It’s been incredibly hard to be a parent during a 2+ year pandemic for my boys who are under the age of 5. So much in our lives have changed – they still haven’t been inside a shop, we still wear masks outdoors at playgrounds and keep social distancing (hello long covid, no thanks you’re not welcome here) and have kept playdates to bare minimum. We see 2 sets of friends and even then not regularly since one moved away to Southern California, and the other has been gone to Ireland the past month. We are 99% alone all the time, just my boys and I exploring the area. Honestly, feels lonely if I dwell on it too much but I’m hoping i’m giving my boys a fun childhood (and so they say “kids are resilient” and won’t be too affected….we’ll see. Spose b’y.
Like everyone, I have been itching to get back on a plane and head back to Canada to visit all of our family. My older son talks about Canada constantly these past few weeks, and telling me that we can go when “covid is over”. I feel as though the under 5 crowd has been forgotten about as everyone seems to be going on like the big C doesn’t exist anymore. Companies are sending employees back to the office semi-full time, with their young kids still unvax’ed. It’s a terrible feeling to been so vigilant about not going into stores at busy times, wearing n95s, and then go back to an office where there’s no mask mandate anymore and bringing home covid to the young kids. We’re triple vax’ed but our children are not. Catching covid to us is no joke, and sure people have caught it with little to no side-effects but what we don’t know is the unknown harm it does in the long run. Why can’t people get that? Long covid isn’t a thing to look forward to either.
Luckily my boys enjoy the outdoors as much as I do, and we basically live at playgrounds, touring around all the ones in the Bay Area – there are SO MANY. I swear there are hundreds of them. Monday to Friday after we all eat breakfast together as a family, I buckle my two boys up and we drive off to an adventure. Of course it’s exhausting but it’s better to explore the outdoors than to be cooped up at home. Plus, I feel like I’m a better Mom when we’re outdoors. But MAN do I miss my good friends. It’s a different world these days. No more random meetups with my mom-friends, and no more library visits for story time. Wild.
Oopsie, this turned into a post I didn’t think i’d be talking about on my blog. Initially I was going to write about all the fun adventures we’ve been having. To end on a positive note, thought I’d include some photos of our adventures out exploring the Bay Area here these last few weeks.
