Life in Lockdown .

Could it be that lockdown life is becoming a bit more 'normal' for us? Slowly but surely we are starting to get used to and adjusting to a new way of living and working. It certainly hasn't been easy and my god it's taken a while to adjust but I feel like we're sort of making some.....and I mean some small steps, a little progress and feeling more comfortable. At times, in amongst the fighting, the squabbles and the constant calls for Mummy (when I'm not at work nursing!) or Daddy (when he's not working) and of course it's kind of nice to spend some time with the children, when they are not bickering and scrapping with each other!

Intially when the schools were closed we both had grand ideas that the days would be education filled, lots of work book activities and 'at the table' learning but it's not turned out like that. There is a couple of reasons for this, my husband continues to work from home while I head out to the surgery where I work three days a week. My husband spends alot of his days on conference calls making it very difficult to 'teach' the kids while maintaining a professional work life, quite tricky as I'm sure many others are finding. My two days off I do all the things I would normally have done such as the cleaning, washing and food shopping etc but try and squeeze in a couple of hours of spaced out learning where I can. 

I felt an immense pressure to try and get it right to begin with, I felt incredibly stressed about the whole situation with having to suddenly be juggling a lot of balls and I had to take a step back and realise that I'm not a miracle worker, my husband isn't a miracle worker and we can only do so much. We have both learnt that our children learn best in short bursts, there is no point in sitting them down for hours on end trying to make them learn. We've been learning to pick our battles and try not to overly stress about every little thing. 15-20 minutes through out the day seems to keep them more engaged, it's not very easy to try and motivate them to try and learn but then who can blame them when really their whole life that they knew has been turned upside down. Navigating this whole 'lockdown learning' was a choice made for us and although filled with dread initially and the days most certainly not been easy I feel like we are all learning alot about the way we lead our life and how things may be different in the future.

We've also been very blessed with some lovely, dry weather meaning we have been able to get outside and embrace the outdoors which has been wonderful for both the childrens mental state and ours. It makes a big difference to be able to sit outside and enjoy our garden, I count us very fortunate to have a garden to be able to do this. Our children thrive outdoors, they love being able to explore freely, ride their bikes and generally just enjoy the outside life.

We have enjoyed some lovely walks and bike rides as a family enjoying our time together and appreciating the area where we live, all while social distancing. We have been enjoying lazy mornings, I defintely haven't missed the crazy and hectic school runs, it has been nice to just be a bit more chilled on mornings. I know the kids are missing their friends and we really are feeling quite sorry for them missing their social interactions, we are aware that we can't give them the educational needs that they would get in school and for these reasons I would happily send them back to school when they reopen, I would be pleased if it would be June as I mostly feel for Elarna who potentially will only have had half a school year which is so sad. However, it is what it is and of course we will just have to wait and see. We don't really know what the next few weeks, or even months have in store. We don't even know if we have a holiday to look forward to but I can't dwell on this for the moment as we just do not know what is in store. For the moment we take each day as it comes and try and keep positive. Keep safe everyone and I hope you are all doing ok.