Posts in category: Personal

On the 10th of every month I take 10 photos.

10 photos over the course of the day that capture life as it is at that moment.  I’ve been doing this on and off for a few years now and the routine of it makes me smile.

The photos that I take are so normal, so everyday, so routine, that there are months that I struggle to take 10 of them.  I find it hard to find 10 different moments that are ‘worth’ photographing.  I push through though, because I know that a year from now those normal, everyday, routine moments won’t be the same anymore, and those photos that I take will be worth so much.

The 10th of October is a classic example of a perfectly normal day, but one that I’m glad to have captured.  It was the first full day of Rhys being stuck at home, isolating after a child in his class tested positive for the coronavirus.

We were all meant to be going out for a walk somewhere with Steve’s parents.  We’re still in local lockdown here so the only time we can get together with them is when we’re outside, somewhere we can socially distance.  With Rhys having to isolate though, Steve took Nerys for the walk and Rhys and I stayed at home.

In a way, I think it was almost for the best.  Nerys had a really lovely time with all the grown-ups’ attention on her, and some extra one on one time with her dad at the park before they headed home.

In the afternoon, once they were back home, I took my turn at getting out of the house.

I needed to pop to the chemist for a few bits and took the camera along with me to get some photos of the changing seasons along the way.  Ever since I took this photo I’ve had a song stuck in my head that we used to sing at school.

You know the one:

“Autumn days when the grass is jewelled, and the silk inside a chestnut shell.  Jetplanes meeting in the air to be refuelled.  All these thing I love so well”

I find myself singing it every autumn whenever I’m out walking in the crisp air, crunching through fallen leaves.

We’ve had some really lovely walks in the autumn sunshine (and some in the autumn rain) over the last week after starting a bit of a new routine of walking home from school.

We live about a mile and a half away from school, and normally drive, but Nerys has been asking since the start of term if we can walk now and then so we finally decided to give it a go.

It’s been a really lovely change of pace.

It gets me out in the fresh air more, gives the children more time to decompress and talk to me about their days at school, and lets them burn off some of the pent up energy from being in school all day.

For the next week now the routine will change again, with Rhys trying to do school work at home while Nerys still heads into class each day.  It’s going to be an interesting juggling act again, but I’m sure we’ll make it work as best we can.

Wish me luck though!

It finally happened.

After months and months of having at least one wobbly tooth in her mouth, the last one finally came out.

I think this possibly makes six teeth that have fallen out in the last six months.  The tooth fairy has been a very regular visitor to our house lately, we’re on first name terms with her now!

Nerys is so happy this last one is finally out though.  It’s been really hard going for her, struggling to be able to eat properly with gaps and wobbly teeth making biting and chewing really quite tricky.

So she’s all smiles now.  Gappy smiles still, but big happy ones!

Her grown up teeth at the top are just starting to come through now, so hopefully it won’t be too much longer before she can bite into whole apples again.

For now though she is just so happy that this tooth that has been hanging on in for ages has finally come out.

The thing is, she’s asked the tooth fairy each time to leave her teeth behind, so she now has a growing collection of baby teeth on the bookshelf in her bedroom.

Does anyone have any ideas for a special little box or something we could get for her to keep them in?!

I remember back at the end of March, when the schools first closed and we were all told to stay at home, thinking it would only be for a few weeks.

We were all so hopeful that Rhys would still be able to have all his friends over for a birthday party at the end of April.  We were pretty certain that things would be fairly normal again by my birthday in August.

It seemed absurd to imagine not being able to go out anywhere to celebrate Steve’s 40th in October.

And yet, here we are.

Luckily Steve didn’t want a big fuss over his birthday.  He wasn’t bothered about having a big night out to celebrate.  What was upsetting though was not being able to really spend time with his parents on the day.

The current local lockdown rules in Swansea meant that we couldn’t be with them indoors, so they popped round to garden and chatted by the back door for a bit.  Which just wasn’t really the same.  They did bring birthday cake though.  And a really lovely photobook full of pictures of Steve from the last 40 years.  A sort of photographic ‘this is your life’.

We’ve all really loved spending time looking through the book over the last few days.

There are some pictures from his childhood that I’ve seen before, and some I hadn’t.  All of them make me smile.  And it’s been fun seeing which of the children looked like him as babies.

The children were in school on the day of Steve’s birthday, so we saved his cake and presents for the afternoon when they were back home.  They had both made him cards too and were so excited to hand everything over and sing happy birthday.

It might not have been the 40th we all thought it might be back in March, but at least it’s one we’ll all remember thanks to the local lockdown.

Now we’re just keeping our fingers crossed that things improve so that at some point next year we can do something a bit special to make up for all the celebrations that have been particularly low-key this year.

I don’t know if it’s because I barely look at my calendar any more (there’s not really anything on there these days to be looking at!) but the end of the month has sort of caught me off guard.

It just seems to have come around so quickly.

September has passed in a bit of a blur as we’ve all tried to adjust to the children being back in school and all the new rules and routines that have come with that this year.

They’ve been back for almost 4 weeks now and I’m so proud of how they’ve adapted to all the changes.

I think we’ve all found this past month quite tiring though, so our weekends have generally been quite quiet so everyone can have a chance to rest and relax a bit.  We have had a few trips out to the beach though, making the most of the slightly warmer days for walks along the seafront.

The chilly weather has well and truly arrived now though, and it’s about time to pack up the sunhats and caps and dig out all our bobble hats, gloves and scarves from the airing cupboard.

