Guess who's back .. back again?! It's happening, people! It's really happening! After more than 2 years, I have finally forced myself to document a day. It sure doesn't show, but I have been meaning to do this ... for TWO YEARS. Ugh, seeing that in writing makes it even worse. I started this ritual back in 2014 with the intentions of documenting a day-in-the-life once per quarter. That's reasonable, right? It's not too much. It's doable. I'm not a crafty person. At all. Paint? Take it outside. Glitter? My eye is twitching at the thought of it. I am horrible and didn't make baby books for either of the boys. I don't print photos. I have a relatively small box of keepsake items from over the years, and I even clean that out periodically. I suppose I'm a minimalist? I watched Marie Kondo and was like "how is this a thing?" I don't roll my laundry, I fold it like a normal human being. But this worthy of a Netflix show? Purging old crap? Anyway, the point being that this blog and documentation of daily life was a good way for me to be "crafty." It's like a photo album of some sort. A nice, tidy way to save mementos. I have occasionally gone back and re-read some old ones, and it's been a meaningful stroll down memory lane, sometimes to the point of tears. I'm always so happy and grateful that I've taken the time to do it. But now two years have passed. Dang it! Oh well. Better late than never. And let's hope this launches me back into the good habit of keeping up with it. Back on the wagon, people!
But first, a quick update about the past couple years. Covid. Yep. Covid. I blame it all on covid. Don't you love how it's become the most epic excuse on earth ... for every person living on earth? It's such a wonderfully common excuse at this point, that the excuse is literally one word ... covid. There's no explanation or build up or babbling about why we didn't do something or can't make it somewhere. Just ... covid. And we all get it. I predict that our generation will never outgrow the covid excuses. Someday we'll be in our 80s and forget to do something random. Covid.
But one thing is for sure. And that is that our little family truly made the most of covid life. We lived it up just about every day, and I have no regrets about our covid experience. During all this time (shutdown happened in March 2020 .. until now, August 2022), all this time I haven't blogged or documented, we have actually thrived. I know covid has been a horrible thing for so many. And we have been reasonably cautious along the way. But we have lived. Really lived. Lived life vividly for our family. We have all been home together and learned how to live with each other so closely. Brian and I have worked exclusively from home and really mastered the art of flexible work life. William did one year of just stay-at-home as a 3 year-old and then one year of preschool during covid life and loved it. He did fantastic. Jonathan finished second grade during quarantine. Then we (I am still shocked we actually did this) let him do third and fourth grade virtually. Pros and cons there. But mostly pros. He thrived as a virtual student. Absolutely thrived. We traveled quite a bit. Florida, Utah, Washington, Oregon, New York (just me on a girls' trip), North Carolina, Hawaii, Texas, cruise to Mexico, several local trips like Big Bear, Arrowhead, San Diego, Santa Barbara, probably some I'm forgetting. Countless beach trips. Park dates and play dates out the yin yang. Pool days beyond measure. This summer has been filled with sports lessons and camps beyond belief: swim, dive, basketball, flag football, junior lifeguard, engineering, continued piano. I think I'm also forgetting some of these. Restaurants, birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, holidays, all done up big. It has honestly been one of my favorite phases of life. I hate saying that in the context of a pandemic that scared the crap out of all of us and caused pain and devastation for so many. But we have truly made the most of covid life. I have loved it and will actually miss it.
School starts Monday. That's two days from now. In two days, covid life will come to an end for us. Covid is still out there. Speaking of which, I might be due for another booster. It's out there. But covid life will end for the Freemans on Monday. At 8:00 on Monday morning, Brian and I will take our babies over to Kennedy Elementary, walk them up to the gate, have a (likely) teary goodbye, and watch them walk away. William's backpack is 8 sizes too big for him and takes up half his body's length. And they will both look like such babies, taking these steps of independence. I could cry just thinking about it. They will both be scared. Out of their elements. Away from home. Away from family. But they will push through like the strong kids they are. They will hold it together. They will be brave and will do it, in spite of being afraid. They will be those good kids in the classrooms that teachers (and fellow classmates) love. They are so easy to love. They will do it. And this will be good.
I will miss them during the day. I will wonder what they are doing, what their day is like. I have been with them every moment for so long, and it will be weird to not know how their days are going. I will miss having Jonathan bounce around the house in the midst of his virtual school. Grabbing snacks whenever he feels like it. Updating me on what just happened in the class. Doing a random flip on the bed while I'm folding laundry. I will miss hearing William's little raspy voice, narrating his every thought. He's so grown up now. But he's still a baby. I will miss them.
But mostly I won't.
After a good bawl my eyes out sesh, I imagine I will breathe. Breathe an uninterrupted breath of fresh air that I haven't breathed in TWO YEARS. Actually more like TEN YEARS. For ten years, I have organized every minute of my day around a baby/toddler/preschooler/two of them. For ten years, every move I have even contemplated making has first been evaluated by a "where are the boys" type of thought. Do I have time to take a shower now? I need to catch up on emails, what can I have the boys do for 15 minutes? I need a sanity break, who can watch the boys? I'm starving and need to prep dinner, will the boys eat it? I mean, literally everything I do is always mitigated by parenting considerations first. Can I get an amen? Where my other primary caregivers at? The reward is great and all that blah blah blah. But seriously! This will be the start of a new era. The start of more structured life for all of us. The start of being able to hear myself think. The start of thinking about what I want to do for myself for 10 seconds. The start of I love you so much and can't wait to see you in 6.5 hours, bye! I have tingles just thinking about this magic. I.Cannot.Wait. Brian and I have lived up the baby/toddler/preschool/merged with covid era to the fullest, and it is now time to end it. Love ya, mean it, bye.
Ok. Anyway. As per usual, I meant for this to be a quick update. But all these details are so important. Anyway, the blog. The blog. Here we are. The end of an era. The start of a new one. I finally finally finally forced myself to choose a day to document. It's the very end of summer. The very end of covid life. A typical Saturday, nothing major, yet still busy somehow. And since I have been on a two-year hiatus from this form of crafting, I've decided to ease back into it, not swan dive. Since these blog posts can be quite time-consuming to draft and format (a major contributing factor to the procrastination and lengthy break), I've decided to just do a massive photo dump of the day. No captions documenting my various cuckoo thoughts about the mundane happenings. Just photos with the times. I would like to get back into the full documentation thing. But one step at a time, people. One baby step, limping to this finish line of an era, at a time. Good luck to any of us who try to make heads or tails of what actually happened in this typical summer Saturday of 2022, but at least it's something. My craft project of covid. Without further adieu ...
Saturday, August 6, 2022
Covid Partiers:
Lil ole me (43)
Handsome Hubs (42)
Jon (10)
Will (5)
Sandy Beach (turning 3 in a couple weeks)
4:53 am
6:00 pm
