I’ve been writing things down since here and there since the coronavirus really started to impact our lives. I’ve shared some of this as snippets on Instagram but if you’re interested in reading more, feel free to read through these lightly-edited words. As this essay says, I’m craving to see what people are thinking/doing/feeling through all of this. Maybe it’s helpful to use my own still, small voice to give some words to what we’re all going through at this moment in time. You can find Week One here.
Sunday, March 22nd
“If I’m going to be successful at homeschooling I need paperclips,” is a thing I say now.
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Monday, March 23rd
We started homeschooling today. Technically the governor has excused kids from school through this week, but we couldn’t go another week without a schedule. “Are we doing school today?” Brooklyn asked every single day last week.
We sat at the kitchen table and Nolan actually got really into the letter and number worksheets I found for him and Caden and Brooklyn enjoyed having their attention diverted into creating their own little stories with sight words and working though math worksheets. Those two thrive on that sort of stuff. So we did school for a few hours. Science was a booklet about the solar system. Then we watched the StoryBots episode about planets, so. And library, which would have been their “special” of the day, was listening to the Story Pirates podcast while they played, which basically meant they just played because not a single one of us had any clue what we just listened to when it was all done. It was fine.
I’m tired. It’s frustrating to see all the memes about how “bored” people are. I mean, a lot of them are really funny (this sock puppet eating cars and this marble race that I became significantly invested in gave me LIFE) but also, I would LOVE to be bored right now. I would love the time and the space to sit with a book, or with my knitting, or with nothing at all but myself to figure out how I really am feeling about all this.
As it is, I feel like I’m go-go-going just as much as usual, if not more, with three kids now home all day. They still wake up at the same time (read: far too early) and need meals at regular intervals (And snacks! So may snacks!) and need supervision and they bicker and they talk so much (the talking make it stop) and I just spent part of my evening printing out some more math activities for tomorrow and it’s fine! It’s going to make tomorrow run so much smoother! This is all exhaustingly fine.
And because we’re living the epitome of both/and right now, I’m both exhausted by having children around and so absolutely glad they are here. They bring a sense of normalcy and schedule and routine and silliness to the day that helps so much right now. If I could choose between having this happen with children around or without I would still emphatically choose with.
But also I wish I could drink a glass of wine or three and sit and take some time to myself.
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Tuesday, March 24th
I’m tired of seeing things to the effect of “maximize your quarantine”. Can we just...not? Even leisure seems to have been co-opted into this big thing to DO. Are you binge watching/learning how to knit/baking sourdough/sewing masks/recording a new podcast? Simultaneously?
In a similar vein, I’m tired of all the “Isn’t it great that we’re not racing all over and bringing our kids to activities and things all the time?”
Well, no. My kids LOVE their activities. To be fair, my kids are still fairly young. I understand that parents with older kids might be glad to not be running somewhere every. single. night. But we had activities just twice a week: dance on Tuesdays and gymnastics on Thursdays. My kids love those things. And baseball was supposed to start up within the next month. Caden and Brooklyn have been counting down the days until they’re back on the field and Nolan is so looking forward to his own first year of t-ball. Will they even have a season this year? Will the activities I’ve signed them up for over the summer even...ever...happen? Will they have a dance recital?
Of course, I don’t have any answers. I’m out a solid $700 (which I’m sure we would be reimbursed) for activities I don’t know that we’ll ever get to do.
I didn’t see their activities as a burden. They brought us so much joy.
To build off the both/and of yesterday, I’m both sad they don’t have their activities right now AND we’re enjoying being home. It is nice to not have to rush in the morning or eat dinner at 4:30 so we get to gymnastics on time. Our evenings are completely free now but so are the rest of our days.
Still, if I could choose, I’d prefer activities.
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Wednesday, March 25th
Today was maybe the hardest one since it all began. It’s rainy and gloomy and the third day in a row of doing school with the kids and I don’t know, I can’t exactly put my finger on what it was about today, but it’s just exhausting.
Though, as I texted to my friends, just wait a day or an hour and I know I’ll feel differently. The emotional roller coaster is real.
It’s exhausting in a way that having three kids under three—or, to be more honest, having two three-year-olds and a one-year-old because that was so much harder—was exhausting. There’s no time or space to think and it’s loud and there are so many needs to be met and it’s loud and I just want space to think, to be and also, it’s loud. It reminds me so much of that time, before Kindergarten, before even Preschool, when we were all together under one roof and it seemed like there was no escape. At least then we could go to the park.
Beth on the Pantsuit Politics nightly nuance last night said something about how her daughter came in the room just to tell her she had a papercut, and then walked out of the room. How just that one little interruption cost her like five minutes of thought process and productivity. And I nodded in solidarity and thought, yes, it’s just like that. About 37 times a day.
To be fair, the kids have been fantastic through this all. They’re more or less their regular selves: sometimes whine-y, sometimes needy, sometimes loving, sometimes disruptive, sometimes cooperative. They miss school but haven’t complained hardly at all about their activities being cancelled, that their days are different, that our life now looks almost nothing like what it did two weeks ago.
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Caden and Brooklyn’s school sent out a video of three of the teachers singing a parody of “Some Things Never Change” to the kids today and I cried.
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Friday, March 27th
Brooklyn broke her wrists yesterday. Both of them. She was swinging and then pulled her arms in through the ropes and fell straight forward onto her arms.
“Why did you do that?” I asked her. She’s jumped off the swing before but this sounded different. I actually didn’t see it. I’d kicked all the kids outside because they were driving me insane. It wasn’t five minutes before I heard Tyson call, from his upstairs office window, “Oh my gosh are you okay?”
“I was showing Caden something dangerous,” she replied.
Beyond the initial pain (“I think it’s a 10” she told me, when I tried to explain the pain scale at the orthopedic walk-in clinic) she’s been perfectly fine. (“It’s a 1 now,” she said, immediately after getting splints on.)
It’s a strange time to be injured, though. Thank goodness for the walk-in clinic. I knew I didn’t want to go anywhere close to an ER. Also her follow-up appointment has been cancelled because of the governor’s stay-at-home order, though we can go back to the walk-in clinic anytime on Tuesday for her to get casts put on.
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Doesn’t “stay-at-home” sound so much nicer than “shelter in place”? A little less ominous, at least?
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I’m totally and completely worn out this week, just in the same way I used to be at the end of week when the kids were much younger. I don’t want to do anything or talk to anyone. I didn’t get a single thing done today besides the feeding and schooling and caring for children. I know that’s important and that’s “doing” something, too. I know. Still. I’ve been used to some time and space carved out during my weeks and that’s gone now. We’re all going to have to adjust accordingly.
But it was sunny and 60 today and we spent the entire afternoon outside and that made all the difference.