3 Things Thursday- Quarantine Edition

Hooray, hooray, today’s the day!

After 3 carefully spaced out, negative COVID tests, we are done with quarantine! The boys have been CLEARED to return to school and activities today!!

I am grateful to both the clinic staff and school staff for helping us navigate the current and somewhat confusing post-exposure quarantine guidelines.

I am also grateful that we have a very efficient community testing site. Compared to our previous experiences with testing a few times in 2020, these tests were a breeze. The lines were WAY WAY shorter and it was a pretty quick in and out (drive thru) every time. (Since we didn’t have any symptoms, we were told we couldn’t utilize our health clinic’s testing site- apparently that is reserved only for people with symptoms, even though we had a significant exposure.)

Here’s a quick list of what I will miss, and what I won’t:

Will Miss:

1- Just seeing the kids more! I’ll miss their random visits to my office just to say hi. I’ll miss the misc. day to day interactions that just naturally happen when we are all home- a quick conversation while filling a water bottle, seeing them laying on the floor doing schoolwork or whatever.

2-Increased family/ leisure time. Like I said, we’ve been watching a bunch of movies, going on a few walks, cooking together….all those lovely things that just naturally are more difficult to fit in during a normal school week. (Definitely not impossible, and we still do these things, it’s just a little harder when they are back in sports, etc.). I’ll miss the ease of it all.

3-Lazy schedule! I will miss not having to watch the clock in the mornings, being able to just work whenever I want, etc.

Will Not Miss:

1- People home all the time= messes. I will not miss their “stuff” everywhere. I also will not miss telling people to pick up their stuff (though this will not magically end now that quarantine is over).

At times I get very frustrated by the kids not doing things that I “feel” they should just “know” to do by this point in their lives….However, I heard a quote on a recent The Mom Hour episode that I found helpful (can’t remember which episode!). One of the hosts said something like, “It is developmentally appropriate for kids to need reminders about things at this age.” I thought that was good to hear. “Developmentally appropriate”. I especially liked that. The boys are NOT adults yet, so even though I might think they should be capable of picking up their own popcorn bowl WITHOUT a reminder, it is still developmentally appropriate for them to need that reminder sometimes. Their immature brains are probably just not even thinking about the popcorn bowl.

2- I won’t miss the disorganized schedule! (kind of a catch 22, since I just listed above that I will miss the lazy schedule!) I guess I will and I won’t. I’ll be happy to return to my normal routines, too.

3-I am so happy the boys can get back to school and sports. I won’t miss them missing out on things. I’m happy that our quarantine period actually coincided nicely with the time that swim team was on break anyway, so A didn’t even miss any. And although Ethan missed a bunch of soccer practices, he will be back in time for their first tournament this weekend.

Daily Gratitude:

I am just grateful for our health!! I am so grateful for the improved health of our COVID+ people, and extremely grateful for excellent medical care. COVID is no joke, obviously, and this time it hit VERY close to home. Too close. Thanking our stars though that the worst seems behind them, though it’s not totally over yet.