Covid Chronicles, Week 7

Week seven has begun.....I think this will be a while, so I'm trying to pay attention to the little things that make life interesting.  Practice makes progress, right?

We have friends where the husband is on fellowship in Cardiology at Baystate Medical in Springfield.  The wife is a pharmacist at Hartford Hospital.  The daughter is kindergarten age, and they are having a tough time implementing the many distance learning lessons supplied by her teacher.  I offered to meet with Vivienne via FaceTime (on a regular basis) and do some things with her.  She is nicely improving in decoding consonant-vowel-consonant words with sh and ch, and also in recognizing her sight words.  Yesterday I noticed good improvement in counting, as we played a dice game!  It's a lot of fun, and also gives me a feeling that I'm at least doing something to help others at this time.  

Anyway, I had the family print out a paper square that needed to be folded like the origami "fortune tellers" we used to make in grammar school.  This one folded to become a SHark!!!  She had a lot of directions to follow (that's the SLP in me getting activated here), it starts with SH, and it's good practice for fine motor skills, too.  

Here is a photo of mine. The tape was necessary to keep the forehead together while I made it "talk."  I guess I could have used glue, but then one needs to wait until it dries!  

A fun thing that anyone can do at this time is head on over to the Cornell Red Tail Hawks camera:

Red-tailed Hawks

Red-tailed Hawks A Red-tailed Hawk pair has been nesting above Cornell University’s athletic fields since at least the 2012. Watc...

At the moment of this writing, there are two babies hatched.  They are so cute!  I am always amazed at the good parenting the hawks provide to the babies.  The mom is named "Big Red," and the dad is "Arthur."  I have been watching this for quite a few years and continue to donate so that these web cameras can continue.  Give it a look!

Here is a photo they provided of the first baby that hatched:

Just a warning:  they are carnivores.  They eat raw, fresh meat.  To keep the babies healthy and happy, there are usually some dead animals hanging around the nest at this point.  Once you get over that, they are totally amazing.  

At least we can keep in touch with our kids with FaceTime, texting, emails, and phone calls.  Katie recently sent us this photo of her two dogs.  Uhtred, the big one standing, is only like 6 months old.  He is a standard schnauzer.  Dogmatix, relaxing on the bench, is at least 10 years old and a mini schnauzer.  

I continue to try to maintain a routine and exercise every day.  I've also been on Amazon a lot.  On Saturday we got up and Peter went to make coffee......but the coffee grinder just stopped.  Sigh.  It was six years old already, so I just ordered a new one on Amazon.  Thankfully I found some ground coffee in the house, as most of our coffee is in whole bean form.  It will tide us over until the grinder arrives next weekend.  

Best wishes to all......