Everybody hates sequels, there are very few occasions where they’re as good as the original, yet here I am promising to make it the best yet. To be fair, the original is pretty hard for me to beat. Towards the end of the first week of Lockdown 1, I gave birth to lovely baby Orlaith – Lockdown 3 promises no such joy.
But everyone claims life is what you make of it, and it’s all feeling a bit groundhog day for me. I’m reliving the same experiences until I get it right, so in a bid to release us from all further Lockdown editions, I’m planning on smashing this one. I can’t beat giving birth, but maybe I can make the lockdown as a whole, a bit more successful.
Armed with the freedom of no perineal tears (the first lockdown was plentiful in this department) I’m ready to take on the world. At the moment, my world is very small and mostly consists of writing, feeding the kids and home-schooling. Keeping on top of it is much harder than it sounds though.
Greg’s done a two weeks of home learning and has requested to stop forever. Emma is doing mostly okay but needs help checking her work and need tasks explaining to her. This in itself also sounds doable until you realised I now have to learn German to help her with her German homework. I don’t speak German. Am I enjoying it? Nein.
Determined not to allow anything to give me an excuse to hold back, I’ve been planning ways to make things work. These are the ways I’m going to try and do to make it work:
I’m going to be better at homeschooling
Last year, homeschooling was a bit of a write off. We did enough to get by but I had a newborn and didn’t take maternity leave, so something had to give. This time I’m still working, but our baby is bigger. She sleeps in her cot during the day and will play quietly in short bursts while I go through stuff with the kids.
My teaching day is longer, because I deal with Greg and Orlaith during school hours, then grab Emma in the evening to go over bits she’s stuck on. I don’t get a break but I worry less about the kids being behind. I also spend all my cash on CGP revision guides because I remember approximately zero of my own schooling.
I’m planning to lose weight
I’m not talking about a vague goal of weight loss for weight loss sake, but with a clear aim in mind. I want to be more comfortable and more mobile than I was last summer. Last summer I had no core from giving birth. It caused pelvic pain, tummy pain and I couldn’t really get about easily.
I was given physio exercises to complete (which I’m still doing now) but I know that weight loss will help with the general discomfort I’m suffering from. The aim is to feel better all round and maybe try and be more active generally. I doubt you’ll catch me going out for a run, but I’d like to be comfortable running around the garden with the kids.
The lockdown means I can do things on my own schedule, so it should be easier to fit in exercise and eating well. If I’m not in a rush, I can be more considerate about what I feed myself and my family.
I’ll get my skincare sussed
Another perk of not going out is not worrying about wearing makeup. Weirdly, my skin is worse than ever, but I’m blaming that on lack of sleep. Once I get back into a proper skincare regime, I’m expecting to emerge from lockdown with the skin or an airbrushed mannequin.
I’ll prioritise writing
I’ve always loved writing as a hobby (if owning a blog didn’t give it away) and the lockdown seems the perfect time to have a go at fiction writing. In December 2020 one of my short stories won a runner up prize and was published by Best magazine in their winter fiction special. That’s given me the boost I need to properly get back into it. I won’t bore you all with my bad attempts at fiction, but I will sing from the rooftops if I get anything published.
I’ll allow myself time to read
This sounds silly, but because I’ve got a very busy home life, I feel guilty if I sit down to read. I’ll get the overwhelming feeling I should be doing something else (usually I should) and I often don’t feel like I have earned the time to sit down with a book. Having absolutely nowhere to be means I can feel a bit less guilty about having some time to do what I like. Hopefully that feeling will remain after lockdown ends and I can read lots of lovely books.