We have found post its and painters tape to be excellent toys.
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Thank you. This gave us an hour of play today. I taped some boxes shut and let him have at it in our front yard. He made a “house” and asked for help building a bed and a garage.
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I finally received a book today called “ABC Yoga” by Christine Engel. Duckling’s daycare was using it to do daily yoga with the kids. Since Duckling has shown no interest in Cosmic Kids Yoga on YouTube, I’m really glad this turned up. He ran off with the book when it arrived and then did several poses with me, so it’s a winner for us!
We’ve also broken out the Big Kid Lego (actual Lego instead of Duplo) and that’s getting us an hour or more of play throughout the day too.
We’re now almost through week 8 at home. I really can’t grasp that we’ve been at home together for nearly 2 months?!
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Same here. The thought of doing another month at home is both “Ugh, noooo!” but also a very grumpy “Well fine, sure, whatever. Why not.”
Big Kid Legos have also gotten more popular here. I’ve also been rotating toys into his room for quiet time and it’s reinvigorated interest in some things like his wooden train set. Normally train set loses out to other toys that are available but when it’s one of two toy sets he has in his room for 90 minutes a day he figures something out. Or not - sometimes he just plays with his books and pulls all the clothes out of his closet. Some days he deliberately does not pull all the clothes out of his closet because he knows it will take a long time to clean up, and his room has to be cleaned up before he can come out to the rest of the house.
I’m glad you got a yoga thing that Duckling likes! My kid also has zero interest in Cosmic Kids Yoga.
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It’s been a while since there have been any posts on this thread, but covid parenting is about to get complicated again. My husband and I are both vaccinated now and we live in a state with high vaccine uptake and low case rates, but our kids (4 and 2) can not be vaccinated yet. I’m hearing 2022 for kids that age. We’ve been extremely isolated for over a year now, turning down all indoor invitations and most outdoor ones. My extended family wants to get together for Mother’s day, which will likely be inside given the weather here. It will probably be 20+ people, vaccinated adults and unvaccinated school age children. I am torn.
Basically, what’s the re-entry plan? Do we wait for 0 cases (probably never). Do we wait for kid vaccination (probably 2022). Some other endpoint? If we wait much longer I risk permanently alienating my extended family. Our daughter is supposed to start preschool in the Fall, too. I am a former scientist so I’ve been reading the primary literature on covid in kids and it is mostly not scary. But I’m afraid of effects that could come years down the road. Obviously there’s no data on that. What are y’all doing? I would love to see other’s decision trees for figuring what works for your family.
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When it’s legal, we are meeting with our parents, siblings, nieces and nephews - outdoor preferred but indoors sometimes. We’re delaying daycare until either we’re allowed into facilities or age two, whichever comes first.
We have already caused a rift with one branch of extended family by not meeting with them. We’re not expecting to hit all adult first doses until May or June.
Right now it’s a third wave so it’s just us, plus the ones we live with and the ones who do our childcare. When we list the house we’ll also have to split ourselves between three houses for a week or two and then reintegrate.
We’re just doing the best we can, and so is everyone else.
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That’s a tough one. We had a family event recently (a memorial) but it was outdoors mostly. There were only 5 children, ages 7-10, and the rule was that kids had to mask indoors. Would that work?
It’s tough because it’s really probably not the best idea. My kids’ school had to shut down for over a week because half their classrooms were quarantined because of a classmate with covid–who probably picked it up at an event very much like the one you are describing. But my kids go to a school with a high population of people of color, who do not have as high a vaccination rate for so many reasons, and we have a relatively high case load (300 cases per 100,000 people).
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We have an almost six year old. We’ve just recently started seeing grandparents indoors without masks if they’re fully vaccinated. I was excited at the idea of maybe sending Kiddo to first grade next fall, but we really want him to be vaccinated first. Then our state’s DOE decided that masks will be optional starting this summer and into the fall and there’s still no ETA on when six year olds might possibly get the vaccine so maybe we’ll have to home school another year or part of a year (we’re both extremely lucky that Mr. Meer will be WFH full time and I’ll have the option to WFH part or all of the week depending on how things shake out over the next few months).
Aside from grandparents, I haven’t even considered seeing other family members but in a normal year we wouldn’t be seeing them till probably November anyway. Some years we did a summer vacation kind of thing closer to where family is, but we’re definitely not doing that this year. My IL’s have only seen Kiddo once in 2021, outdoors for less than thirty minutes back in like … February? And that was only after a huge blow up between them and Mr. Meer. For context, my FIL will refuse to go into stores if the store requires a mask so that’s where they are on mask compliance. 
My dad is actually here now, two plus weeks out from his second shot and I just got my second shot Monday, Mr. Meer is also fully vaccinated, so we’re not doing masks. We also know he leads a pretty circumscribed life anyway, pandemic or not, so he’s not a high exposure risk.
This was kind of a ramble, not sure if it’s helpful for what you were looking for or not.
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It’s helpful to hear what other folks are doing. In our case my youngest is not quite 2 years old, I’ve been rounding up for him on here, so he can’t/won’t wear a mask. We’re at 12 cases/100,000 and declining in our state. My husband and I discussed it today and we’ve decided to go to the event, so long as cases continue to decline this week. When I pictured a future with vaccines it didn’t occur to me that we would be vaccinated so much earlier than the kids and I’ve been avoiding thinking about what that meant until now.
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Playing outside with other kids doesn’t help reduce risk when your toddler eats a raisin that another toddler has licked 
All toddlers seemingly healthy, so far.
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