Quarantine Journals - Rough Seas

Another good difficult day. Lots of good playing between the kids, but also a lot of temper tantrum's and hitting and yelling. I've noticed that his meltdowns are starting to be quickly followed by apologies, so maybe that's progress, but when I refused to take him on a walk earlier today he punched me right in the boob. And then they both had total and complete meltdowns for the entire duration of dinner. Which Richard had worked really hard on. It was baked salmon with a delicious pasta that used up the last of what was left of our basil after the cut worms massacred 90% of it outside.

Penny didn't like it because he put zucchini in it, and refused to eat around it. Oliver just had a total meltdown nobody knows why. And they were both just screaming and running around and penni was upset, and Oliver was throwing things. His moments like these that I just want to blink and send myself to somewhere quiet and alone for a while.

We spent a considerable amount of time releasing ladybugs into our butterfly habitats which we filled up with plants that we discovered have aphids and or spider mites inside. Before I went to bed I found that more plants have spider mites on them, and sprayed them with Nimoy oil because we're out of area in the habitat. We've got three of them set up on the dining room table, and probably emptied about 30 ladybugs into the containers and then close them up. The ladybugs that we let loose in the house just didn't really stay in one place for very long. We're finding them all over now. That doesn't really bother me, but I do wish they would do their jobs LOL.

Earlier, I took the kids out in the front yard because they've been trying to scream through my brain all day today. We're outside, sitting on the sidewalk, playing with truck, when our next-door neighbor approaches. Now, this isn't our party neighbor. This is another neighbor who where is NPR shirts and I think it's probably a good apple. All of our neighbors moved here within the last year so I don't know any of them particularly well.  Anyway, she comes out the front door with her little boy. And we say hi, and they're playing in the front yard and going up and down the streets, and Oliver Panik's every time they start walking towards our house because it looks like they're walking towards our house and he knows we need to move. But I keep telling them it's OK, they're just going to their house. And so we stay.

Well, I look up and they're walking towards us. And I asked "hey, did you want us to slide out of the way? Are you guys coming over here?" And she responds "oh no, we were just coming to say hi. From a safe distance." And then proceeds to get way closer than I'm comfortable with. Now, mind you, 20 feet is probably way closer than what I'm comfortable with, but I had to find a polite way to pick Oliver up and go up towards the front porch so I could put as much distance between the two of us as I could, while we talked about the school district and what not. It was super awkward, and my anxiety was through the roof. And while I'm holding all of her up by the front porch, Penny comes riding her bike down the sidewalk. And she stops, because she knows she's not supposed to get close to people, but she still just sitting on her bike slowly inching forward, getting closer and closer to them. Until I basically had to say "OK everybody it's time for a water break!" And get them both to come up front, and then eventually I said it was dinner time and we were coming inside. Which was not a lie. But, anyway, I'm still having anxiety about it. So I put my shoes on and went outside at 1130 to walk the distance and decide how close she actually got to us because anxiety.

12-15 ft, I think/hope?

Richard got his tire fixed today.

I am dreading tomorrow, I'm feeling anxious about keeping the kids distracted. But they did pretty good this morning, so I guess we'll see what happens tomorrow.