We’re trying.
I’ve never really been a water or beach person, but occasionally I find it nice. A lounge chair and a book here, standing in the water up to my waist there. I don’t love it like I see other people love it, but I can enjoy it from time to time. Tom is, of course, the swimmer. Better than all of us, he’s so good at it, you can’t help but expect some of it to rub off on our children.
We recently took a long trip in our car (more on that later) and it was the longest that G has ever been in the car in his entire life. I was worried it might not go well, of course. When you’re that young it’s easy to not be hyperbolic when you say something is the worst thing you’ve ever experienced. It literally could be. And it would be easy to see how being trapped in a car for a long period of time, when it had never happened before, being one of those times.
At some point do I just stop counting? Is life so changed that it will never return to the “before" so there’s no point in counting how many days it’s been?
Or is it pointless because some things might get back to something that looks a little bit like normal, while others never will? Our daycare is actually open right now, so does that negate my count, since I started counting days since daycare closed? Or does the fact that we haven’t sent them back to daycare yet mean I keep counting?
I had some time recently and made some summary videos of our last few months. I don’t do this often enough - especially because it doesn’t take that long, and I’m always excited to have the memory. I definitely have a picture problem, but at least I have a process of deleting ones that aren’t great and I try to organize the ones I keep. Videos, however, just sit in a folder. They take up so much space, and there are a lot that should probably be deleted, but it would be a full time job managing all of these. And there’s only more and more every day I do nothing.
It’s not easy in this new world. Everything stresses me out or makes me anxious. I’m constantly on edge and judging everyone I can see. I judge them for not wearing a mask, or not wearing it correctly, for getting too close to me or someone else, for touching something - it all stresses me out.
But at the same time, it’s hard to hide at home forever. It’s summer, which means it’s easy to get outside, and we all know that’s safer than being inside. And since I believe we’re going to be fighting this virus for a while, we might as well take advantage of being outside while we can. Otherwise I’m going to regret it when winter hits.
I realize that we’ve been in a drought, so maybe I shouldn’t talk about how much I’ve loved the weather lately, but I’ve really loved the weather lately. June was full of sunshine pretty much every single day, and it was amazing.
While we haven’t made much progress on a lot of things on our interior to do list, we’ve managed to make some real improvements to the outside of our house this year. We’ve completed a lot of maintenance stuff that needed to happen - cleaning the gutters, getting the septic pumped, even pressure washing the fence and front porch. But more than that, we’re completing a lot of big projects we’ve been dreaming about for a while. Our shed, while not here yet, has been purchased and the land is prepped, so we’re counting the days. We’ve also finally got our side patio completed, which means we have our gazebo up(!), and it gives us some shade and rain protection on that side of the house. I am fully in love.
Somehow we’re halfway through 1. It’s unimaginable, because just a few days ago was your first birthday, and then we all went into quarantine and suddenly it’s today and the calendar says six months have gone by. At the same time when I think about the fact that you weren’t walking when daycare closed and we all started this home quarantine, that seems forever ago. You running around is the best thing ever. It’s a half gallop, half fall as you move slightly sideways with your belly out and arms pumping.
As we hit one and a half, you’ve picked up a few new tricks, grew some more teeth, and have a slightly better vocabulary. It’s hard to count all your words, because you have a lot that you’ll use randomly, but not often enough for me to remember unless I happen to write them down at the time. There’s a lot of context that comes with your words too. If you’re saying “bee” and looking out the window, you literally want to see a bee. But if you’re walking around saying the same thing with your arms up in the air, you’re looking for some specific object, as in “Where could it be?”
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve gotten about parenting so far, is not to compare them. They’re going to be different. This close in age, they’re going to be as different as they can be in most ways. That’s just the way it works.
And so far, that’s pretty accurate. It seems like we have on introvert, who pulls into himself when he’s in stressful or new situations. He requires a lot of down time, and is a pretty strict rule follower. We also have one that seems like an extrovert who expresses himself outwardly, thrives on loud and busy situations and wants to be around people. Oh, and he thinks mischief is the best.
There are some things that haven’t changed too much due to our home quarantine. We still get up at the same time, play with the kids all day, and in between manage to clean the house and mow the lawn. Some things might be harder, so we just don’t do them, or are putting them off. Dentist appointments, mattress shopping, haircuts. But then there are other things. Things that are much harder now, but cannot be put off. Things like blood draws for the kids. We have actually put it off as long as we could, but it was finally time to get it done.
Here’s the thing about life.
