the Rescue Rider song quietly to himself
• At the end of Meet the Robinson's, there is a Rob Thomas song. He knows who Rob Thomas is!
• We forgot to mention that in NY, John, who ran the ski school had a "Step away from the cookie jar" cookie jar just like the house in NH from skiing 2019
• “Let’s rock it out, people," Zach and Hance said this to each other when they saw each other briefly for the Uber Ladies Zoom HH
• Zach said, "This is the best day ever!" on the day we got pizza for first time from Killer Tomato. We all remarked on how good the pizza smelled on the way home. Yummy dinner!
• Zach says he wants to “transform” the nail clippers. 
• We are now all familiar with the concept of being "hangry."
  

Movie Weekends: Frozen, Meet the Robinson's, Winnie the Pooh, Sound of Music

Sleep Update: Sleep has been fine and sometimes really not okay. These changes have impacted him. I mean, he has been going to CT since he was 3 months old, so this is a big change!

• He seems overly concerned about where we are. 
• When it's time to sleep he comes to check on us and make sure we're nearby. This wasn't really a thing before. It's almost like he needs a monitor showing him where we are at night!
• He has regressed and when he wakes up at night, he comes to find me. :( But as I read back over everything, it seems like things were much worse in the first two weeks he was out of school...and things are improving/leveling out now.

Good Food

• Zach and I made strawberry muffins
• Rick and Susan gave us more ramps, and I made a mushroom cream sauce
• Ongoing: scones from Great Harvest
• Delicious cardamom banana muffin from Sigga and Auntie Em's banana cherry walnut bread and cranberry pound cake
• Ordering out: Weekly Tacos and More and spreading the love out with MOD Pizza, Killer Tomato Pizza and Old Ox, Paisano's (buffalo chicken pizza, white pizza with chicken, and mac & cheese), CAVA, Territory meals, Thai, Founding Farmers' tortilla chips, queso, and pimento cheese
• Loving Amy's spicy chili
• Washington Green Grocer weekly deliveries
• Auntie Em picks up items at the store for us when she goes, and we have gotten Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods delivered. 
• To date, we have not been in a grocery store since I went to Trader Joe's on March 13 and picked up a prescription for Emily from Harris Teeter the week of March 16.

Visits (via Zoom or the phone) with

• Kathleen
• Mary Kay, Kathleen, and Kate happy hour on Zoom
• Caught up with Adrienne
• Katie
• Emily R.
• The regular calls with friends were going well, but they've sort of dropped off.... 
• Actual walks with Auntie Em

Fun and Not So Fun Stuff (Personal and Professional)

• Walking, walking, walking - usually 60-90 minutes/day
• Zumba on Zoom. Thanks, Kate! 
  
• Concerts on the internet (Indigo Girls, Wade Bowen, Josh Ritter)
• AMP and All Hands are good, helpful and getting my head out of day-to-day nuttiness!
• Bye, bye Lindsey. Sniff.
• Overdid it with the Fitness Challenge - over 20,000 steps every day for a week for a total of 163,735 for one week!
• Auntie Em had her surgery, so now she's down three, one to go! She's amazing!
• Love, love, love Brene Brown's Unlocking Us podcast
• Parent podcast advice: Eliminate words: don't, stop. Put in positive. Please take smaller bites, use your napkin. I really love watching you do this…
• Marcus Buckingham's StandOut Assessment
• Option B resources
• Enjoyed Virgin River and am now watching Atypical and Unorthodox
• I love the idea of taking him in an RV on a road trip!
• Quotes: 
• Anne LaMott quote, "I have known hell, and I have also known love. Love was bigger."
• This quote from Tasha Eurich: Albert Camus once said that “in the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” Since this deep winter began, I’ve searched for my invincible summer. This is where I think our true invincible summer exists. To discover that our worth is not determined by what we get done during the pandemic. To know that getting through it is enough. To know that we are doing enough. That we are enough.

