The Quarantine Diaries

I lost like a week Tried to figure out the date today - in the context of checking food in the fridge - and decided it must be 19/20. Nope.  Apparently the 24th.  Not really sure what happened but apparently this week didn't really register. We are still recovering from the aftermath of last week's jabs, one of M's arms reacted really badly and was bright red and very sore looking for a couple of days, eventually ending up with me ringing 111 to check this was ok and normal (apparently, yes).  It didn't seem to overly bother her thankfully, but over a week on there's still a brownish circle around the injection site that looks like an old bruise.  C was fine after hers all the way up until Tuesday (7 days post-) when she got a temperature. I text the nurse mother-in-law and she thought it was probably the Measles part of the MMR kicking in, and by Thursday she has come out in tiny pink spots all over her back and chest, so that's seeming the most likely expla...

Spring Harvest Home and Jabs That's pretty much been this week really. I was so sad when Spring Harvest got cancelled, we were signed up to steward, a kind of last hurrah after 9 years of consistently stewarding with the same team (apart from last year when I gave birth 2 days before the week started).  It seems unlikely that we'll manage to steward again, at least until the girls are bigger, so I insisted we did it this year inspite of all of T's reservations because we missed out last year.  And then it was cancelled. Spring Harvest Home has been somewhat successful I would say.  We've not watched a single daytime seminar but we've done The Big Start in the place of morning prayer and have watched the evening celebrations after the girls are in bed so that's something at least.  I may or may not manage to watch any more things before they get taken down from YouTube.  I think at least we'll attempt to watch tomorrow morning's final celebration....

Week 3 And just like that we've been living in lockdown-land for 3 weeks.  A lot of this third week has been repeats of the same activities but with the addition of a few more walks. I'm not going to try and remember what we did on what day so I'm just going to insert any good pictures I have and give you the highlights. Here is M making her (and my) first Easter bonnets.  I didn't know they were a thing before this year.  But they filled a few hours so that's always good. A bike ride in the sunshine.  M's first time out on her balance bike.  She did pretty good. I was expecting to carry the bike at least some of the way. C's first go in the bike seat following a trip to Halfords to buy her first helmet. A walk down to the river where one child thought paddling in the river was cold and not fun (that's the one who's like me) and the other who thought this was the best thing to ever happen and cried a lot when we had to ...

Last night of being 0 A Quarantined Birthday Today my baby girl turned 1.  I'm really not OK with this.  How is she so big?! She didn't get super many presents today, partly due to not seeing anybody, but also because most people are donating to the trampoline fund so we can get a big one when we move house.  Because T and I were also just putting money in the pot we didn't buy her any new toys for her birthday (not that we need more stuff in this house), but we did get the bag of toys out of the loft that M has outgrown, and so she had a wonderful morning playing with those.  They included a ride on bug which she has really loved today, she's not quite tall enough to get a good push off forwards but she can go backwards really well! After lunch we went over to the horse field again for a walk and then we spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden playing with the water table and the paddling pool and video chatting the grandparents. M has enjoyed rev...

Day 15: FREEDOMMMMM!!!!! I mean, not really, cos the whole countries still in lockdown but it's better than nothing.  I took a very leisurely trip to Tesco this morning, which was as much weird because I was child-less as because of the weird virus precautions.  I had to queue with my trolley to get in and then the whole place is a one-way system.  I'm not good at one-way systems in supermarkets apparently.  I had to double back on myself like 3 times.  And I spent far more money than I meant to.  But that was also partly because I'm not used to Tesco, we're an Aldi family normally. When I got home and we'd had some lunch, C took a nap and M requested her toe nails painted to match her fingers.  I suddenly feel like I have a little girl, it's very odd but I'm quite excited for her to figure out what she's into as time goes on. And then we went for a walk over the road to visit the horses and play pooh sticks.  We also checked on a couple of o...

Day 13: Day 13 started as normal, then once C was having her first nap M requested to do some playdoh.  How we made it a whole 13 days without a playdoh session I don't know, but definitely not complaining. Most of the gap between naps was taken up with filming a Passover Supper/Maundy Thursday video for the church, in the end about a 15 minute video but it took us like 2 hours to film, needing to do a few minutes filming and then take a break and having to refilm some of the segments several times.  They do say never work with children or animals. It was starting to be nicer again outside too so we spent a decent amount of time in the garden.   Then during C's afternoon nap M had her nails done in the very fancy salon-de-sofa.  It's the second time she's requested/we've attempted to paint her nails but the first time they only lasted about 5 minutes before she decided she didn't like them and insisted on cleaning them off.  So the first succes...