As Lockdown Starts To Ease

Here we are going into one hundred plus days of lockdown. Lockdown-ish. I mean, it’s easing considerably now, but I think most people will feel that life’s far from back to normal. The kids are still being home schooled and lots of people at the Husband’s work are still on furlough. He continues to go in, has done throughout this whole pandemic. I think for us, having my mum join our bubble has been the closest life has felt to ‘normal’. And I know it’s meant a lot to her as she had been alone for so long.

With the Husband still working full time, and with me homeschooling two primary school aged kids and then doing my best to work and find more work, the time has actually flown by. We’ve managed to get out to a National Trust and we’ve another lined up, and the kids and I have seen a couple of friends, outside of course. Over the weekend we had the Husband’s sister and her family come over and we all sat in the garden for an hour or so. We normally see each other weekly and were last together in mid-March so it was lovely to see them. I think being able to catch up with friends and family makes things feel so much better.

We are OK. We have good days and tough days. But my overriding thought is to get the kids through this as best I can. To keep them happy, keep them stimulated and to keep them safe and healthy.

When I look around at the moment, I am very conscious that everyone is living a different experience.

People say we’re all in this together, and whilst I do get that as we are all living through the strangest of times at the same time, I suspect that no one experience is the same as the next. And I am ever mindful of that. People are struggling, people might not even have had time to process all of this, people are angry, sad, numb, anxious and so many other emotions as I suspect the whole spectrum is covered. We can go through all of them just in our household within a week!

We are all living a different experience. We are all walking our own paths, and for the parents amongst us, we are doing our best to smooth the path for our kids before we really think about our own. I will endeavour to be ever mindful of this as things start to shift and people make different decisions around what they’re comfortable doing and their perceptions of this whole period.

I am no longer sure that this feels strange. We have adjusted. The kids have routines, they no longer ask me ‘what are we going to do today?’, we have no expectations that we will make any plans. The introverts in us revel in it, but the extrovert in me knows that I feel lifted when I do chat with a human older than 10 years old. This is kind of just life now, and we’re getting on with it. As things have lifted, we have changed little, though the Husband has, somewhat eagerly and desperately, booked in hair appointments for himself and Little Man – I’ll miss those huge mops of hair!

I’ve noticed that the passage of time seems to be different. A month can feel like a lifetime, the start of this pandemic feels like forever ago, and yet the days and weeks appear to fly by. Just two more weeks to the end of term here now and we are looking forward to the summer break. Our learns at this point as a family, in no particular order, or real context…

My kids don’t need any more toys. They have been home for more hours than they’ve ever been home and there are still plenty of toys up in their rooms that have not seen the light of day.

Netflix is far superior to Disney+.

There can never be enough books to satisfy us.

Little Man and Boo get on very well, and for this I’m grateful.

There comes a point when daily cream teas and regular rice pudding consumption do count as calories. ‘Tis a sad day when this realisation dawns.

Herbie is a big fan of lockdown life.

Following on from a morning spent learning about climate change, the kids and I can and want to do more for our planet.

I am always better in the sunshine.

None of us miss going shopping, but we know we’re fortunate to be able to buy so much online.

A lot of people have dogs. I’ve never seen so many dogs being walked before, and Herbie and I are out there all year round. Where did they come from??!

When you don’t go out, there’s little point in ironing. A lockdown win.

You can never have enough house plants.

So, what about you? What are your learns so far?

 

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2 thoughts on “As Lockdown Starts To Ease”

  1. Yeah, each of us has its own path…I must admit that my family is one of those who enjoyed lockdown, even 24/7 lockdown for a month when we were not allowed to leave the house! Home schooling went well after first few hard days as my 6 year old is very social person and loves going to school, but we found new routine for her 🙂
    We played lots of board games, read books, had movie nights, played some PC games, cooked and baked together and more 🙂
    There were some stressful moments work related, but still having work – hopefully in next months too, though its still very stressful…
    Thankfully we are all healthy and happy and that’s what it matters!
    I didn’t have as much ME time as I usually do, but did my best to take some time just for me 🙂
    Did quite some cleaning, rearranged some furniture and more.
    It was good lock down, thankfully. However, am looking forward for kids to go back to school in Aug, though it will be far from what it was.
    Hopefully hubby will soon go back flying too and hopefully things will go back to “normal”

    Happy summer 🙂

    1. It does sound as though you’ve enjoyed it, glad you’ve made the most of it for you and your family. I do hope the move back to school goes well for you, here’s to some sort of ‘normal’. Thanks, I hope you have a lovely summer too.

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