Zach asked if we could take a picnic here.

Where to Begin

Marney, aged 96, former long-time resident of Columbia, died Thursday, February 27, 2020 in Johnson City, Tennessee. 

The Giles county native grew up on a dairy farm. She was a graduate of Bunker Hill High School in Giles County. She married the love of her life, James, on May 23, 1941, just before he joined the U. S. Army to serve in World War II. During the war, she worked at Woldridge Drug Store.

After the war, Marney assisted her husband in running several Stuckey’s stores, including the one in Columbia. Travelers stopped in to taste her homemade spreads including pimento cheese and ham salad, and to admire the cherry tomato plants growing in the planters in front of the store. She was a faithful member of Riverside United Methodist Church for over 60 years, and enjoyed working in the church kitchen to prepare meals for fellowship events. Mrs. Minatra made the best scratch yeast rolls in the South. She was a great mother to her children and friend to all, especially her church family and her neighbors. She was the first one to lend a helping hand in times of trouble, usually with a casserole dish in hand. She loved tending to her flowers and working in her garden.

Winter Fun 2020

• Zach was a GREAT traveler to upstate NY!
• He loved our dinner, a chicken and cheese quesadilla, at the New York travel plaza
• He had four+ instructors (Drew, Pat, Chris, and Karl); John kept him in snacks and hotcho with an ice cube! He was truly living his best life!
• He was up early and to bed late; he couldn't wait to ski. He LOVED speed. He also enjoyed snowball fights
• The daycare at Gore Mtn was not his thing
• Ski school was impressed that Zach could put on his boots by himself, zip his jacket, etc. The woman operating the greenway said, “He’s so smart; he can carry on an entire conversation!”
• Dinners out at Bolton Landing Brewing and Sticks and Stones. At S&S, we played with Paw Patrol and hid them all around the restaurant. Zach posed in the snow mobile and played in the snow.
• He did not nap from Sat - Tues, and he was a little bit of a piece of work b/c he also did no
  t sleep more at night. :(
• Frank and I had a great day of skiing on the second day at Garnet Hill Lodge, and a frozen lake!
• Check out our photos here!
• The weekend after our trip to the Adirondacks, Frank and Zach went to Whitetail (PA) to snow tube. They had a blast.

Zach - Of Note

• He got a new Paw Patrol book from the book fair
• Fun soccer pics from picture day
  
• Tossing animals on his bed and saving them from hot lava (all around his bed)
• On the way to school one day, Zach asked "Why is that man was walking"? I said, "Maybe he likes walking; then he might be my soulmate." Zach then told me he was my soulmate. Awww
• Mickey Mouse DVD was a brief hit
• On a warm day, we stopped at the pole park and he slid down the poll 8 times! He initially just asked to go down one time, but it ended up being eight. :) Teehee.
• Playing fire fighters
• I got so frustrated with the lights and traffic on Elden one Saturday. (Zach embraces my rants a little too readily!) The next weekend with Daddy Bob, we tried to turn around our attitude on the same stretch of road and celebrated with almost elbow bumps every green light we made!
• Spent all afternoon outside on the time change day. Sun and weather that was "just right" temperature-wise and no mosquitoes yet!
• Frank tripped on a toy at dinner and wiped out in the dining room. Zach cried and cried. So empathetic.
• He tied my shoes together and wandered around the house. He thought it was SO funny!
  
• We decorating his helmet with stickers, most notably Paw Patrol and Gore Mtn
• We are loving playing volleyball over the bed
• Playing with Logan and Cora has been great. Can we be a family of seven with Mike and Mary through these trying times?

Sleep Update

• Ongoing challenges staying in room for 10 hours, but doing really well in the grand scheme. I'm sure I obsess on this WAY too much
• He gets out of bed several times from 8:30-9 for hugs and kisses. :)
• Lately he's insistent to know that I'm nearby and comes to double check over and over and over and he says, "Mama," not "Mommy"
• A general bit of a regression in the last week or so. Is it because he's trying to understand what this virus means or is it that My Little Pony is a little scarier?

