One might ask how it is that I spent the entire quarantine not blogging. As there should be a plethora of material. My official line is "well behaved children rarely make for interesting blogging" and I'm sticking with it. 

In truth, it's been pleasant and fun to have so much downtime. By the end of April the novelty had worn off. But the end of May, both Baby and Baba were demanding to return to soccer. Because I controlled that. X-Man has been fretting about trick or treating already. 

The quarantine had clarified how absolutely necessary a larger house is for the sanity of us all. Our pre-quarantine lives were extremely busy. At least twice a month there was a three hour, one way, commute for soccer. Even the "local" games would be an hour away. For the young kids, their activities were much more local, but every weekend had activities. So the father figure and I were gone for the majority of every weekend. During the school day, there would be a good chunk of the day when just Mac and Cinco were home with me. But come shut down, during the rainy spring, we realized we really were living on top of each other. 

So of course, the reasonable approach, just months from taking on college tuition payments, is to increase our mortgage payments significantly. Oh and Mac went ahead and jumped on the braces train because.....why not? 

So that's quarantine life. Boring and crowded. And spendy.

D'Garebear thrived during quarantine. The lack of activities meant an increase of attention on him. And that suited him just fine. He repaid his fans by increasing his talents and mobility. Cinco turned seven during the lock down, so the experience of watching a newborn grow and mature was a fairly unfamiliar experience for the siblings as a whole. Even Baba and Baby were surprised to see how young D'Garebear was when he figured out how to garner attention, whether it was fake crying or squawking. X-Man and Cinco had precious little baby experience and found each new development fascinating. And also necessary to fight over who saw what first, for whom D'Garebear was performing and who D'Garebear likes more. (hint, it's whoever is giving D'Garebear whatever he wants in the moment.)

D'Garebear has started to object loudly when ever I leave the house. At first I thought it was a long delayed separation anxiety, as I hadn't actually left him much in the previous months. Any sort of jingle of keys and he'd start bellowing, and chasing me down as quickly as one can on all fours. I tried to distract him by taking him upstairs, but he was wise to my ways. He'd stand at the large living room window crying as I left. But, then he started reacting this way when anyone left, not just mom. Even if they were just getting something from the car, or getting the mail. It seemed that D'Garebear had rejected the quarantine that had been imposed on him since birth and become quite the social butterfly. 

Indeed, today I finally made the connection. D'Garebear does love the leave the house. Because he misses woman in masks fawning all over him. He had nine weeks of personalized attention and was loath to give it up. When he discovered that leaving the house opens up all sorts of mostly older women, wearing masks, to tell him how cute, smart and wonderful he is....well he's not one to turn adulation down. And he's back to his happy place. 

He makes it worth their while. He's friendly until they look, and then he bats his large eyes at them presenting an image of innocent wonder. He's still bald as Buddha which makes him appear to be younger than he is. So then he seems amazingly advanced and that warrants even more cooing and ahhing. 

Meanwhile I'm telling him to stop trying to eat the shopping cart, now flavored with bleach. So of course this is soul crushing for the boy, and his large eyes and protruding lower lip is basically a bat signal to the grandmas out there. He rewards their attention by offering them items from our cart. Often while I am desperately searching for various necessities like Clorox wipes. And ignoring him, which he is not pleased with. 

And when I turn to check on him, D'Garebear breaks into his favorite game, and a new one to me. It's called "Pull mom's mask off and shove it in your mouth. Or at least lick as much of it as possible first. And bonus points if you then drop it on the floor." This is a great crowd pleaser. Again, mom is not amused. But I'm not bored that's for sure.