Posts in category: Personal

Time means nothing.

I have lost all concept of how much time is passing and what day it is and where on earth has the last month gone?!

I would’ve thought that time would seem to drag a bit during this bizarre lockdown, but it feels like yesterday that I was writing my me and mine post for March.  And now here we are at the end of April.

The days themselves are a strange contradiction of time too , I’m finding.

We’re so busy with work and school work and keeping the house running and trying to keep up with friends and family and planning the best time of day to do the food shop and remembering online cubs sessions and everything in between.

But at the same time things are slower.

Mornings are calmer, with time for the children to spend with Steve without us all rushing around; something that never happens on normal school days.

We have time to make bread, not rushing to get something baked but hours at home to leave dough to prove on the worksurface.

Our days are full but flexible, so we can spend an hour walking in the woods in the middle of the afternoon on a Monday which just feels like such a luxury.

We all have work to do, but with no timetables to follow or strict office hours to stick to our days at the moment have a flexibility to them that is just what we need.

It is all a bit groundhog-day-like at times though.  Without the routine of after-school clubs and swimming lessons and the like.

The only thing that is really keeping me on track with what day of the week it is is bin day, and even then I have to check that the neighbours have put their bags out before we do ours!

I’m just going to keep rolling with it though, not sure what else we can do!

After all, time means nothing.  Jeremy Bearimy baby.

We’ve crossed off another box on the pandemic bingo card.

We’d already baked banana bread and normal bread, signed up for Disney + and filled our windowsills with little plant pots hoping to grow some vegetables and herbs.

Now we can cross off having a birthday while in lockdown.

Rhys turned 9 last week, which I’m still struggling to get my head around.  I know us parents always say it, but only because it’s true.  The time has just flown by and I feel like I’m struggling to catch up.

All of a sudden this little boy of mine is not so little.

He coped amazingly with his birthday not being quite what he’d hoped it would be.

The birthday party he’s talked about for months will have to take place who-knows-when in the future, and he’s been brilliant about that.  We’ve tried to find a balance of talking to the children about the coronavirus and why we’ve all had to change so many things in our lives because of it, while trying not to stress them out or scare them over how serious the situation is.

I think Rhys has taken this on board and understands why we can’t have all his friends over to the house at the moment, and is happy with the knowledge that he will get to have his party at some point.

Party aside, he ended up having a better birthday than he would have normally because he wasn’t in school!

He managed to get all the work that school set for the week done by Thursday so we all took most of the day off on Friday to celebrate with him.

We decorated the lounge for him the night before so he found bunting and balloons and a pile of presents and cards to open in the morning.

Then we made the most of the sunshine and went for a walk/scoot through the local parks in the afternoon.

He’d requested pizza for tea so we all had that with garlic pizza bread on the side and a homemade chocolate birthday cake for pudding.

The one thing that he did miss was getting to see all his friends, which obviously he would’ve been able to do if school was open.

So I asked the mums of his little group of friends to send me a photo or video message from the boys for Rhys to know they were thinking of him.  And oh my word did they deliver.

All the boys sent video messages that were so thoughtful and funny and just incredibly lovely, I got really emotional watching them all.  Rhys absolutely loved them all, and was so excited to see all his friends wishing him a happy birthday.

I’m going to edit all the video clips together into one so that we can keep it as a little memento of his strange, special lockdown birthday.

Has anyone in your family had a birthday during this pandemic?  How did you end up celebrating?

We’re heading into our third week of doing (trying to do) school work at home.

Last week actually didn’t go too badly, all things considered.  Nerys was very keen and ticked off all the different pieces of work that school sent through for her.

Our school have been brilliant through all this.  We get sent work through each Monday, normally one piece of work for each subject that they cover at school.  It always comes with the instruction though, to do as much or as little of it as we want.  And I really appreciate the fact that they’re not putting pressure on the children, or us parents, to get it all done.

The piece of work that Nerys was most excited about was science.  We picked an experiment to try out, from a video that school sent us, and then she sat at the computer and typed up what she’d done and what happened.  I think her typing and computer skills will really come on in the next few weeks, because she’s so keen to learn all about it.