Zach's Words & Songs

• His language is AMAZING! He's just slightly getting word ordering wrong. For example, Zach says, I'll fill up her, rather than I'll fill her up. Lately also we’ve talked about growed, flyed, etc. No, it’s grew and flew. Also, he told me this morning: I’m going to cool down you, rather than cool you down. (He was talking about Emmy’s fan.)
• He said, "I love walking." I love it every time he says that!
• Fox in Socks
• "Punching the face off" the virus
• The Mr. Butt song and choreography

Good Food

• Potter's cider and tempura cauliflower from Local VA
• AWESOME black beans (Auntie Em), live kale and cabbage salad with ginger and garlic, sweet potatoes, rice, and salsas/hot sauce.
• It was Kari's birthday and we all had lunch together from Bar Taco (Yum) and cheesecake
• Thai Luang has been added to the rotation for dinners out (sadly those are ending)
• Delicious homemade banana muffin at Gore Mtn
• Scones from Great Harvest
• Rick and Susan gave us scallions and ramps!

Family Time

The Zoo - it was probably my best visit to the zoo ever. Zach and I took a carousel ride. The lion roared, the tiger vocalized. Pandas, lemurs, and orangutans on the ropes in the sky! 37 turtles! Amazing!!!!!!!!!!! Photos here.

Visits with

• Auntie Em - so many great walks
• Dress shopping with Katheen and a great walk around Reston; we tried out Local VA
• Walks with Katie
• Walk with Emily R and dinner with her and Andrew
• Krista's goodbye lunch at Enyate for Ethiopian
• Grandad and some great Hot Wheels racing
  
• Frank - a couple nice walks
• Auntie Em and Mom and Dad after Emily's mastectomy
• Check-ins from Virginia

Fun and Not So Fun Stuff (Personal and Professional)

• SICK - I had a cold or was recovering for almost an entire month!
• Leadership Institute for Feb; Ben's mini-MBA was really impactful!
• AMP program and the financial module - Judie helped me!
• I really love the DiSC Jockeys. I have a great group of amazingly grounded colleagues
• Eva and I talked about agile philosophy and decision making
• It reminds me that if I have aspirations, it would be in organizational development. I would love to learn how to administer the assessments like DiSC, Myers-Briggs, etc.
• Volunteered with GoCanvas at Women Giving Back
• Spawned Parenting Podcast's episodes on coronavirus and discipline (Thanks, Amanda)
• Finished Anne with an "E"
• Zumba, zumba, zumba - I love Kate, Tammy, and Corrina and I got to go to a 90-minute Zumba-a-thon!
• TAL and The Moth stories on 2/22/20
• Drinking less b/c of Lynch Syndrome
• The Heartbreaker! Man, I love that movie.
• Enjoying the book, Women Walking North!
• Signed up for CSA with Potomac Vegetable Farms
• Laura Friend reminded us that Mama Pepper said, "It takes a lot to keep a strong woman down."

  

  A fave quote
  that has made
  its way from
  SCORE to
  GoCanvas

Sleep Success, Zich and Zach, and More

Zach - Of Note

• Zach remembers to wash his hands and clears his dishes. We're trying to make both a habit. The hand washing is almost there.
• He always closes the car door and puts himself in his car seat. Every time.
• A couple mornings we walked to school, and since it's so cold, Zach is not always a fan. Those mornings we told him that the building management needed us to check on the gate and the sign and that we also needed to make sure the red light/walk signal was working.
• Zach went to two parents nights out and Merrick was at both. What a blast!
• Zach's dance recital
  
• Spending the night with Grandad
• We took Zach out for Thai!
• Valentine's Day and the heart-shaped cake from Trader Joe's
• He picks at his nails all the time.
• Still a lot of playing with the neighborhood kids!

