If there’s one downside to this new computer, it would be this – it is a desktop and therefore stuck upon its desk. Now don’t get me wrong; it’s exactly the one I’ve wanted for a long time. I love it. It’s just, we’ve had to change around some sleeping arrangements lately and my computer in is the room MJ is now sleeping in. This means I cannot use it at night, for fear of disturbing him. Also, with the “quarantine school,” I am unable to use it during the day because I am otherwise occupied with the four kids.

I am currently drowning in worksheets and busy work, but I would gladly take that over the copious amounts of work that has been assigned to my children via devices. Am I the only one bothered by how much work is expected to be done electronically? I mean, it would be one thing to submit work electronically. I was a pro at that by the time I was done with college. However, my children are expected to do hours of lessons through gaming.

I am all for making learning fun, but telling my children they must learn through this medium just doesn’t work for me. If MJ gets too much screen time, regardless of the content, he’s, well…a jerk. He yells at his sisters, at me…It’s just no good. Whenever there are breaks from school, especially summer, I make screen time something he can only do on weekends and for limited bursts of time. (I would like to make it clear that what I am referring to as screen time involves handheld electronics, ie something you do on your lap.)

So now I struggle to modify the already modified lesson plans of their teachers, trying to make sure they are not behind by the time school resumes.

On a lighter note, last night at dinner, Q started telling some awful jokes. And by awful I don’t mean “dad” jokes or “punny” ones, I mean jokes that make no sense whatsoever. Then she was getting really confused as to why CJ and I weren’t laughing. Eventually we ended up laughing at just how outrageously bad they were compounded with her AMAZING delivery.

At this time, she decided that whoever was the first to laugh had to tell the next joke. It was quite funny and we all had a good laugh once we started really going. CJ and I discovered pretty quickly though that we were grossly unprepared for such a game. For some reason, every single child-friendly joke we knew decided to leave us and kept our number of turns limited. I think we were only able to come up with about a half dozen between us. I took this as a person failure as my grandfather is the king of these type of jokes and even writes the funnies for our local gazette. He would be so ashamed.

My personal favorite from Q’s arsenal tonight: What do you get when you put ketchup in your drink? Something gross.

You know you laughed a little too. 🙂