Emerging, hopefully, from Covid

-

It's nearly 10pm and I'm in bed with the kids but I only just get to write now: and I think that fact sets the tone for this quite well. Because we've been busy, out.

Meeting friends outside
As much of mainland Europe has already or is considering going into another Lockdown, the UK is surprisingly efficient about vaccinations and the so-called roadmap for reopening has been confirmed again today; as of 12th April, nonessential shops get to open again and restaurants / pubs can serve food outdoors.

We had mother's day a few weeks ago, and for me that kind of marked a sea change. We saw the kids' grandparents again for the first time since November. Along with most people, we had been in lockdown before that and had not met with anyone in the flesh. Schools reopened on the 8th March, which doesn't affect us as we educate the kids ourselves, but it felt really silly to continue adhering to lockdown rules so completely when all over the country kids were mixing again.

That's not to say we aren't still cautious. The grandparents are going to have their second jabs soon, so will be as protected as they can be, and Mr. is having his first jab this Saturday, but I won't get one for a while yet (only 40 and no risk factors) and I don't want to catch it thanks very much. The kids have started gymnastics again on Wednesdays, which is in a huge and well ventilated warehouse with very few kids (only home educated kids allowed at the moment), and we've met for walks with a group of other home edders twice - up a hill and down again, as well as individual outside meetups with one other family at a time. From all I've been reading, outside doing things and not speaking / breathing directly into one another's face is as safe as it gets, so that felt worth it.

Today we went to the outdoors cycling centre and the kids went around a track several times, with my help and with much fear and screaming, to try and get them to learn to cycle. Then to the playground with another home ed family. Being out and about is our way, our comfort zone - but I'm very conscious that I don't want to get over busy or over confident. We are still in a pandemic. But I want to give the kids as much normality as I can now, and I pray very hard that Europe gets their situation sorted because we have booked six weeks in Vienna (July/August) and I don't want to cancel that.

So... emerging indeed. Unlike most people I feel like I'm emerging better than I went in - after all, I got abstinent (from my eating disorder) in October! So I'm excited and cautious at the same time. I often think this lockdown has been like a greenhouse in terms of my abstinence, a protected place for that little shoot to grow, but it needs to be planted out and withstand the weather. I'm ready.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Home Ed Questions: what about socialisation?

-
Image
Last week, a reporter and cameraman from the BBC visited our house to do a feature about home education. It was great fun, a real adventure for the kids to be interviewed! The team spent 90 minutes at our house, but of course they had to condense that down to a couple of minutes for the feature, and sadly the kids' interviews didn't make the cut. (A transcript article of the feature is here ) I had put my hand up for doing this because the reporter had every intention to make this a positive piece on home education, and so it was; the premise was to try and answer why there had been such an uptick in home education in the past few years. They interviewed two mothers, probably strategically chosen: me as the one who always wanted to home educate, and the other mum as someone who felt she had to due to her son's needs.  They interviewed me at length, and of course only a few seconds of that made it to the screen, but inevitably it was the part to do with social skills that th
Read more

Thrown into to a new reality, then back to the old

-
Image
Towards the end of August this year, Mr. and I suddenly faced a very different future to the one we had envisioned: at 42 years old - and he's 55 - I found myself pregnant again. Camping after our summer trip - and I've just found out I'm pregnant As it's been seven years since D(7) was born, we really didn't expect that. We would have loved more kids soon after D, but I just never got pregnant. Seven years on, we were pretty convinced that this was our lot. Two beautiful children, we really can't complain! So we needed a bit of time to digest that. A new baby, with siblings 8 and nearly 10 years older! And Mr. would be 75 when that child was 20... the maths was mind boggling. But hey - if that was our new reality, we were going to run with it! The kids certainly were excited about it, they're old enough to understand and yes, we told them; this is a family matter. I knew there was a chance this pregnancy wouldn't work out, but we felt they had a right t
Read more

2023: Our Year

-
Image
This is the yearly roundup post - as I've done almost every year for 2022 ,  2021 ,  2020 ,  2019 ,  2018 ,  2017 , 2016 seems to be skipped as I got to grips with mothering two little ones, and  2015 . 2023 was, for us, a year of highlights and milestones as well as getting on with life and growing.  Milestones This year, Mr. and I were married for the third (!) time, almost exactly ten years after we first tied the knot. Some of the background (and lots more pictures) about this is here  - in short, our three weddings were firstly the Register Office legal wedding that only Mr.'s parents attended as witnesses; secondly the church wedding at City Church where we invited everyone, also in 2013; and now, finally, following the annulment of Mr's previous marriages, we made our marriage sacramental by having it convalidated in the Catholic Church. 2023 was also the year that saw N(9)'s First Holy Communion. A beautiful celebration of her now being old enough to understand
Read more