April 2020

Photos and videos from April can be found here.

Due to the pandemic, April was not too eventful. I'm working from home. Becky is not working per se, but doing a lot of therapy with Alex at home and handling all the boring paperwork related to Alex's therapy. And Alex is still going into the clinic for therapy sessions from 8 am to 1 pm. Most days I am at our apartment in Washingtonville, but some days I go to our house in Endwell to do some cleaning between our occasional AirBnB guest stays. All in all, we can't complain. I still have work. Becky still gets some partial income though her employer as part of a relief package. And working from home lets us be together a lot more than we were before.

Easter weekend we all spent at our house in Endwell. In the videos, you'll see Alex looking for Easter eggs in the backyard that have pieces of bagels inside. Bagels are not as festive as Cadbury eggs, but he really likes them. Plus, he has a narrow diet and rarely eats things he doesn't recognize these days including Easter candy. We had no other major festivities other than just hanging out, making food, and going on some walks outside. We also checked in with our families via video chat. Becky's little brother Nate is home, on pause from his mission in Brazil.

April weather has been a mix of nice warm days and cold rainy days. There was even some snow in the Binghamton area. Outings at parks or trails where we can walk have been a source of sanity. You'll see photos of us visiting some places around the Hudson including Long Dock Park, Bear Mountain State Park, Denning's Point, the Orange County Arboretum, and the Beacon Institute of Rivers and Estuaries that has a nice outdoor area that Alex loves to explore. There's also a video of us walking over the Hudson on a bridge that connects Poughkeepsie to Highland Falls on a windy day. 

Our church congregation does weekly meetings over video conference, which have actually turned out to work well. The bishop or one of his counselors usually shares a few words, and the messages have been really good. In talking to our families, I'm kind of surprised that their congregations aren't doing the same thing, so maybe we are an outlier in melding technology with spirituality.

Alex continues to make good progress, adding words and signs to his vocabulary, and asking more for what he wants unprompted. He knows the letters and is working on the numbers. His favorite thing to randomly say over and over is "Sheep Baa Baa Cow Moo Moo," sometimes its the first thing he says when he wakes up. He is constantly saying 'up' now, meaning he wants us to pick him up and hold him. He's not the little baby he used to be, so that exercise is tiring. It's always been a challenge to walk anywhere with him holding your hand. He either wants you to carry him, or he runs off in random directions. But he's getting better in at least walking (usually running) in one direction on a trail. There is some video of that. You'll also see some pictures of him playing with markers, which he's been into as well. 

New York City continued to be the global epicenter of the coronavirus during the month of April with thousands of new cases every day, hospitals overwhelmed, and several thousands of lives lost. That impact is felt more in Washingtonville where our apartment is than in Binghamton where our house is. In hindsight NYC should have responded and prepared sooner, even if the U.S. failed to implement testing early on. Aside from that, Governor Cuomo has demonstrated mostly good leadership that seems to be paying off as the rise in cases started to slow at the end of the month. The Governor's daily briefings are widely watched now, and he generally does a good job explaining the epidemiology, deferring to the science, and expressing condolence, encouragement, optimism and sympathy where appropriate. I appreciate that he's not trying to politicize this or spread conspiracy theories or anything like that. Meanwhile, after 3 months of this, the U.S. continues to struggle to implement any kind of coordinated testing and contact tracing response to bring the pandemic under control within our borders. States have been left to compete with one another to get the aid they need from the federal government and the supplies they need from other countries. Our apartment is close to Westpoint and Stewart International Airport, which used to be a military base and is still used for related activities. You'll see in one of the videos what looks like a military cargo plane flying in slowly, probably delivering medical supplies to be stored in the hangars there, thank goodness.

I expect May to be a better month for New York, but I'm not sure about the rest of the country where people are more spread out, but still susceptible. In any case, because of my past experience and interest in virology, I'm following the new findings and reports very closely and find it all to be fascinating.

-Rob