Sleep Update

• He did great, but it took time. I used the "walk back" or mantra method, but also tried checking back on him. In the end that didn't work, and we went with mantra method: "It's time for sleeping. You need to stay in your room/bed." Frank and I split things up at first, but before I was about to leave on my trip and as Zach really seemed to get the hang of it, I handled all nights for the last week or so. 
• I did research and talked a lot with fellow parents at GoCanvas. We bonded around our kids' sleep challenges. I listened to the Parenting Beyond Discipline podcast. It took from January 16 - Feb 1, but he really had things down in two weeks. 
• We tried having music on as he fell asleep since they do that at school, but that was distracting. 
• He got many rewards for his hard work: a trip to Peets with me and visiting my work, multiple visits to the water park at the St. James, and in fact, the afternoon after he went to the water park for the first time, he fell asleep while I was reading to him, which has NEVER happened. He got to go to a Paw Patrol show. There were too many toys, and a Paw Patrol book with a blond-haired, brown-eyed Zach as the hero. 
• He sleeps with his light on (dimmed). We watched the Daniel Tiger about "See what it is, you might feel better." Before the sleep training, I started talking with him about "Sleep Rules." Lay down, close your eyes, be still. We also always used to go to sleep "on our tummy." 
• He needed strategies for what he would do when he woke up and was scared. 1. Hug spider man 2. Try to go to sleep w/ sleep rules 3. Read a book. 4. Try to go to sleep w/ sleep rules 5. Read a second book. 6. Try to go to sleep w/ sleep rules. That seemed to work!
• The goal is in his room from 8:30pm-6:30am. The 8:30-9pm is still a lot of popping up, but the morning works pretty well. 
• His training now works for his naps, and he spends 2-ish hours in his room either playing by himself, reading, or napping. It's pretty great. 
• We are so proud of him!

Zach's Words & Songs

• Driving to meet Mary Kay and Hance, he noticed the Mormon Church off the Beltway for the first time. He said, "My wish came true. I wanted to see a castle."
• We are loving Story Pirates and Eat Your Spanish. One day I could hear him repeating the words: “mama,” “papa,” “abuelo,” and “abuela.” Teehee! 
• The Bippolo Stories are great! Zach is loving the story of “Todd and Tadd,” so this morning, we decided his alter ego version would be Zach and Zich.
• We read the story of Pinocchio after Zach saw a Geico commercial at Dogfish Head with Pinocchio on it.

Good Food

• Mushroom ravioli at Maggiano's and a visit with Kathleen
• Sunday morning with Auntie Em - I took her to a Rake's Progress to celebrate the end of chemo, and we went to the Dupont Circle farmer's market. Fun!
• The heart-shaped cake from Trader Joe's
• Great brunch in Woodstock with Gamma and Daddy Bob
  

Visits with

• So may walks with Auntie Em
• Walks with Katie
• Bowling with Katie, Suji, and Veronica
• Dinner with Rae
• Lunch with Emily R.
• Dinner with Jenifer and her family (Dennis, Jason, Zac) and Katie and Suji. There were no phones at all!
• To Vanish with Merrick's parents
• Mom and Dad
• Mary Kay and Hance
  

Fun (and Not So Fun) Stuff (Personal and Professional)

• Marcus Buckingham: Which bit of your day flew by recently?
• Bonding over Richard Marx and Vertical Horizon with Judie and Kiersten
• I led two, great small-group sessions on inclusive leadership!
• Bourne movies (Supremacy and Legacy)
• AMP Kickoff, Sales & Marketing Summit
• Runs along the Pacific Ocean
• Karaoke to Dancin' Queen and 70's costumes!
  
• Watched Miss Americana
• Marney, Jim, Virginia :(
• Hiking at Seven Bends State Park
• Some great changes with Amanda: walking daily check-ins and white board sessions for her 1:1
• The Good Place continues and enjoying Spinning Out
• One-year anniversary at GoCanvas!