She’s also enjoyed spending time in the garden over the last few weeks, helping dig up all the beds ready to (hopefully) put some plants that we’ve got starting to grow on the windowsills at the moment.

Rhys has helped out in the garden a bit too, and was quite excited to try out some of the garden tools.

He doesn’t tend to last as long as Nerys though before he heads back inside to go on the computer or draw pictures.

He’s really started to love art and drawing lately, and it’s amazing watching what he comes up with in his pictures.

One of his pieces of work last week for school was to create a poster about staying safe outside.  We talked about how he could adapt this topic to make it relevant to life at the moment with the coronavirus.  So he drew a poster with advice on staying 2 metres away from other people when you go out, washing your hands before and after you go out, and not touching things/picking things up.

He came up with the idea of putting each piece of advice in a cloud shape, or in one instance a hot air balloon shape, and then planned on attaching the rainbow he’s made to go in our window underneath the poster so it looks like a pretty sky scene.

I love that he can do this sort of creative work as part of his learning, to balance out the more formal bits of work he has to do with his maths and his English comprehension.

He’s found it harder than Nerys to get going with his school work at home, and I’ve struggled at times with finding a balance between pushing him to do it and not wanting to put too much pressure on and stress him out.

The thing I’m trying to remember is that no one knows what they’re doing at the moment.  There’s no right or wrong way to be doing any of this, so we’ll just keep plodding on, do our best and take as many breaks as we need to to keep everyone happy.

How’s it all going in your house, if you’re doing school work at home with your children?

I’m starting to completely lose track of time.

I can’t believe it was just a month ago that I was writing about world book day, Rhys’ school residential trip, and a lovely scoot around the park.  It feels like so much longer ago that all those things were happening.

And it seems so odd that there are no signs at all in last month’s siblings post that everything was about to change.

I think I was in denial about how serious things were about to get, this time a month ago, so didn’t mention anything about the coronavirus in that post.  Now though, there’s no getting away from it.

We’re now into the fourth week of the children being home from school after they were all closed to try and control the spread of the virus.  It’s been an incredibly surreal few weeks so far, with those moments when everything seems normal and then it all hits you again, out of the blue.

I think the warm, sunny weather has been a big factor in how surreal it all feels.  It’s really created that sort of summer bank holiday feeling, which is in such stark contrast to the seriousness of the wider situation going on.

I am thankful for it though.  Thankful for glorious clear blue skies and warm days to get out for a family walk each day.  I’m also so grateful that my children are old enough to understand why the play parks are closed, so we can walk through the other parks without them getting upset about not being able to go on the swings and slides.

Rhys and Nerys have both been happy to walk, run, and sometimes scoot around the local parks together, and we’ve talked about the fun we’ll have back in the play parks when they do open up again.

I think they’re both starting to miss all their friends from school but they’ve been getting on together really well, for the most part, considering how much time they’re spending together at the moment.

I’ve seen a few people talk about how our children will remember this time in their lives when they’re older, and I really hope my children hold on to all the positives that come out of it.  The extra time spent together.  The later-than-normal bedtimes and late afternoon family walks.  The fun of using zoom to see school friends and join in with cubs sessions.  The randomness of Easter spent just the four of us, doing egg hunts in the garden, egg and spoon races in the carpark and our own version of the Easter bonnet parade they normally do at school.

I don’t know where we’ll be in another month’s time, which is a really strange thing to accept.

A month feels like ages and no time at all, all at once, and I’m not sure how much better the coronavirus situation will get in that time.  I’m not convinced the children will be back at school to see the end of term out.

So I suppose all we can do, with all this uncertainty, is keep doing what we’ve been doing.  Keep juggling.  Keep trying to bring as much normality into our days as we can, while also kind of embracing the weirdness of the whole situation.

Has it really only been three weeks since the schools shut?

That last day at school feels like a lifetime ago.  Even then things were definitely not normal, but this situation we’re in now with all of us at home feels so surreal.

I love all the things that people are doing to try and create some sense of normality for our children though.

Our school would normally do an Easter bonnet parade at the end of term, with the children in the infants making hats at home then showing them off for everyone, parading around the playground.

It’s been a tradition my children have really loved over the years.  Around this time 2 years ago I shared photos of Rhys and Nerys in their hats for a Living Arrows post, and those hats are still going strong now.

