Just a Dash

I won’t lie.. this shit has been hard. Even though I’m a stay at home mom, my kids are in school 9-3 3 days of the week and 2 days are extended for extra curricular activities, so I had time on my hands.

When the first death in the US was announced, we basically began our “quarantine” from then. It was at the hospital 5 minutes from our house. From then until last weekend, I’ve only attended appointments and began slowly gathering things in the house since we were cooking more than usual and expected the quarantine to be somewhat imminent. But there was a lot I wasn’t prepared for. Namely, feeding 4 people 3 times a day. I already had subscriptions set up on Amazon’s Subscribe & Save, so cleaning products weren’t exactly lacking around here, but food was enough to last 5 days. We would normally eat out/order in 3-4 meals of 6 on the weekend, again, not cooking this often. So if you had to ask me again how I’d prepare for being home for 2 weeks, I’d say buy 4x what you normally buy and don’t expect to have the healthiest diet either. You can’t stock up on fruit. Vegetables you can freeze and cook as needed but we are a family that is heavy on fruit consumption more than vegetables. We do salads more than broccoli, squash etc. so again, nothing you can put in the freezer. But I’m having to go more veggie and purchase stuff we can freeze and cook.

Then there’s keeping a 2.5 and 5 (in a few days) year old occupied all damn day. NO NAPS. Why no naps? Because our soon to be 5 yr old doesn’t go to sleep until 11pm if he sleeps for barely 20mins a day, and our 2.5 yr old makes me take an hour to get her to sleep and then she too will stay up very late. I’m sorry I had to deal with y’all the whole damn day. I’ll put up with tired tantrums to ensure I get an hour or two to myself at the end of the day. There’s been a COVID19 Schedule floating around and I thought “oh that seems like a great idea!” but then realistically, it didn’t apply to me due to my kids’ ages. So I made up my own yesterday finally and had to make one tweak to it today after today’s test run (which went well surprisingly):

• Breakfast
• Morning Work
• Reading time
• Lunch
• Outdoor time//Afternoon Walk
• TV//iPad time
• Dinner
• Bathtime

This is exactly how it looks. No times are allotted on purpose. We get out of bed when everyone is up and we’re ready we’ve been asked 20 times for milk. Then there are 2 different breakfast requests going on so no one ever has the same thing unless it’s pancakes/scones, anything other than those two is personal preference and changes at least 3 times. I want them to eat so we have to narrow it down. Then I ordered a few books on Amazon and visited Michael’s just before the quarantine and I ordered more craft supplies on Amazon to keep them busy for the morning work period. This consists of the 5yr old practicing his writing/math skills, and the 2.5yr old drawing and going over the alphabet. Once his work is completed, we have craft time. I’ve made it so that this time is TV/iPad free. We usually have it on in the background but now it’s off until afternoon. On Monday or Tuesday (I’ve lost track of the days honestly) we made play doh and that kept them occupied for sooo long. Like 30mins minimum. If you have toddlers aged kids you know that’s long for them to sit quietly working on something. It was nice.

That time actually passes quickly because I’m always caught off guard that lunch is in half an hour or so, and I start to scramble trying to figure out what the hell to feed everyone. I’m NOT used to this. I usually have to fend for myself not 4 people, and two extremely specific ones at that. I’ve always got dinner covered but lunch for them has always been a tough one. They don’t really do leftovers for lunch and they don’t eat sandwiches. Leftovers are fine for dinner, but lunch is always a killer. I went as far as buying a guide for feeding kids to give myself ideas and options to try to keep them satisfied.

The reading time was inserted today because it was a given before but I realized my 5yr old would give me less stress about doing it on his own before lunch than after with the itis. Since my husband is working from home, and because it’s been sunny but cold, I put outdoor time after lunch so it would still be in his lunch time and it wouldn’t be as cold as if we went out at 5pm. After that, I’m clocking out. I purchased Osmo for the kids to give them something educational on the iPads, and that is going to be used after outdoor time. 5yr old was very interested and worked on it for half hour today, 2.5yr old was tired and liked the idea of it but wasn’t interested in working on it properly and wanted to just play with the sticks for the ABC game. I have decided this is a work for her in the morning when she’s more eager to learn than afternoon and more tired. (See how I’m switching things up for their moods? I hope she does better tomorrow though). I take a breather in the afternoon and then pry myself up to start dinner.

Now, I made a list for my most recent food delivery order to basically double and give myself easier options for lunch and dinner. In that aspect I feel a little more prepared.

A few resources:

• I downloaded some drawings and this Point Chart which helped my 5yr old stay on track a little more today from Rachel Parcell. The points chart gives my son (5yr old) a sense of accomplishment when he does things and keeps him in check when he’s not keen on doing activities, like reading after lunch. My daughter (2.5yr old) pooped on the toilet 2x today after reading to her that she had to poop on the toilet on her chart today. HUGE PROGRESS! As usual, pooping in the toilet has been the hardest part of potty training but today was a great success.
• Camp Castle playmats are great for bringing out your kids imagination, as a subscriber you can also receive printables during this quarantine time.
• Here is an idea list on Amazon that I created with everything I’ve bought. I do expect this quarantine to last longer than the 2 weeks put forth because people aren’t taking it seriously. Also my kids LOVE crafting and I’m all for building imagination through sensory play.  Disclaimer: my daughter loves all things girly and pink and princessy and fairy… It makes me happy but it kills me how much pink she’s obsessed with. I didn’t even have her in lots of pink as a baby!
• Also follow @robinpsychology on Instagram for more ideas and good accounts to follow during this time.

It took a quarantine to get me to post again, but you know I post when I have something I think will be really useful to others. Hope this helps a mom or two!