So. Quarantine.
We’ve been here for a while. 43 days to be exact, and we’re not going anywhere soon. We know we have at least two more months of this, but ask the Actuary how confident she is that this will be over then. Part of my actual job is to study pandemics. We’ve been doing this since before it was cool. Ask me about what happened in the fall of the 1918 flu.
Hello there!
What happened to last week? I remember celebrating Easter and birthdays and having a good time, and then it’s like I blacked out and here I am.
This is hard.
It’s also a gift, to have all this togetherness. To be here to witness new milestones and to be the one to comfort the tiny humans EVERY time they’re upset about something. To have all this extra time with my kitty who doesn’t have a whole lot of time left.
I think, for the first time since all this home quarantine stuff started, we had a day that felt normal.
So far, Easter has been a holiday that we celebrate at home. We do egg hunts in our living room, and we spend the day here together. So we were able to do everything pretty much the same this year. It was definitely a relief to have a day where nothing felt cancelled or different. Both G and E were excited to find eggs and made the day a lot of fun.
Happy Birthday Tom!!
Birthdays definitely look a little different during quarantine, but we’re doing the best we can. We went for a family walk to get outside, I made us some confetti brownies to celebrate, and we even have a party to go to later. Sure, it would have been more fun to go in person, but we’re still excited.
My brain is in a fog most of the days. I sit down and try to concentrate on work, or a book, and it’s like I’ve forgotten how to think. For a while I thought I was handling this quarantine pretty well, but it’s officially getting to me. It’s April 8th, and the last time I was in the physical office was March 9th. Which if you’re counting, is more than 26 days. My official count is days since daycare closed, but we had our own week of quarantine due to sickness at the beginning of all of this. It’s both impressive and scary how long I’ve been trapped in this house.
I have had the worst stomach ache of anxiety all week. Tied up in knots, can’t relax, in constant panic mode. There’s no reason for it, well besides the global crisis we’re all facing, but that’s not new. Nothing’s changed this week, I’ve actually mostly stopped watching/reading the news even. My body has just decided that we’re stressed out this week and should panic.
So with that being my mindset, despite the fact I feel like I should be much more comfortable right now, I’m going to give a very cute, baby-centric update. Because that’s more fun to talk about.
I actually had, what felt like.. a normal weekend? Or at least a good and possibly bordering on fun weekend!
It feels weird to say. It almost feels wrong to say, since so many people are hurting right now. But there aren’t many wins lately, so I’ll take it. Tom got a half day on Friday, so we were able to get outside and enjoy the beautiful weather. Our kids aren’t great at taking walks, but we’re working on it. We park at a local (closed) playground, and walk down the street, since that part of town has sidewalks. We go very slowly, we don’t get very far, and both kids require A LOT of snacks, but it’s nice to get outside.
So much, we did it again Saturday.
Dear G and E,
I wonder when you grow up, if you’ll remember this time. Is this one of those things that is so life changing that it will forever be one of your earliest memories? Or will you only repeat stories you’ve been told over and over. Although you’re young, you’re aware that things are different now, even if you don’t understand why.
Well, another walker I guess.
But baby G is finally walking! Or he did it twice, and hopefully he’ll decide it’s something he likes, and will continue to do it. I’m so sick of having my phone out all day, every day, waiting for the moment. Because it felt like it was going to happen all month. He’s been standing and almost taking steps, but deciding he didn’t really want to. He’d rather crawl, or “walk” on his knees.
Well hello there, 15 Months!
I was talking to the director of our daycare recently, and mentioned how happy G seems to be there, and in the non-infant room now. She replied “He’s just happy to be HERE,” waving her arms around “in life!” It’s pretty true. It doesn’t really matter what we’re doing or where we’re going, G is thrilled to be a part of it. The more he learns about life, the more he is enthusiastic about joining in.
I woke up yesterday and seriously thought it was Wednesday, when in fact it was Thursday. I thought about putting up a sign that says something like “Today is [Friday] and today we [work/don’t work].” But then I realized I’d probably forget to update it, and confuse myself even further. Everything is so disorienting, I really need to spend a few minutes each morning trying to remember what I’m supposed to be doing, and when.
