Today is our last day of freedom before Lockdown 2.0 starts across the entire UK. I can’t quite believe we are back to this, but I do understand it needs to happen and I’m feeling hugely more level headed about it all, rather than last time when it was all quite a shock. I’ve got that ‘I’ve survived a lockdown once, I can do it again’ vibe which is helping me to stay positive, although obviously, I do still feel worried for our country, the vulnerable and our economy taking another hit. On a personal level I am anxious about catching COVID within our family plus the affect on my business – as last time I was hit pretty badly financially and our helpful government disqualified me from getting the self-employed grand as I had a baby in 2018 (makes sense…. not!) but I’m trying to keep a positive spin on things, limit my news intake and try and look forward. There is no point worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet (although I have disinfected my doorknobs and parcels a few times already, here we go again!).
So, as the pandemic really does effect on my mental health if I let it, I wanted to start the lockdown by writing a list of things we CAN do to pass the time and to keep ourselves busy….
FOR ME
Celebrate my birthday! Yes I’ve got a lockdown birthday this year as it falls on 14th Nov, hopefully, we will have a lovely family day at home, maybe some cake and a takeaway. In the evening I’ll probably subject V to some trashy telly that she wouldn’t usually want to watch, but it’ll be my birthday so I’ll get first dibs on the remote! 😉
Buy a couple of Nintendo Switch Games – I’ve got my eye on Zelda: Breath of the Wild and one of my all time favourite games Ni No Kuni – which has been remastered for the Switch. I got obsessed with Animal Crossing during the first lockdown, it’s such a sweet game and really took my mind off everything, but I don’t think I can face picking any more apples this time around!
Go easy on myself – I plan to reduce the pressure on day to day things like cleaning, tidying, getting everything done and try to approach a slower pace of life. After all, who is going to see our spotlessly clean house if I do clean it to perfection?! I also won’t be checking the news obsessively – keeping an eye on things once per day is enough.
Baking Bread – yep, my lockdown cliche habit is back! I’m already dying to bake my first loaf of lockdown bread, although after I killed off my sourdough starter I don’t think I’ve got the patience to create another one! Maybe I’ll start with something simpler!
Christmas Shopping and Fish Tank Planning – Looks like most of my Christmas shopping will be done online so I want think about it as early as possible so we can try to shop with some smaller, more independent brands rather than places like Amazon. The second lockdown will be so tough for everyone so I’m going to try to shop small where possible.
FOR THE GIRLS
The girls will still be going to nursery during lockdown this time, which I think will help us all to have a bit of a change of scenery and they’ll still get to see their friends, which will be nice. When they are not at nursery here are our plans…
Plan some winter walks – this lockdown will be slightly easier as playparks will still be open and we CAN meet one other adult outside as pre-school children don’t count towards the total in a group. This really changes things as I’ll be able to meet a friend for socially distanced walks with our children and see some friendly faces whilst getting some fresh air.
Christmas Crafting – It’s time to get festive so we will be getting our Christmas craft on! We have been loving crafting sets from Baker Ross, they are so easy and simple to follow even for little ones as young as Pearl. The girls are so into drawing, painting and crafts at the moment so I think their pens and paper will be out all the time so they can get crafty any time they like! I also might buy some plain Christmas cards so they can design their own this year.
Baking – I’ve already bought in a load of baking ingredients, icing and chocolate to make some sweet treats. The girls LOVE baking so if we are stuck inside on a rainy day I know this will be my first go to.
Getting ready for Christmas – We don’t know how long the lockdown will go on for (it’s supposed to finish on 2nd December, but I’m not sure if it really will) so during this time we might be putting up our Christmas decorations too! The girls will love to help out this year, they are already getting excited for Christmas and asking ‘is it Santa Day yet?’
Daytime baths – When the day is spiralling out of control sometimes there is nothing better than a daytime bath to break the cycle. The girls will sit and play in the bath for HOURS so it’s a great way to keep them entertained and contained when I need a well-deserved sit-down.
Don’t worry about screentime – Obviously, we won’t be watching TV all the time, but with nowhere to go and bad weather on the horizon it’s obvious the TV will be a big help when we are all a bit stuck. I’m not going to feel guilty if we end up having an afternoon watching Christmas movies or Frozen for the 49734902345th time! The one thing I will limit is watching Youtube as there has been such an increase of rubbish on there and it’s so hard to monitor what your little ones will see.
What have you go planned for this lockdown? How are you feeling?
