Back to normal-ish

It has been a while since the last post. Most nights this week  I’ve been too exhausted to write... or just haven’t felt that I can organise my thoughts enough to make any sense...

The kids returned to school last Monday. There was a little anxiety the day before and that first morning was a bit nerve racking because we’d forgotten how our old routine went, how to get up and out of the house so early... also, I happened to have my first gig in months (other than those little YouTube recordings) and had to get into town super early that day for a recording. Isolated, of course, just me and and a few others at a distance, outside. They actually only needed me for the visuals, the sound was pre-recorded by another cellist. Check it out🐝🎵
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsLiNMk6iDg

Lucy and Molly seem to have settled back into school pretty well, and Emma seems to be enjoying kindy, even though her first day back on Wednesday she kicked up a major fuss before we went. There was quite a bit of screaming. Some of it was from me. I was having a bad few days for some reason and found my patience threshold was a lot lower than usual so I may have thrown the tweezers across the room, after wrestling with her little foot (where the offending splinter was) for some time and then being kicked in the face. It took a VERY long time to calm everyone down, get out the damn splinter and drive to kindy. Emma was happy enough to go in but then an overly enthusiastic (but well meaning) educator greeted her at the door with a thermometer aimed at Emma’s head and frightened the hell out of us both. More screaming from poor old Emma. (They now check all the kids for fever when they arrive.) I had to hang around for a bit but eventually she remembered that she has good friends there and it’s way more fun than being at home with boring old mum. (Though she and I did have a pretty fun picnic on our driveway on Monday, because it was freezing cold but it was nice and sunny out there in the morning.)

It was quite strange to be at home with no kids, just Scott in the bedroom tapping away at his computer. Lunch was very quiet. I had wanted some time alone for so long and then it was here and hard to get used to.... we really had a rhythm going with our homeschooling life. But this is good. Life had to go back to normal eventually. Scott is still working from home for now so it’s not totally back to normal.

There are a lot of thoughts spinning around in my head about what our normal will be, and can we keep some of the SLOW from lockdown life when we fully return to our regular busy life... I really don’t know how... I gotta think on this some more. I think maybe because the kids were gone I was finally able to think about everything, a little too much....made myself a bit crazy... was a weird week.

Our favourite local cafe is still closed but is doing takeaway so today Scott and I went and grabbed a coffee/hot chocolate and sat in the park nearby. Lucy babysat. I sent her this photo while we were out:

And she sent this one back:

When we got back Scott and I attended Molly’s Lion King Festival that she’d been working on all day. I think that needs its very own post😍

The shops

Today Lucy and I went shopping. The poor girl has outgrown most of her clothes and shoes and unfortunately we don’t have a big pile of hand me downs waiting for her, like we do for Molly and Emma.

Some of the op shops have opened up again so we hit those first. Grabbed a few things but still needed some specific items so we went off to brave the shopping centre, aka Indooroopilly Shopping Hell. It was our first trip there since Covid and things have changed quite a bit there.

Everywhere there are stickers on the floor to remind us to stay 1.5 metres apart from others, signs telling us how many people area allowed in an area and staff members with clickers, counting the customers going in and out. And hand sanitiser stations at the door of each shop.

The food court tables and chairs were all gone but there were still a few takeaway options open. With nowhere to sit people were walking around while eating bowls of soup, or crouched on the floor with containers of dumplings and Subway sandwiches.

It was all a bit surreal.

Most fitting rooms were closed because of Covid but we managed to find some things that looked like they would fit Lucy. (They did.) And then we discovered that she now has the same shoe size as me so we took advantage of the “second pair half price” offer and bought 2 pairs of sneakers (different colours) of the same size for us both to share. Ha ha. This is a first for me. I will be able to inherit her shoes when she outgrows them. Whaaat?

In other news, here are 2 little girls with 2 little butternut pumpkins that we picked off a dying vine in our backyard.

Playgrounds and pups

We are gradually embracing our new freedom. The other day the girls and I went for a bike ride and ended up at the dog park and the playground. We’re not used to everything being open again so it was quite a delight to just stop and have a play.

Was good to let Charlie play off leash. He seems to have developed some kind of “leash aggression” and keeps growling and snapping at other dogs when he’s on his lead. I suppose we’ll have to deal with that...
But here in the park he is the friendliest loveliest little dog...

Here he is again, making himself at home on my yoga mat...

And here’s this crazy kid we know...

Amused

Having a glass of wine (on a school night!😱) and wanting to share my top 3 favourite cartoons from these lockdown times:

And the best one, by my favourite cartoonist of all time, Molly O’Connell...

Playgrounds are open!!!!

Stage 1 began today. (I’ve included this photo of the grand plan that a local politician sent me. Pretty exciting actually. Stage 3 means weddings and concerts so hopefully in July I will once again be a useful part of the community.)

We celebrated by having a picnic today with Jesstoph at a playground in our old neighbourhood. The kids actually spent more time playing along the creek than in the actual playground but it was nice to be allowed to go there.

Emma decided to wear her tutu, white tights and pink leg warmers. All three were pretty brown and dusty by the end of the day.

