Greetings,

These are certainly interesting times. It’s been a minute since I’ve written, so I figured I would play catch up.

We’ve been hunkering down in the house for the past 3 weeks, with limited opportunities to go places for obvious COVID-19 reasons.

I’ve just completed 3 straight weeks of working from home. It would have been very risky for me to continue to keep going in to work having triplets that were born 10.5 weeks early with under-developed lungs. Contracting a cold is hard enough on them and they stay sick longer, so a respiratory disease of this nature would be very tough on them. Out of an abundance of caution, it made sense to not put them at risk unnecessarily.

3 days into it I took over my “oldest” daughter Michaela’s room as my new office. With triplets that have cabin fever, a door and the pictured headset are ESSENTIAL.

I have very good internet connectivity, and once I’m on the network at work, I have multiple ways to stay productive. Access to multiple desktops, exactly as if I were physically in the office. Working from home has been interesting. It would be great if the kids were at school, but that wasn’t our reality as the school closed down for the rest of the academic school year despite hopes of having it reopen after spring break. With them around the house all day and generally confined to the backyard and driveway, it can get pretty noisy.

They don’t really understand (and why would they) what is really going on. They miss their teachers and classmates, and even their play dates. Their teachers apparently miss them, too. One left a nice note at our doorstep this week:

Just goes to show you the impression they’ve left on folks in such a short time in school. They are definitely ready for kindergarten, and will switch over to their assigned school a short distance from the house. Rocklin is home for the foreseeable future, and most likely until I retire. The roots are taking hold!

We’re as prepared as we can be, given the circumstances. When I first saw how bad this was getting, I gave my wife direction to go grocery shopping in a big way before the madness commenced, and she stocked up. No expense was spared, and the overflow of necessities were stored in the garage away from prying hands. We also stocked up on the standard meds as they just come down with stuff no matter what in addition to it being allergy season:

Keeping the cabin fever at bay has been tough. They tend to feed off of one another so the house has looked like a war zone most days:

We’ve had a minor cold make its way through each child, starting with Michaela, then moving to Emma (who came down with an ear infection requiring antibiotics as a result of it, and finally rounding off the ordeal with Christopher, who can’t seem to stay out of his sister’s faces.

Needless to say, as the pandemic worsened around us, Grandma stepped up to the plate and made nice masks for everyone.

Along the way, Emma lost her first tooth (she was the first to get teeth as well).

There have been no shortage of cute moments to capture:

The severity of the COVID-19 pandemic became clear when the playgrounds started to shut down:

In conclusion, we are good on this end. We hope that everyone stays safe and sane as we collectively weather this storm on our way to a somewhat cloudy, but undoubtedly new normal.

On another note, if you’re looking for a great read, don’t forget my book!

Cheers,

M.