4 y.o. has invented the morning game of "giant ground sloth" where we lie under his duvet quietly, pretending that we're in our burrows. He might be a genius!

Partially posting anecdotes & pics etc to cheer myself up during these uncertainty times.

Also, we'd been out of the office for parental leave for kid #2, and had only had them in childcare for a week when work closed. It's very minor in the scheme of things, but I'm fairly sick of being home.

Just going to make this thread kid things, so folks can mute it if they want to. Personally, I'm enjoying the pics of peoples walks, art, & bread.

We watched My Neighbor Totoro for the first time, such a good movie. And drew some pics for kid $1 to colour

Today: wildflower walk (also known as kid sprints away while I take a pic) & and harvesting some of our last avocados.

Any recommendations of a beginners guide to NorCal wildflowers?

This personalized news content is getting to be a bit too much. Did they see me losing it at kid #1 running around our house naked this morning?

Today's sanity-saving device: Pirate adventures by Putah creek

Today's moment of peace.

Rainy day walk & slender salamander

Pirate king & Putah creek starting to flood.

Black walnut (& mistletoe) from today's walk. Trying to use this time to get a little better at NorCal botany.

and when I say get better at botany, I mean plug plant pics into iNaturalist to help id & then try desperately to remember their names.

Gopher snake warning us to keep our social distance on today's walk.

Kid at work in the marginal trees, hope he avoids the full ARG!

From today's walk: Watching tree swallows & a baby turtle

Turtle was about 1.5 inches long & adorable. (I don't know if it was a Western Pond Turtle or the invasive red-eared slider.)

Apparently, he was a western pond turtle, so glad we rescued him from the path and put him closer to the river.

All our walks have been very quiet, but we saw absolutely no one on today's rainy walk except 3 tiny slender salamanders

Today: Out splashing in gutters & rescuing earthworms from puddles between rainstorms

out searching for frogs. Saw a couple but mostly just heard them calling [ https://gcbias.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/frogs_davis.m4a ]

New pictures for kid #1's wall. There's a dinosaur one as well. He loves big cats & sharks.

Testing the limits of his boots, looking for fish. Black walnut & wild cucumber (manroot) climbing cottonwood.

He also saw his first skunk (from a reasonable distance).

The kid told me today that he wanted to go catch bugs rather than have hot chocolate. A high point on what's been a pretty tough week. (He had his hot chocolate after we spent an hour in the garden.)

Yolo county roadside botany, w. kid to give baby some quiet nap time. (mules ears, mimulus + ? caterpillar, ithuriel's spear)

A preschooler with a full-sized rake is a good lesson in social distancing

Hadn't expected the 3rd degree about my claims to have heard hopping in our back garden overnight, but luckily kid #1 is mostly satisfied by the physical evidence of eggs.

Looking for insects and fungi on a quiet Easter Sunday morning walk in @UCD_Arboretum. So glad for fact that it is still open, nice to see people using it responsibly (at least while we were there).

The oak grove area is one of our favourite places in the @UCD_Arboretum, and reasonably quiet first thing in the mornings (especially on weekdays).

Sorry again for the self-indulgent thread, feel free to mute it. Cheers me up to post the good things that are happening, as days at home with young kids are a constant emotional roller coaster.