Do you think anyone in the whole world woke up today thinking Boris Johnson is a great leader? I bet even his own family didn't. After receiving an email from Percy's school yesterday morning hearing that school is definitely on, we put them to bed in the evening telling them we didn't know if they will be going to school or nursery tomorrow. We woke them up to tell them that Eric would be going to nursery but Percy would't be going to school. They took the news surprisingly well. They are pretty resilient to change at this age, at least they have some understanding of what's going on. Not like the time we were kind of homeless when Percy was 18 months, that was a mad time for Percy, it was like now were visiting Grandparents, now were visiting auntie Sarah's student house, now we're visiting the other grandparents, now we're living with another random family for 9 months and then we'll move to our own house and have another baby and auntie Sarah will live with us. Maybe that chaos has set him up perfectly for Boris's mess, maybe it's psychologically damaged him. Only time will tell.
I've tweeted Boris a few times but surprisingly not had a response yet.
I worked so hard in December and November at my 3 random jobs. I'm glad I did because it will be hard to earn any money now till schools go back, but I was really looking forward to some more decorating work for a neighbour and having a bit of time off to myself in January. Part of the reason I took the Royal Mail job in December is that it would help me be eligible for the 30 hours of free child care from January to March. I'll now be spending that time as an unpaid teacher.
When I realised before the announcement that schools were going to shut I had a little cry and then I had a hot bath. With hindsight I should have cried in the bath to save on water bills. I can't believe that on Monday some kids went to school! Imagine going to school for one day and mixing with other kids who have seen family at Christmas only to be told that is it no more school till at least February. Or all the schools that had inset days to sort out the safe return of children, when what they needed to be organising was how they're going to teach the key worker kids and how they're going to do online learning.
Everyone's had a bad birthday this year. It's mine next week and I knew restaurants and stuff would probably be closed but Dan took the day off work so that we could at least enjoy a kid free day together, go for a cycle and watch a grown up film, now we will have to involve a 6 year old and maybe a 3 year old in whatever plans we make. I just hope that by the time it's Eric's birthday in May things will be normal again. I'm worried that he actually can't remember what normal is: Covid has taken up nearly a quarter of his life. I asked him the other day what he would do for his birthday and he said "play with Roy" which is one of his toys. I don't think he can remember real parties.
I am super glad nursery is still open for now. It's great that he gets to socialise with other kids, he was the one that got missed out when we homeschooled in the spring. Percy had a lot of things he had to learn for school so Eric got ignored a bit. The nursery have said you shouldn't send them in if you don't have to, but I'm not going to let them guilt me into keeping him off, he loves it there and having only one kid to homeschool makes it way easier. Today I taught Percy batik for the first time. There is no way I'd ever get hot wax out with a 3 year old around. Not sure how I will get through the next month, but today in-spite of everything was actually a nice day, and a very rare chance to spend time with just my eldest.
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| unfortunately just after taking this I spilt ink all over my chameleon |