(Zoom in on Scott’s shirt😉)

Loved the laziness of hanging out together in such a beautiful place... nowhere and nothing to rush off to...

This would be the best thing that has come out of the whole Covid situation, for me. Not rushing. Have to think seriously about how to make Not Rushing a priority when life goes back to normal.

Mother’s Day and our little visitor

Last Sunday I had a lovely Mother’s Day breakfast and the girls gave me some beautiful plants and flowers for the garden, as well as a voucher to the local nursery. Just love those gorgeous kids. Even the wild one who refused to be in this photo...

Later we went over to Dave’s for lunch and really enjoyed hanging out together inside a house. Hooray for restrictions easing. We still tried to all keep our distance though but in a much more relaxed way. It did feel a bit weird though, to be near people other than our little 5... funny what feels normal now...

Scott had promised me I didn’t have to set foot in the kitchen at all on Mother’s Day but I really really wanted him to finish building the quail pen so I ended up making dinner anyway.

It’s looking pretty good. Now we just need some quails!

Here are Molly and Emma, pretending to be quails...

And Molly, just hanging out, wishing the quails would come... (we were supposed to be picking them up today but due to incubator failure at the farm our pick up date has been postponed for a few weeks. Molly was DEVASTATED.)

Our first proper visitor inside our house since Covid was my niece’s little boy Teddy, who spent Friday morning with us while Tahlia had an appointment.

He is pretty darn cute. The girls adore him.

Some moments from this week:
Emma doing Reading Eggs and Molly doing schoolwork

And chilly morning snuggles

Oops we did it again

We accidentally went and got takeaway burgers again today. It was just one of those days when I couldn’t think of a single thing to cook for dinner and we needed to go out and get a few things for the quail sanctuary anyway, so, well, why not...

We are enjoying even more freedom this weekend since more restrictions have been eased off. We are now allowed to have 5 people over to our house. (In fact, as I write this the neighbours up the back are having a very LOUD and ANNOYING party with really bad music, and the bass is so GD loud it is making the house vibrate. Oh and there’s some very bad singing to go with it. We don’t know much about these neighbours other than the fact they are a young couple who fight and swear a lot and yell at their enormous dog who is called Chopper. Yep.)

I feel a bit weird about restrictions lifting and things starting to go back to normal... it makes me feel a bit nervous. I’ve gotten used to living in our little bubble, gotten used to our daily routine... of course it’s been hard in many ways and really terrible for many people. But some things have been good for us during this time.. my gut has been really good (maybe not having any extra commitments?), I’m managing to keep up a daily yoga practice (mostly), our days are slower and there’s no rushing about to get people places on time and it’s been really nice having Scott around so much... but of course life will have to back to normal -ish at some point.

At the beginning of all this I set up my yoga area outside because all the other rooms were full of people. Despite all the gardening tools and mess around I love it. Charlie keeps sitting on my mat but I forgive him because he’s cute and fluffy.

This is my view when I lie down on the mat and look up. I never noticed this gum tree before. There are often rainbow lorikeets in it.

The kids have become a little obsessed with Roblox. I’m not sure how I feel about it... I usually hate computer/video games but this seems ok. Maybe. My instinct is to constantly try and get them off the devices but the girls have so much fun. They play with each other in the game and do things like adopt pets and look after them, run away from tsunamis and help each climb things and open doors (? I don’t know, something like that?). They get really excited when Daddy joins...

I did have a parenting win this week when I made this mini pie for Emma. She normally refuses to eat our normal sized egg and spinach pie, which is annoying. The rest of us love it. Anyway, this little pie won her over and she gobbled it up, exclaiming “look at my little pie!”

And, here’s another photo of the girls being sweet: 

Bush walk

This weekend Queensland lifted some of the Covid restrictions and for the first time in ages we all felt a bit more relaxed about things. So we met up with Dave and gang for a bush walk on Sunday (still practising social distancing of course. Well, trying to... very hard to keep cousins apart. We had to keep yelling “remember you have to fit a kangaroo between the two of you!!”)

So good to get out and do a good walk with steep hills and be rewarded with a pretty fantastic view at the top. Thanks Dave for the idea. And it was so good to catch up in person with my lovely brother and gorgeous sister-in-law💗

Emma forgot to bring shoes but managed really well in a spare pair of Franka’s that were way too big. Silly me, I guess I forgot to check that each kid had shoes on their feet when we left the house😬🤪🙃😔

And I’ve included this photo below because I am amused by how I look like an angry cowgirl...

The delights of Messenger

So my girls and their cousins have discovered how fun it is to call each other via Messenger and then put all the crazy effects on their faces on the screen. (I’m sure there is a proper name for it but I am way too old and not cool enough to know what that would be...)

I accidentally (and then on purpose -learned a new trick!) took screen shots of some of it last week. Pretty hilarious.

And here is a little moment I captured, between Lucy and Emma. They have a beautiful relationship. (And Lucy might just have the longest legs in the world, also beautiful.) Lucy was helping Emma with her Reading Eggs: