Overwhelmed. When I think of how I felt during lockdown, that's the one word that comes to mind. I was completely overwhelmed. My job had been urging anyone who could work from home to make that transition. Mine went fairly smoothly with Brent's IT help.
It was when the schools closed down, the tsunami of emails, trying to sift through what was redundant and what was up-to-date news, that was part of what was overwhelming. I'll be forever grateful to the teachers and administrators who kept a positive attitude in the face of some fierce criticism. This was from Sydney's class:
I'm also grateful that by and large the girls were dedicated to their schoolwork when school resumed online. They carved out places in (and out of) the house to meet, read and work. I know a lot of parents and kids just gave up. They declared summer break had started early and withdrew from school altogether, assuming it would be back in full swing in the fall. Even so, we received the inevitable emails from teachers letting us know there were missing assignments, one of the girls skipped a Zoom meeting, they were falling behind. We couldn't stay on top of all 4 of them all day long and it was overwhelming.
Thanks to Brent's finely honed practice of economizing the groceries, we were well stocked for a lockdown. We never had to worry about running out of toilet paper or panic buying. Our financial situation actually improved by leaps and bounds during lockdown. Brent found out about his yearly bonus on March 10th and it was paid out just before lockdown started. Aside from the government stimulus, we began getting refunds for tickets to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cubs vs Red Sox game, Girls on the Run, among others. Everyone and their dog decided to refinance their house so I wasn't just busy at work, I was insanely busy and raking in the overtime. Interest rates dropped so low we decided to refinance ourselves from a 30 year to 15 year mortgage. We paid down debt so quickly it became like a drug, like an addiction. As good as this was for our family, the guilt of motherhood seeped in. I had to ban the girls from the office completely because I simply couldn't be effective at work and attend to their constant needs. One day I heard a knock on the door and I turned around and they had put up these sticky notes, reminding me that they loved me.
I'm so grateful they cheered me on, but I was definitely overwhelmed.
Even with the demands of work, I made sure to take a solid hour for lunch. If the weather was nice, we went for a bike ride. If it was rainy, we played a game. Sometimes it was an oldie but goodie like Tensie or Nerts and sometimes we tried something new like Iowaopoly which had never even been opened. Turns out Brigitta was particularly good at this game. She dubbed herself a "hundredair" and whenever she had to pay rent to anyone she'd nonchalantly say, "That's ALL? That's nothing!" We've always prided ourselves on not having any gaming equipment in our home but as the days and weeks of lockdown stretched into months, entertainment from the Disney+ subscription was wearing thin. We realized our home had limits when it comes to keeping the girls happy and occupied. It was so overwhelming.
It was fun to reminisce about all those places in Iowa City that we have all come to love and adore.
We did have an Amazon Echo and the girls used Alexa and her music catalogue quite a bit. I love these photos of Brigitta dancing in front of the tent the girls made and slept in for a few weeks.
At the end of those few weeks, I discovered to my horror, all the girls had lice. I've never dealt with lice in my life and I was waaay out of my depth. To this day, I have no idea how they got it- we were in lockdown and they had no contact with anyone. Literally NO ONE! I heard lots of moms across the country complaining of the same thing- kids in lockdown suddenly getting lice. There is no way lice are only spread through person to person contact, there must be a connection to all the time the girls were spending outside. The fort came down and each girl had to sleep in her own bed, use her own bed and have her own hairbrush. They lived in braids. I nearly went blind and my hands hurt all the time.
Nitpicking took on a completely different meaning to me as it took me 6 hours to check all of the girls and their long, long hair. I would do it every other day until they were clean and then I moved to once a week. Once they had 3 clean checks in a row, I moved to once a month. In spite of my diligence, we had 3 rounds of lice sweep through the girls. At the same time, our dryer broke. To properly wash and sanitize everything, Brent had to go to a laundromat. Speaking of Brent, he was paranoid he would get lice in his beard. The ironic thing about that is that he could easily have shaven his face clean and had a nice, thick beard back by the end of lockdown. Even so, he became very protective of his beard, looking far, far away every time the girls hugged him. As soon as salons opened again I booked appointments for all the girls and had 4 inches of hair cut off. The lice didn't just overwhelm me, it flat-out broke my spirit and I don't think I've recovered even to this day. Doing the girls' hair used to give me joy and it no longer does.
In a moment of desperation to get the girls out of the office so I could work, I told them I would pay them $100 if they could get their jump splits down. Liesel got to work right away and I have to say I'm insanely impressed. When she hits that split mid-air, she looks so graceful I could cry.
Ireland came up with this on her own- she played tic tac toe with the mailman! Outside interaction was so severely limited and it began to have it's effect on the girls. By and large they were kinder to each other than normal, but they missed their friends. Ireland came to watch for that mail truck and even now she has deemed it her job to bring in the mail everyday.
We had some working bikes but during lockdown but a friend gave us her daughter's old bike for Ireland and we bought Liesel and Sydney a new one. Since we couldn't go anywhere, riding bikes helped save our sanity.
At the bottom of a gentle hill, Sydney panicked when she went into a ditch and ended up crashing her bike. She got a fat lip and skinned her knee and vowed never to ride again. I made her get back on a couple of days later. As the lockdown was stretching on and on, we weren't about to coddle her on this one.
As it looked like restrictions would loosen but only if everyone was properly masked, I pulled out the sewing machine, my fabric stash, and helped the girls sew their own. They loved it- Liesel and Ireland made two just for fun!
These masks were heavy duty with 3 layers including a pocket to put a filter if needed. There's a pipe cleaner sewn into the top seam so it pinches their nose.
I always thought I would use this fabric for a quilt but ended up making our own BYU masks.
I didn't just look forward to John Krasinki's Some Good News, I came to live for it. Each episode made me laugh and cry. This was one of my favorite Office throwback things he shared.
Never in my life did I think I would go to Target looking like this.
We slowly emerged from lockdown hopeful for the future but knowing some things would never be the same again. It was so overwhelming, but I'm also so grateful we got through it okay.
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