Restrictions lifted: Going from 0 to 60...

Back to normal, back to school

It was with a collective sigh of relief that restrictions lifted and the children went back to school on March 8th after the best part of three months at home. Juggling work, homeschool and bandwidth was a pressure on us all.

School life isn’t exactly ‘back to normal’, but it’s a huge, happy step in the right direction.

Restrictions lifted – April 12th

It’s been brilliant having some normality resume and more freedom. We’ve enjoyed alfresco dining, went away for five nights, met outside with a few friends; and it’s been nice to go into non-essential shops again.

Since April 12th, school clubs and external ones have resumed. The children have been so excited. My own weekly exercise group Totally Mama also started back (although I’ve kept up with weekly online poker nights).

Shock to the system

We’ve had many pretty inert weeks and our world got a lot smaller for a period. Then suddenly all activities resumed in unison and it was a bit of a whirlwind. I’m not complaining, but it’s been quite an acceleration in pace: swimming until 7.30pm, early morning netball, kids’ club, gymnastics until 8.30pm and Saturday morning netball…

It’s certainly more hectic again and coupled with renewed social engagements and doing things ‘in real life’ once more it’s requiring a bit of readjustment.

I felt a little guilty for being misty-eyed for the period when I didn’t have to remember lots of timings, have swimming/gymnastics/netball gear to prepare and wash and have to re-schedule dinner times and breakfast to accommodate everything.

Then I was rather reassured by an email I got from my Totally Mama group, which echoed the exact same sentiments. It made me realise that perhaps I’m not alone in finding the 0-60 a little overwhelming.

One of the positives from lockdown was learning to take my foot off the gas a bit when it came to home life, and smell the flowers. I really wanted to continue this, but have realised it’s difficult to maintain as normality resumes.

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