So when our lovely PTA sent a message out about trying to do a virtual bonnet parade we were all over it.

We dug out their old Easter hats which are still in surprisingly good shape.

Then the children added a few more stickers and flowers, and rearranged a few bits to freshen things up, before we popped outside to take a few photos.

The idea is that all the families who want to be involved will send photos and video clips of their children in their Easter bonnets over to the lovely mum who’s organising everything.  She’s then going to put them all together into a little video montage for us all to enjoy.

It is such a lovely idea, and the children were so excited to be involved.  Especially Rhys who, now he’s in the juniors, wouldn’t normally do a parade this year.

I can’t wait to see the end result when it’s all done!

These are such strange times we’re living through, and I am so thankful for all the people out there organising these kinds of things to keep our children connected and having fun together.

Rhys actually did his first online cubs session last week too which he really enjoyed.

I wasn’t sure how well it would work to be honest, but the leaders were brilliant at keeping everything from descending into chaos!  The meeting was done on zoom and they managed to coordinate the cubs making rockets from toilet rolls and cardboard at home.

What was really lovely actually was that Nerys could get involved too.  She watched what Rhys and the cubs were doing, then made her own rocket when they’d finished.  She’s so excited to pop on the next zoom meeting with them to show everyone!

Have you done many classes or clubs like this online in the last few weeks?

I have a feeling this week will be an interesting one.

We’re into the third week of all of us being at home, and the first week of trying to fit school work into the juggle of it all.

Over the last week we’ve just tried to keep things as, relatively, normal as we can.

We’ve not really been out other than to pick up food for us and Steve’s parents from the supermarkets.  We tied one of these local supermarket visits in with a walk to the local park, so Steve and the children could get a bit more fresh air and exercise while I had the rather surreal experience of shopping.

The children have been so understanding about not being able to go to the swings, and Rhys was happy to just practice his yo-yo skills while they were outside.

That’s what the green string is in his photo.

He had a yo-yo a while ago and never quite got the hang of it, so he is so proud of himself for mastering the skill with this one he was given at Christmas.

Maybe with the extra time at home now we can work on some new tricks with it, there must be tons of video tutorials on YouTube he could learn from!

In other exciting news, Nerys lost another tooth last week.

It had been wobbly for a while and she kept questioning why it was taking so long to fall out.  Then all of a sudden, out it came!

It took her a day or two to adjust to this big gap in her smile, but I think she rather likes it now.

To be honest, it took me a day or two to adjust to it too.  She just looks so different now.

What’s really funny though is that a handful of children in her class at school have also lost the same tooth in the last week or two.  We have a WhatsApp group for us parents and last night it was filled with gorgeous photos of gappy smiles.

Through all of this craziness I’m so pleased that we have the technology to be able to stay in touch with everyone.  I have a feeling I might be relying on the mums at the other end of that group over the next few weeks while I try and get to grips with doing school work at home!

I think it’s safe to say that things have changed quite a bit since I wrote last month’s me and mine post.

It feels so strange thinking that it was only a month ago that we had a house full of girls celebrating Nerys’ birthday.  Only a month ago we were complaining about not getting out to the beach as much as we’d have liked thanks to all the storms.

And now here we are, limited to walks close to home.  Being asked to only leave our house for essential shopping and to not have any physical contact with anyone outside our household.

I don’t really have the words to describe it all yet.

Things feel incredibly surreal.  I don’t think I’m fully processing what’s happening yet; not taking it all on board properly as a sort of defence mechanism.

What I do know is this.

Right now I am incredibly grateful for my family.  For the man I chose to marry 12 years ago who is right by my side to reassure me when bits of reality sink in and my anxiety bubbles to the surface.  And for my children who are coping amazingly with this weird new situation.

That’s not to say we’re not winding each other up or that we’re loving every single minute of being on top of one another all. day. long.

We’re absolutely muddling through here, working out how to juggle everything with all of us suddenly at home together.  We’ve all cried, we’ve all shouted, we’re all feeling that tiredness that comes with trying to process something completely out of our normal experiences.

But through all of that, I am so grateful that they’re here with me.