a year after lockdown started ...

There'a been quite a gap since I last posted on the blog, but today, a year since the UK went into its first COVID lockdown, seems like a good time to start again.

A lot has happened over the last year.  We've had lockdown birthdays, zoom birthday parties, had a baby and moved house.  I'm now back at work after maternity leave.  But it wasn't quite the return to work I had been hoping for ... 

A year ago I was sat on the sofa in tears.  Because the PM had just announced a (minimum) 3 week lockdown for the UK.  3 weeks that would take us past my eldest's birthday, that I had, barely a handful of hours earlier, told her I would see her to celebrate.  Except, for me and many other separated parents, the announcement was terrifying.  Because at no point was transporting children between parents' homes mentioned as an allowable reason for travel.  It never really was ever noted.  There were people who told me it wasn't allowed (even once I'd had the answer and the link to the updated document from my MP in the early hours of the following morning).  My MP was brilliant, and by 3am, the answer was sitting in my inbox.  Plans were revised, and a new parental switch system became the norm for the next 6 months.

I gave birth.  A few weeks into lockdown.  When the systems and checks were still new.  When goalposts changed for midwives, mothers and partners on a seemingly hourly basis.  My lg arrived into a world no-one had imagined in the early hours of the morning.  There were no family visits.  No cuddles.  No time out.  Not for a long time.  It was months before she met all of her grandparents.  The various travel restrictions making it impossible for some to even see her, let alone hold her.

We moved house.  It was stressful.  Somehow we managed it.  But a new house isn't exciting when no-one can visit.  When you can't go to look for curtains, furniture and all the other things that come with new houses.  We're still sorting it out.  Because the stalled sorting out means we never got to do it all when we moved in, we just had to unpack and make it work. 

We turned the dining table into a classroom.  Taught all of the subjects and work that was set by the teachers.  The living room became the office.  Tried to find the space to do things our house really wasn't designed for.  

Then came the re-opening of schools.  And in September, an apprehensive 7yo returned to the classroom.  After nearly 6 months of being told that indoors, in large groups of people, was the riskiest place to be, we sent her back to school.  We were lucky.  The self-isolation phone call only happened once that term, right at the very end before Christmas.  But every unexpected phone call in the evening was stressful.  Never quite knowing if it would be school, saying that we had to keep a 7yo at home, not seeing one of her parents for the duration of the self-isolation period.

We spent Christmas in lockdown.  No family gatherings.  No first Christmas with the grandparents.  

In January, we started home teaching again.  This time with live lessons, an under pressure broadband and a 7yo increasingly competent at navigating TEAMS.  

I went back to work.  It is possible to have 2 work meetings and a school lesson simultaneously.  Just.  

The baby isn't a baby any longer.  She's most definitely a little girl.  Well versed in IT.  Because that's all she's known her whole life.  People live in screens.  People in real life, well, that depends on who, where, and how many of them there are.  She's getting better.  But long car journeys might take a while.  Because she's barely spent any time in her car seat!

We've come full circle.  And we're back, almost at my eldest's birthday.  Her 2nd in lockdown.  No parties.  No meeting people to celebrate.  

Hopefully, by her sister's 1st birthday, we can meet up.  With a big cake and some balloons.  To celebrate together.