I've been working harder than ever these past three weeks at home, accounting my time in 15 minute intervals in order to be able to claim work time. So the kids have been mostly free-ranged, i.e. on screens, when they aren't sleeping, which they have been doing a lot more. And the quiet house is more susceptible to working from home, so we haven't had much incentive to wake them up early, especially with all our looming deadlines. The advantage of online schoolwork is that they can do it whenever they want, and we told them that as long as they complete assignments by their deadline, I'm not going to be nagging about how much time they are dedicating to school. I have deadlines of my own.
But even though I had two deadlines on Monday, I was sitting in my younger son's room sorting Legos by color on Saturday morning. I had given him two weeks ago, while trying to come up with something to get him off the screen, the "requirement" of building an old 900-piece castle before purchasing him a new large set. But the pieces of that old set were, of course, mixed with all the other sets the boys have acquired throughout the years. Thousands of pieces were covering the floor of his bedroom, which I had intended to vacuum on Saturday.
Even with a nifty Lego size sorter, the task felt overwhelming at a time when the world is overwhelming enough. So we sat on the floor for 4 hours, bagging Legos by color, pulling out pieces that were obviously for the castle set, and watching Disney top 10 lists because that is all he wants to discuss at the moment. And that was fine with me. I didn't want to think about the world, mounting schoolwork, or my Monday deadlines either.
