The Coronavirus Diaries – 12th January 2021

I have decided to write a weekly diary of our time through the Coronavirus pandemic. To keep for the future. It’s such an unprecedented time and full of so many mixed feelings and events we have never encountered before it is hard to process it all.

I haven’t written an update since before Christmas. It’s a weird and a hard old time at the moment. Last time I wrote, my son has tested positive with covid-19, but I tested negative. Logan’s symptoms were a very small cough and the problem was persistent headaches.

I went on to be quite unwell – metallic taste in my mouth, aching all over, awful headaches, sore throat, a cough but not very big one and not persistent really and odd days with a wheezy chest. Really tired. I was ok, not bed ridden, but just generally unwell and took paracetamol regularly. A week after me, my husband started to feel unwell with very similar symptoms. A few days after that our youngest Bo – just seemed generally unwell. No cough at all, just irritable and complaining of headaches. Aria didn’t get any symptoms at all. None of us had a temperature.

We’re now a couple of weeks past Christmas though and my husband and I still have days when we feel quite unwell. Several days of feeling great and then, for example, this weekend I felt rough for most of the weekend, my cough seems to have got worse and the headaches seem to come and go as does the tiredness. The aches seem to come and go for my husband too.

Christmas

Christmas, as expected, was quite a quiet affair and very different to how it is normally. We stayed home, as Bo and my husband were in isolation we couldn’t even go for a walk. Santa still came and we had a Christmas dinner. We still made it as nice as we could, we all dressed up and thank goodness for video calls. I missed my family a lot and the socialisation and get-togethers. But it was still nice in a different way, I did enjoy Christmas even if there were things we missed and for that I am glad.

Schools Closing and Lockdown Again

The beginning of the year felt grey and it wasn’t helped by the confusing messages we were receiving as parents. On Sunday 3rd January, Boris went onto the TV to say that schools are perfectly safe and they should remain closed. 24 hours later we were informed that all schools would have to close for at least half a term.

So now the schools are closed, we’re in lockdown and are in one of the toughest months of the year. There are no sunny plays in the garden and paddling pool games. It’s bitterly cold, the garden is like a swamp and it’s hard. I broke down in tears one evening last week. But as I had settled back into a routine by the end of the week and it got easier. Bo has been able to go to nursery last week as they were able to open, which really helped. Unfortunately one of the teachers tested positive and he is back in isolation now and the nursery is closed. Listening to the news, I am not sure if they are going close the nurseries soon anyway. But I have to remember that perfect isn’t possible at the moment. I’m trying to juggle the needs of 3 children, my work, my own self-care and run a home. It’s not possible to do all of those perfectly.

So we will get through, all of us has set little goals we would like to achieve in this lockdown. Logan wants to build a volcano, Aria wants to learn some origami, I am doing some coaching which I am excited about and my husband wants to do some work on his music. Goals and actions definitely help. At least the vaccine is rolling out too…