We're very lucky that DH works from home anyhow, because our amazing live-out nanny normally commutes 50-60 min each way on public transit, and we were getting really worried about both her health and the increased risk to us of her bringing more germs into the house each day. We asked her to stay home for a bit while we see how the situation shakes out, and it's looking like we'll have to let her go as it's unlikely she'll be working in the next few months and she was planning to move on at the end of the summer anyhow as she's doing minimal childcare now. K is spending her days at home with Papa working in his basement office. We set her up with Messenger Kids to stay in touch with her friends, and now that March Break is over, I'll be having her keep up with some school work each day. She's coping pretty well so far, though we hate that we can't cuddle as much as we normally do.
As for me, I'm an anesthesiologist, and like my colleagues across the nation and across the world, I'm scared shitless of the tsunami of illness that is most likely to hit us in the next couple of weeks. We're hoping that social distancing and an early shutdown of all non-essential services and restricted movement of Canadians will flatten out the curve so that people aren't dying without access to appropriate care. I think it's a faint hope given the resources that we have. We're terrified about not having enough Personal Protective Equipment as my group will likely end up being the intubation team and will certainly turn into ICU physicians in the near future. Elective surgeries have been cancelled indefinitely for the past week, and we're now doing only urgent and emergent cases in order to save hospital resources for when the shit hits the fan. My group is being very proactive at helping the hospital with the planning, and I'll be spending two hours after work tomorrow practicing how to intubate and extubate and don and doff protective gear without putting my or my team's safety at risk. Or at least minimizing the risk.
Enough of the doomsday stuff for today.
Darling K is now 10. It's hard to imagine. Still no sibling though I haven't taken contraception since we started trying to have her back in 2005. I'm 45. I don't think a miracle will ever grant us a second kid. I'm so thankful for the wonderful one I have, and really grateful that she's old and independent enough to be a big help at this time.
She had a great few years at the public school 1.5 blocks from our house. Her kindergarten teacher was phenomenal, Grade 1 teacher meh (and was dealing with a lot of personal issues that year which didn't help), Grade 2 teacher phenomenal, and Grade 3 teach was OK. She found a fabulous group of friends over that time, with her best friend G being in her class from JK to Grade 3. Each year, the teachers decided to keep them together, initially because G has health issues and was a very anxious kid, and K was a fantastic supportive friend who really helped with her anxiety. G's Mom T and I became good friends too, and she's been an amazing help over the years too as on occasion I'd be stuck at work out of town and wouldn't be able to make it home on time, and she'd just take K over from our nanny and keep her till I could get there to pick her up. She'd even be happy to have K come sleep over with them and head to class with G the next morning on a rare occasion when I had a call shift scheduled while DH was away on business.
K thrives at school. She (reluctantly) joined the cross-country team starting as soon as she could in Grade 1, and is a strong runner. She has been playing piano (practicing reluctantly) since she was 6, and is getting better though it's certainly not her passion. She continues to excel at swimming and completed level 10 Red Cross just after she turned 8. Since then, we've been doing Race Club lessons with her competing in a mini swim meet at the end of each session. She's participated in a fun 3k run with her Papa for WWF the last couple years and does really well at that. She adores singing and I think the children's choir she's in is probably her favourite activity. They sang with the Canadian Children's Opera company in Feb along with a couple other local children's choirs for a production of Hansel and Gretel, which was really cool.
In Grade 3, universal testing was done to assess children for giftedness or learning challenges. She was flagged for additional IQ testing and was offered a place in a gifted program starting in Grade 4. Initially K said she didn't want to change schools and would stay with her friends at the local school, but after I took her to the information night about the program, she changed her mind and chose to move to a new school. It's about a 15min drive from our place, and she busses there every day from our neighbourhood school. She really liked her initial teacher and has been fast friends with her new BFF L since day 1. That teacher ran into some health problems, and she now has an even better long-term substitute teacher. Or should I say had, as they're now likely off school for the rest of the year in an attempt to contain COVID-19. We really miss the choir and music programs at her old school, as well as the fabulous sense of community there. She loves the new school though, as she's got a great group of close friends scattered in the 3 different Grade 4/5 split classes, and she finds the schoolwork more interesting. She did cross-country there in the fall, and she and her friends were the only grade 4 girls that joined in. She was the only one fast enough to make it to the next stage of the competition, which we were proud of. They also all signed up for volleyball, even though they can't compete for real until Grade 5.
As part of the incentive for keeping an open mind when starting at her new school, I told her if she made it through the fall term, she could get her ears pierced when we returned from vacation in Jan rather than waiting for her 10th birthday. It took us 4 weeks to get around to doing it, but we finally made it to a piercing studio 1 month before her birthday and she semi-reluctantly had them done after pestering me to let her get it done for years.
She's getting more interested in helping out at home too, and has even been known to cook for us on occasion (usually with a fair amount of help).
Her great passion in recent years has been reading. She devours books, and won't go to the washroom without ipad or book in hand. My Mom tells me this is the revenge for me for how I was as a kid. I'm thrilled that she enjoys reading as much as I do, and look forward to her sharing in some of my favourites as she grows up.
In other notes, she was about 27.8kg, 142.5cm tall at almost 10yo. We measured her accurately for once while we were at the kids clinic at the hospital for allergy testing as she developed a rash while on amoxil for a dog bite (was bitten pretty badly on the thigh by a leashed young doberman while out with Papa). She's got a dog phobia now which makes walks in the neighbourhood a little more challenging. She complained of tiny tender lumps under her nipples on 10.3., which seem to be the start of developing breast buds. I hope puberty holds off for a couple more years though, which I think it should given how skinny she is.
She's traveled the world widely with us, with a fab vacation in Australia last summer, Thailand in Jan, as well as trips to Sri Lanka, India, Germany (of course), Malaysia/Sinagpore etc. She's reasonably adventurous with the foods we eat while we're away, which is great.
And now, it's time to have some breakfast with her. I plan to keep things updated more frequently as a way of journaling during the horrors that likely await me in the next few months.
Keep safe everyone!
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