Just because you’re dealing with something tough, doesn’t mean that nothing else bad will happen. Just because the world is going through a crisis, doesn’t mean that another one can’t dump right on top of it and demand what’s left of your attention.
And just because it’s your son’s third birthday, doesn’t mean that your cat won’t die.
Something I didn’t quite understand about young children before I had them – it takes them a while to learn how to speak. And it’s not just vocabulary building, it’s pronunciation, but I’m not talking about the cute way they say spaghetti. There’s this whole period of time where they’re screaming the same word over and over at you while you play some desperate charades game of trying to figure out what they’re telling you.
Sometimes this staying home thing is easy. There’s no commute, there’s no annoying people, and I have pretty much everything I need here. I can rent movies on my TV, ship almost anything to my door, and I have a lot of crazy boys to keep things entertaining and interesting here.
Some days are really hard, though. Like when my three year old says “Mama, will you come here and play with me? I need a friend. I have no friends.” Or when he tries repeatedly to get his brother to play with him, which sometimes works, and sometimes ends with two very frustrated toddlers.
Three feels big. Heavy and important and monumental. Two still felt like a baby, still felt close to birth, with everything felt fresh and new. Three feels so big and so old. It’s hard to explain the feeling, but when I had babies I didn’t feel like a mother so much. I felt like a caregiver of tiny humans, someone who was given a gift of these squishly little creatures to take care of. Now I feel like I have a child. A child that I have to raise, mother, and teach.
Three is old enough to ask questions and remember things that I’ve told him. Three is big enough that I need to think about what I say before I saw it, unless I want it repeated forever and to everyone.
Quarantine birthdays are not an unique experience anymore. We’ve had months of people celebrating in quarantine at this point, and we’ve missed first birthdays and 18th birthdays and so my 35th wasn’t a huge deal. We probably wouldn’t have done much different had there not been a quarantine. Sure, I would have loved to go to a movie theater or sat in a Starbucks while I caught up with my best friend, but the empty parking lot where we met while we sat in our trunks was actually kind of fun. It certainly made it memorable.
I have a bunch of posts in draft right now, but I’m having a hard time expressing how I’m feeling at this point in quarantine. My head is in a fog, my feelings change by the day or by the hour, and so expressing it coherently is a struggle.
So I won’t.
Not today.
Instead I’ll tell you about our weekend. We didn’t really do anything, of course. We never do, but it was okay just the same. We went outside and got dirty and did some cooking in the kitchen, although not as much as we have been doing lately. I think the only thing E helped with was pancakes. He’s getting excited about his birthday, and cannot wait to have cake. Which means I need to get his cake from a hypothetical vision in my head to something with a bit more of a plan to it.
Our littlest toddler is the best.
You couldn’t ask for a better quarantine buddy. Well you could, because he’s also an angry little tyrant who demands food constantly and runs away when you try and change his diaper, but he’s the best mood booster. Recently I taught him how to give hugs, and it’s the best thing ever. I don’t know why it’s taken me this long. But now I’ll tell him to give me a hug and he’ll grab one of my shoulders in each hand and squeeze them as hard as he can while grunting. Seriously, who couldn’t use a hug like that?
While I was sitting at my desk on Friday, a reminder popped up on my phone: “Muffins for moms.” It’s usually the kick off to Mother’s Day weekend, a little treat to look forward to. Cancelled this year, obviously. Of all the things cancelled, it’s the least of them. I can easily get a muffin or something even more yummy, but it was just another little sting. Another little reminder that things are different.
It feels funny to complain about quarantine sometimes. Because most days we’re fine. Thriving even. Last weekend was amazing, and I felt really close as a family. We went for family drives to point out the empty parking lots, and we played in the yard. We even crossed a bunch of things off our home to do list, which made us feel like real functioning adults. Got the septic pumped! Gutters are clean! Even bought a shed for the backyard! (Something I’ll post about on it’s own once it’s actually here and functioning).
It really was a good weekend. They feel longer, now, than they used to. I think that’s a function of having no where to go, no plans, nothing to do to “kill time,” so it’s just two full days of togetherness. And that’s not a bad thing.
Now that I have two little children, I feel like I’m finally understanding all of my friends that grew up with siblings close in age, and who are used to fighting about things being equal. My boss tells stories of his siblings and him fighting all out wars to reach the kitchen every night before bed, in order to have first pick at their evening drink of juice (even though his mom had painstakingly poured them all equally). Or I understand why my two older sisters had so many duplicate toys – buy one for one of them, and you better buy one for the other.
I haven’t exactly reached the stage where I believe everything needs to be equal, but I’ve at least witnessed the jealousy, and I understand it now.