Who wants a fun post, full of pictures, to take their minds off all the crazy stuff in the news lately? I know I do!
We’ve obviously seen how quickly life can change when big things happen. Everything seems uncertain now, and we’re not really sure what’s going to be happening in the next few months. Instead of speculating on that, I’m going to focus on how life changes slowly, over the course of a year.
It’s always a toss up what rides home from daycare are going to be like. Some days G will be singing slippery fish to himself, hand motions and all while E is mostly quiet. Other days it’s the opposite. G will be looking out the window, oohing and ahhing at whatever catches his eye, while E tries to tell me stories from the day.
And then there are the other days.
Day 1 of whatever we’re calling this. Home isolation? Quarantine and chill? Apocalypse watch? Whatever it is, I’m not a happy camper. Daycare’s closed and work still expects us to work full time from home. I could handle one of those things at a time, but together it’s… rough. I know I’m extremely lucky that I can work from home and that I’m still getting a paycheck right now. But if I had a unicorn to wish on, I’d wish that instead of bailing out big companies, the government sent us all home with pay for 3 weeks so I could focus on keeping the kiddos happy and safe, and not worry about anything else while we’re home.
We were driving home from daycare the other day, and E was happily holding G’s hand in the backseat. See, every day he makes me slide their seats together after I’ve strapped them in, so they’re close enough to touch. E was talking as he does, about 50% words that I can understand with lapses into his own made up talk. One thing came through clearly though: “My G. He’s my G.. FOREVER. Brother. My brother.”
Life has seemed a bit harder than usual lately. And not the normal kind of hard. That kind of hard I’m used to – the push through even though you’re tired, get everyone where they need to be and just survive until life calms down type of hard. This is more emotionally hard, and it’s exhausting in a completely different way.
It’s the deep sigh that comes from once again realizing that it’s not that this country isn’t ready for equality, it’s that it doesn’t want it. It’s that familiar feeling of feeling a bit invisible, a bit stepped on, a bit like you’re screaming in a crowded room and no one can hear you. We’ve been here before, we live here. We’ll swallow the pain and move on.
Well… we did it again.
I actually said we wouldn’t this year, and I was okay with that. But then we walked by the place in the mall one day, and E saw the signs advertising the bunnies, and he ran up and hugged them, and told me he wanted to see them.
So we ended up with an appointment. As always, I had my predictions of what would happen, and was completely wrong. One day maybe I’ll get better at predicting how my children will react to situations. Or they’ll keep surprising me - I’m okay with being kept on my toes.
I remember when I used to pray for 30 seconds. 30 seconds where I could slip away, unnoticed, and change out of my work clothes. It would never come – I’d either end up carrying two deceptively heavy children with me, or I’d listen to their panicked screams from down the hall where I’d left them, while I quickly changed my clothes.
Last night, though, it happened. I left them playing in their rooms, and slipped down the hall to change. When I got back, they were still laughing and playing, and hadn’t noticed I’d left. It wasn’t until I was putting E to bed that he realized my shirt had changed, and asked me about it. He likes to play with the buttons on my work shirt, and I wasn’t wearing it anymore.
Sometimes I feel like a canary. Desperately trying to sound the alarm that the house is on fire while everyone else calmly sips their tea. The truth actually lies somewhere in the middle. A lot of times I’m overreacting to a non problem, and occasionally other people are a bit slow to see a problem that is clear to me.
So on a recent Saturday when I was panicking that the house was about to blow up, Tom wasn’t sure how to react. I was smelling gas in the basement, and desperately trying to convince myself that something had just died down there instead. But I didn’t, I smelled gas.
Sometimes I forget.
Until I catch someone looking at me, or I walk by a mirror. And then I remember, oh yes… I’m the adult wearing a Sesame Street shirt. Because it makes my toddler super happy. “My matching you!” he’ll say with a big smile on his face. Right now I’m the coolest person he knows, and I want to hold on to that feeling for as long as I can.
His new chant is “Mama FOREVER!!” which is mostly cute, but it occasionally morphs to “Mama RIGHT NOW forever” with the “right now” coming out as a demand, and the “forever” more a cry, and always happens when he wants me and needs to wait because I’m driving or busy or not there.