Adjusting to our new kind of normal – Mummascribbles

Well it is all a little different right now isn’t it? A little crazy, a little overwhelming. Very, very strange.

I have been pretty quiet for a number of reasons relating to the current situation, and when I do sit down and grab my laptop out in the evening, it sits to the side of me while I scroll through social media. I just haven’t had the motivation to really sit down and write. And yet, as a blogger who generally documents our life, it would be pretty wrong to not sit and write about what the heck is going down. I mean we are living through a piece of history right now. We sat through our school years learning about The Great Fire Of London and The Black Plague, but future generations will no doubt have this added to their curriculum. It is going to be a huge part of history.

So what has been going down over here?

Well, it all started going quiet on here when Oscar and I were ill. I have no idea if we had the virus, but both of us had the most awful cough ever. I mean I have had bad coughs before but this was something else. And it isn’t even over as I am still coughing a bit. Oscar’s started on Sunday 8th March. Of course, he immediately went into self isolation and stopped going to pre-school. And because I needed to be home with him and he was far too poorly to go out, the other half started working from home and doing all of the school runs for me. I was still doing the dog walks, but otherwise, I was sat next to Oscar permanently. He had a horrible cough and a temperature that kept rising and dipping. We called 111 at one point, but because the standard questions were, “have you come back from another country or been directly in contact with a known case?”, which we hadn’t – we were instantly dismissed with it not being the virus. Thankfully throughout, his breathing was fine, but the cough was unlike the usual coughs that he gets. And it was continuous. Even when he was just sitting down.

Four days later on the Thursday, I got it. I had no temperature but the cough was constant and exhausting. Again, my breathing was fine, but my throat was very crackly, my ribs were in absolute agony, and I could’t move without having huge coughing fits. Just the same as Oscar. So, into self-isolation I went too.

Zach and the other half had absolutely no symptoms at all. The other half continued to work from home so he could take Zach to school and pick him up, and he was doing all of the dog walks and shopping too – on top of working. On the Friday he did all of that AND went into the London office! He was knackered but amazing!

And then of course the regulations changed and Boris told us that family members had to self isolate too. Which meant that Monday 16th March was Zach’s last day in school because after that I had to keep him at home, and of course, on the Friday they closed. So I have now had Oscar at home for more than 2 weeks, Zach at home for more than one, and thankfully, the other half working from home the whole time too!

Because the cough lingered on so much, I had barely been out. Even once my self isolation period was over, I was still coughing so much, it just wasn’t a good idea for me to be out in the public. The other half told me that nobody was coughing outside. And when I started, I couldn’t stop! So I just stayed in, hiding away.

I started schooling Zach at home from the first day he was off. He wasn’t ill, he simply couldn’t go to school and I didn’t want him to get into the mindset that this is one big holiday. Of course I am not putting on the pressure, we are taking each day as it comes and I am not pushing him in any way, but he loves learning and he is such a clever little thing, I don’t want him to miss out too much. Of course we are watching movies, playing games, spending plenty of time in the garden. But we are also learning and I am really enjoy teaching him. I actually always wanted to be a teacher but sadly didn’t get the right GCSE’s in Science and Maths and so never bothered to go through the process of re-taking them.

I am also involving Oscar where I can, although with him being that much younger, he loses interest pretty quickly. And where he sat on the sofa coughing his guts up for so long, he got a bit addicted to the iPad so I have banned that! I don’t mind him watching TV, I don’t mind him watching and playing on the Amazon Fire. But there is something about him spending too much time on the iPad that makes his attitude stink!

I have managed to get out a bit now the cough has almost gone. On Saturday I went to pick up my wedding dress so that it was safely in my house and not in a closed up shop. I still have no idea whether I will be wearing it on the date we have had set for the last two years, but at least I have it! On Sunday we drove about 15 minutes away to the forest to walk the dog. We saw a few people doing the same but at no point were we near any of them. We had a little picnic on a tree and it was just lush to be out for a little while.

And then of course, Monday brought the latest and very expected news that we were to lock down further. It doesn’t feel like a huge amount has changed here. I have been pretty locked down for the last two weeks and I feel safer in my little bubble at home. That said, the dog still requires a walk twice a day and since a person is only allowed to go out for one piece of exercise per day, we are now taking it in turns to walk him.

Having Oscar at home constantly has had one benefit. He is very nearly toilet trained. I never thought it was going to happen because he just wasn’t interested. I had tried and he got bored so I gave up. But then he was stuck at home and he suddenly started telling me that he needed a wee. And it has progressed from there and we have had many days of completely dry nappies. He is even dry over night so we almost ready for a complete upgrade to pants. I say almost because he refuses to do a poo on the toilet. He has major issues with it and struggles to go if he isn’t standing up. This is obviously something we need to crack but we are so nearly there otherwise.

We are obviously missing things like everyone else is. I am used to seeing my Mum every week and so I am missing her. We haven’t seen the other half’s family for ages. His parents were supposed to come round last weekend but Oscar and I were poorly so it wasn’t a good idea. I know the other half is missing his Tuesday night footie, and obviously all of the kids classes have been cancelled for the foreseeable future. There are so many fantastic things that have come about though and the support out there is unreal. Oscar’s footie class are sending over online training videos for him to do, Zach’s performing arts are doing a Facebook talent show, although he isn’t keen to take part at the moment, we have been Whatsapp video calling our family members, and tonight we are having our first Skype ‘pub meet’ with our friends!

We are living in a very strange time. It is scary and unprecedented. It is weird to think that outside of our little bubble at home, as it stands, the world isn’t its normal self. The streets are deserted (hopefully), the hospitals are packed with the poorly, and such a sad number of deaths have happened so far. Every morning I wake up and it feels like a normal day. And then I remember that it is not.

I have had my ups and with my emotions. I was doing pretty well until the schools shut and the enormity of the situation hit me. About the kids not seeing their friends, their lovely teachers, and having their normal life sent into the complete unknown. I spent about half an hour sobbing my heart out on that Friday night – I especially felt sad for Zach who had been taken out of school before the end and hadn’t realised that his Year 2 experience could be over.

I won’t lie – having the kids home all the time is hard. I literally don’t get a break until they go to bed. If I’m not teaching, I am assisting their play, making them food, or breaking up fights. It is intense and exhausting and there are times when I am struggling with it all a bit. Now that my cough is almost gone, I am going to start doing some of the daytime dog walks to get an hour to myself in the daylight where I can listen to a podcast and leave the other half to the chaos at home!

I have also now started feeling all the emotion about our wedding. We are due to get married in 3 months and I have started talking about postponement options if the situation doesn’t get any better. We still of course have our fingers crossed that we will still be able to get wed, but at the moment, the registry office service aren’t dealing with June weddings and have asked me to call them back in a couple of weeks time. It will hopefully be at that point when we find out the likelihood of us actually getting married or not.

For now I need to stop thinking about it. It is completely out of my hands at the minute and it will drive me absolutely crazy if I keep going through all the what ifs. I just feel sad that these next weeks should be the most exciting part of the build up and instead, it is full of uncertainty.

For the time being, we will keep ourselves wrapped in our bubbles as much as we can. Limited amounts of shop trips, dog walks only, and the rest of the time spent safe at home. And deal with everything as it is thrown at us.

I hope that you are all doing OK. I hope that you haven’t been affected directly from this with your loved ones. I hope that your mental health is OK. That your anxiety isn’t too heightened. That you are coping with these new limitations. We can and will get through this. If we just stay at home where we can, it will be over with far quicker and we can get back to the lives that we all know and love.