Monster post warning.
So the first couple weeks were overwhelming. When would this end? How was I supposed to work all day with the kids constantly interrupting? Was the house ever NOT going to be a mess? Is school...over? Is life...over? I admit, my stress level was really high and if you've ever had tension headaches, you know that they laugh at any OTC meds and then persist. I had some bad days. My sister put it the best way and I love how spot on her points were. She said the problem is, any moment of the day could be spent on one of 4 things:
1) House needs - dishes, laundry, mopping, general tidying. The constant flow of stuff and things that need to be cleaned and put away. I personally can't function is a messy and disorganized house but fighting this, when you have four people that share four walls, 24 hours a day, often seems futile.
2) Work (like, our actual jobs that pay us)
3) Our children: engaging them, playing with them, giving them our undivided attention whilst thinking about numbers 1 and 2
4) Self-care (exercising, quiet time, or anything that is focused on ourselves. It is #4 on this list for a reason because it almost always comes last, even though it's critical)
Once the struggle was defined in those terms, I learned to let go pretty quickly because you can't do those 4 things at one time. No one can, and no one is asking you to except yourself. So there was that. And I'll also admit, there was an underlying ease in the fact that we were not supposed to be anywhere, see anyone, do anything. We were home, and then home, and then home some more. And so was everyone else. There was no fear of missing out, no "everyone else has plans, is out doing XYZ, being productive/having fun/whatever." Pretty much everyone we knew took the stay at home order very seriously, so there were no hard feelings about not seeing neighbors or friends. We were all in the same boat. Or actually, all in separate boats on the same ocean. ?. Whatever. It looked like this.
Month 1: March 13 - April 13, 2020
I'll preface this by saying, I did what the experts told me to do and made up a nice daily schedule. Just because we were all home didn't mean everything was going down the tubes. No no, we would be civilized. There would be a set time for snack, screen time, forced outdoor exercise, and designated periods for reading and other wholesome activities like workbooks. I even printed it and put it on the fridge.
It was great, I was great, everything was great. We totally did it and made it all the way to the halfway mark on Day 1. If you refer to the above, the boys got the iPads at 1:30 pm and that proved to be my demise. I needed that time to actually work, they were so quiet, so we skipped reading and then ran late and before I knew it, buh bye Daily Schedule.
In its place though, a lot of fine things happened :) Besides Alex turning 6 which was right away (
already documented, thankssss), there was some:
50% shirtless Lego building
Family fitness
Hopscotch (before playgrounds closed)
50% shirtless mini billiards
Ninja training
Acorn crafts
I'll let you caption this one:
Like, what the.
But then, more hopscotch
Tennis (before they took the nets down)
Cornhole
More Legos
Slot cars
Chess, lots of it! In these first ones they are playing a friend via Facetime :)
More tennis (after the nets were taken down)
Some learning
Puzzles
And it randomly snowed.
I hit my 200th ride on my Peloton
We explored the woods around our house on a few separate occasions
Became pen pals
And generally, things to keep us busy. Games, old Halloween costumes, stuff with wheels, house and tree work, and eventually we got so bored we started walking the neighbor's dog.
On March 25, Natick launched remote learning/online school. It was huge - it gave the kids their teachers back and little did they know, they would not see their classmates in person again for the rest of the year.
And so began 9 weeks of Zoom and Google Meets and Google Hangouts and Google Classroom and Facetime and Seesaw and Epic and Raz Kids and Freckle and all the electronic and online platforms and apps.
Month 2 up next...