I love the beach during the colder months, possibly even more than I do in the summer.  It’s so much quieter and I love wrapping up and being blasted with the sea air on those wild and windy days!

We’re in local lockdown here in Swansea, for who knows how long, so we’re not allowed to leave the area for the time being.  Honestly though, that doesn’t really make much of a difference to us, we don’t tend to leave the area that much anyway!

I am just so glad that I went to visit my family in Kent when I did back in March, because the way things are going I’m not sure when we’ll be able to get over there again.

For now though, we’ll just focus on being grateful for being where we are.

We have the beaches.  We have the parks.  We have each other.

I think October will be another quiet month of seafront walks, chilly scoots around the park and cwtching up together at home, all of which sounds pretty nice to me right now.

One day at a time.  That’s how I’m trying to take things at the moment.

Everything feels so uncertain and just when you’re getting used to things being one way they up and change again.  So I can’t try and plan.  I can’t think too far ahead to how things might be in a few weeks or months.

At the moment we’re in a local lockdown here in Swansea, and we don’t know how long it’ll be before those restrictions are lifted again.

In general the tighter restrictions don’t affect us too much as a family.  We’re not allowed to leave Swansea, which is fine, we didn’t have any trips planned.  We have to wear a mask if we go to any indoor public places, but that rule was already in place.  The pubs are closing at 10pm, but it’s not like we were out painting the town red anyway.

The one thing that does impact us though, is the fact that we can’t be part of an extended household any more.

So we’re back to spending time with my in-laws outside for the time being, rather than being able to be in each other’s houses.  At least we knew these restrictions were coming so the children were able to have a last sleepover at their house on Saturday, before they came into force on Sunday evening.

The children were also able to head back to swimming lessons this weekend, for the first time in months and months.

They had to arrive at the pool ‘beach ready’, and then wrap up in a dressing gown to head home rather than getting dry and dressed there.

I think it’s going to take me a few weeks to get in the swing of the new routine, with staggered start times and a set route in and out of the building.  We weren’t able to stay and watch either, like we normally would, so had to wait out in the car while they had their lessons.

It’s a strange new set up to get used to, but the whole thing was really well managed, and both Rhys and Nerys seemed to really enjoy being back in the water.

I would say that it was a little taste of normality for them, but that doesn’t sit quite right with me.  Because it wasn’t.  It wasn’t a normal Sunday swimming lesson.  It was like everything at the moment, almost normal.

And the children coped with it brilliantly, the same way they seem to have coped with all the changes and disruption this year has brought.

I think it is starting to take its toll though.  We’re all tired.  We all need each other that little bit more than usual.

We’re all questioning what the rest of the year will bring us.  How many other things will be almost normal, but not quite right.

I don’t want to think too much about the answers to those questions.

So, for now, I’ll just keep taking things one day at a time.

I think it’s almost time to call it.  We’ve done what we can to wring as much summer out of this year as possible, and I think it’s about time to start welcoming autumn in.

There are a few things on our summer bucket list that we didn’t manage to do, but our plan was always to move these things over to a new autumn/winter list so I don’t think the children will be too disappointed that we didn’t tick everything off.

And some of the things on the list, like spot a double rainbow, were perhaps a little optimistic!

We did manage to tick a few final things off last week, including having a bbq.  It’s not something we really do because Nerys has never enjoyed typical bbq food like burgers or sausages.

Last week though Steve convinced her to try a burger again, and she loved it.

So I think we might actually get to have a few more bbqs next summer.  Who knows, she might also like sausages or hot dogs as well by then!

Now I need to sit down with the children and decide if we do want to do another list for autumn/winter, and if so what sort of things will be on that list.

We’ll have to keep it all quite simple again, with activities we can do at home or out at the park and the beach, because so many of the things we’d normally do over the next few months are already being cancelled.

I’m hoping that if we can come up with fun, seasonal things to do together we can create some great memories for the rest of the year, like we did over the summer.

So it might be sparklers and hot chocolate in the back garden, instead of walking to the big firework display, and driving around to see the lights on people’s houses instead of watching the Christmas parade in town.

It might even be putting together their own little Christmas concert in the living room if the school one doesn’t go ahead which, honestly, is more than likely going to be the case.

It won’t be the same, but I think we can still find all sorts of things to do as a family that will make us smile and see us through these next few months when so much feels uncertain.

The last month has been mostly about change.  New starts and new routines.  And I’ve been amazed at how well the children have adapted.

They’ve headed back to school with new teachers (who they didn’t get to meet at the end of last year) and separated from some of their closest friends.

The classrooms look different, the school run is different, nothing about their school day is quite the same as it was before.

But they’ve adjusted so well.

They both love their new teachers and are happy to be with the friends that they’re still in class with.  And spending a bit of time apart after all the time spent at home together means they look forward to seeing each other at the end of the day, with new stories to tell each other.

Of course now they’ve also shared lovely back-to-school germs with each other so they’ve been back at home together the last 2 days!  It’s just a cold but we’re erring on the side of caution and keeping them home to get well instead of sending them in to potentially pick up even more germs.

Luckily I managed to get some pre-cold photos of the two of them together for the siblings project when we went to the beach for sunset a week or so ago.

I hope they never get too cool to hug like this for photos for me!

And I hope that once they’re back in school we can go a bit longer than a week before the next cold gets us.  I really don’t know what this term holds for them though.  I have a feeling it may end up being lots of disruption if the last week is anything to go by.

I’m hoping for the best, but already starting to think of contingency plans for keeping learning going at home if they do come down with more bugs in the coming weeks and months.

How has the return to school gone for your family so far?