Quarantined!

I had intended to run another (and final? possibly penultimate) "Font Friday" installment today, but life got away from over the past two weeks... because Son One was quarantined!

Last Monday we got word that one of his daycare instructors had tested positive for COVID-19, so the whole daycare had to be shut down for two weeks so all students and staff could quarantine. He's shown no symptoms, so we're not really worried... but this does mean that he has to spend two weeks at home when my wife spends most of her time tethered to an infant. So on days where I work from home, I work in small bits while spending much of time time trying to keep Son One entertained, and especially getting him outside where possible. My goals of getting work back to my students promptly this semester-- out the window right at the start of week two! (On the other hand, he Zoombombed three of my four Friday classes last week. I wonder how he'll do this week?)

So no time to do a deep dive on the new logo used on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novels after the series ended. Instead, here are some cute Son One stories:

• 
  We went walking one day-- he was riding his toy tractor-- and were going down a parallel street to ours when he saw a kid playing with trucks on the driveway. (The other kid was two, six months younger than him.) In his classic mode, he began insisting those were his trucks. We moved on, but he suddenly began insisting that he had a digger, and he hopped off his tractor to drive his imaginary digger around on the sidewalk. We resumed walking eventually (I carried the tractor because he didn't want to ride it anymore), but he held his hand out, palm up, to carry the digger, and I soon realized he was holding both hands thus, because the other one had a loader in it. When we crossed the road, he would touch his hands together, and it dawned on me that he was putting both trucks in the same hand so he could hold my hand with the empty one! He eventually did resume riding the tractor... but without holding onto the steering wheel so that he could continue to carry his digger and his loader!
  
• He likes to refer to himself and his brother as "brothers"; like, he'll give the baby some Duplo and then declare "Brothers are sharing Duplo." I think it's pretty funny when he refers to himself as "this brother" and the baby as "that brother": "This brother is eating egg noodles, and that brother is eating milk."
• 
  One of the things that drives me crazy is that though he always enjoys going outsideide, you really have to cajole him outside in the first place almost every time. One time I did it by telling him he could bring his "Mama Duck" along; she rode along in his pocket.
  
• I helped him swaddled one of his Star Trek baby toys; he promptly held it up to his chest and because walking around going "sss sss sss" in imitation of the way I shush the baby. He already knows the 5 S's!
  
• Him to me, unprompted while eating yogurt for dinner: "I'm just a kid who eats yogurt."

It's been exhausting and, um, I am excited for him to go back to daycare so that the house can look slightly less like a Duplo bomb has gone off in it (actually, we are pretty good about cleaning up the Duplo every night; it's the cookbooks in random places on the floor that are obnoxious), but the past 6-8 weeks have really seen some big jumps in his abilities with language and with imaginative play, and it has been a delight to watch.