April was, as you know, the first full month of full-on pandemic lifestyle. When our mayor announced our stay-at-home restrictions, he set our timeline to go until April 30, so we knew that April was a goner, in that sense. Barbara, bless her, stayed for the end of March, the entire month of April, and into May to help with all of the things (because my body really is pretty much a disaster while pregnant). This enabled us to do things like keep the children fed. And for Brad to really hit his dissertation hard.
Our townhouse neighborhood is across the street from a little church that has a playground. They haven't closed down their playground during the pandemic, and given that it isn't a super popular location for lots of people, we felt (and feel) fine about the girls playing there. We have almost no yard to speak of, so this has been a huge blessing. Barbara made many a trip across the street with the girls during April. She snapped some great park shots:
It's the sweetest little playground. We've been thankful for it for 6 years.
We also jumped on board with some of the stay-at-home entertainment ideas that were going viral at the time, and y'all. This one was such a winner at our house! They did this for a solid 45 minutes without taking a break.
I traced their hands on cardboard (of which we had a lot, given all of the the online ordering, pandemic-style)...
...and gave them nail polish to "do their nails."
They were so focused and did a fantastic job!
I also showed them a favorite pastime of mine from elementary school: tracing my hand/wrist and drawing on beautiful jewelry. Claire LOVED this idea!
We, like everyone else, got lots of quality time together. On so many levels, I'm very grateful for this time. It's such an unusual opportunity to have literally nowhere to go and nothing to do outside of our home. We did, however, have to be creative with how we spent our time so we wouldn't make one another crazy.
Kat gave this to the girls a few years ago, and it's brilliant. They can build all kinds of things and play all kinds of games. Highly recommend.
Our friends, Katy and Karl, sent us postcards from their travels (pre-pandemic). Fun fact: both of these friends have individual goals of visiting every national park. They both sent us post cards from some of their park visits!
Obviously, we did a lot of Zoom visits with Nana, Poppy, and Bo.
Front porch hangs
Just waiting on neighbors or delivery people to pass by so we could have human interaction.
Lots of crafty projects
LOTS of reading
Claire started reading bedtime stories to her sisters. It was SO SWEET.
We also had some quality time in the closet, waiting out a tornado warning at 6:30 am. Fun times.
Lots of time playing with Gran
Brad decided to try his hand at this.
Sweet Lily brought friends to keep me company on my really sick days.
We began practicing this habit.
We kept pressing on with first grade. Which included a homemade game board + game pieces found in the toy bins.
And Claire made signs of encouragement for us all: Lern to help the vires go.
(Learn to help the virus go)
We managed to have lots of normal moments and days, even in the midst of a very not normal month. Please note that "normal" also includes tantrums, bad attitudes, and getting very tired of being together. It was not always pretty. I just don't tend to snap pictures of those moments.
FYI: these are Barbara's. The girls abscond with them regularly. Barbara is a good sport.
She didn't want to get in her bed...so she got under Lily's.
Found some panties. Wore them over her pants.
You can tell really well, but she's holding my cherry pit bag (that I heat up and lay on my head when I have a migraine) to her head and saying "head!"
It just hurts so bad, you know?
She's classically 2 right now: makes you want to pull out your hair but is SO CUTE and SO SWEET that you simply have to snuggle her. It's a conundrum.
April 2020: what a month you were!
No comments:
Post a Comment