Social distancing and covid19 - blogger is my therapist :)

Hello folks! I haven’t written on this blog for quite a while! Let’s see… We have a third child, and he’s 14 months old already!

We are now a family with three boys! One in grade one, one in preschool, and one baby.

 Just like pretty much everyone around the world, we are housebound these days due to the flu pandemic of COVID-19.

personally, I have asthma. So the idea of catching Covid itself freaks me out a little more than the average 30-year-old. To top it off, seeing cases of healthy 30-year-old people being hospitalized makes me even more anxious about it. I’m not afraid to talk about the anxiety, I think it’s important and healthy to voice it. Yes I fret and lay awake. I actually invested in some melatonin to help me sleep on nights where I feel myself being jittery before bed.

The other anxiety I have is school being closed for the rest of the school year potentially. My oldest son is in grade one, which may not seem like a big deal. But he is a lot like me, in that reading doesn’t come naturally. I genuinely worry for his academic success if he’s not in school. I am simply not a teacher. And having them home for the last two weeks has only affirmed my decisions NOT to homeschool.

Every time someone posts or suggests an online learning resource, It raises my blood pressure because it just reminds me that the responsibility is entirely on my shoulders, whether my child will be able to progress to grade 2 or not. I remember being in grade 2 and not being able to read a Franklin book properly, being bribed with stickers, and taking almost a week reading one page a day to earn those stickers.

My oldest son has ADHD like me. We haven’t diagnosed it yet, but I am 100% certain on it. I don’t think I’ll feel the need for a diagnosis until he needs medicating.

Those are my two main anxieties, otherwise we are healthy and happy and have everything we need.  I am generally a plan ahead kind of person, so I stocked up our pantries and medicine cabinets well before the anxiety struck the rest of the nation. This has resulted in me being able to shop at times that are dead. Even now, when we are fully stocked I have planned our grocery shop using click and collect for two weeks from now. It feels weird to plan a grocery shop when you have all the food you need, but that’s just a reality right now.  Especially as an asthmatic, I am trying to be extra cautious. I am not simply worried about corona, I am worried about catching other viruses, and then catching corona. It is my suspicion that this is what has caused young healthy people to end up being hospitalized. My goal is to have my asthmatic lungs in as healthy estate as they can be, so they have a fighting chance if I were to contract corona.

Curtis is fortunate enough to continue working during this pandemic. His crew is only made up of a few guys, and as they do construction outdoors, most of the time they are more than 2 m apart. Also with the weather being cooler generally they are wearing gloves still. As much as possible though Curtis is trying to do separate tasks at different sites than the rest of the crew. I know he is worrying and being responsible for our families safety as well.

Regarding our mental health, we are all still doing quite well, all things considered. Yes I have a bit of anxiety, and curtis is equally a little bit frazzled with everything going on, and him being a responsible protective husband, worrying about his family’s health as he works. But the kids so far are doing well, and nobody is depressed or having crazy cabin fever yet.

The boys and I have structured our days pretty rigorously, by the hour. They have scheduled recess times and play times, One hour of school work in the mornings, and an hour with reading at home reading and crafts in the afternoon, TV time is scheduled so they’re not always asking for it, and there’s even a chunk of time or they can choose what they want to do with me, one on one. This results in a happy family and a messy house since I never have time to clean with this schedule ha ha Ha!

From our family trip to great wolf lodge in February 

If you are a praying person and looking for a prayer request from us, it would simply be the prayer of thanks for our current situation in this troubling time. We are truly fortunate, dare I say blessed. (It’s so hard to use that word these days at so many people take offence to it for random theological reasons… But I’m not sure what else to use as a term of spiritual thankfulness, and giving God the credit). I do you want some prayer for my own personal level of discipline. I am learning more and more that’s what I eat changes how well I function with my ADHD and hormones. When I am eating fillet of low-carb, my brain feels clear and functioning on all cylinders. When I stress eat and have a lot of carbs or sugar‘s, it’s like I am living under a cloud and I am more anxious and scatterbrained as well. Me and the boys get a lot less done on those days, and the general mood in the house is less ideal. I have also relayed this to my spiritual life. When I am fuelling myself in healthy ways spiritually, by reading my Bible, by prayer journaling, by teaching my children about the Bible… I have less doubts I have less anxieties and I have more confidence and joy. But when I feel myself with the world, reading the news, going on Facebook, watching YouTube, then my spiritual life is foggy, and full of doubts about prayer, and about whether or not God truly excepts me for who I am. It’s really quite simple, and my dad has been telling me this since I was a child. “ Garbage in, garbage out.”  So prayer for me to be disciplined both physically and spiritually would be my biggest prayer requests right now.

I hope you are also doing well, and if you’d like to shoot me an email or Facebook message I would love to reconnect. We all have plenty of time on our hands to do so, so let’s use it to bring us together. :)