So, another week of lockdown successfully navigated and I’m left to sit here girding my loins ready for Blue Monday tomorrow. I can’t help but think that any previous third Monday in January has been a doddle compared to 2021. Certainly in my lifetime.
This week has been the usual nonsense of world and national events in the news, home schooling and remote working. Of course all we needed to add was a dump of snow quickly followed by some -7 degree freezing to make sure everywhere turned into an ice rink. Even daily exercise has become far riskier than it should be! We did make an awesome snowman however. The kids remain unfazed in their usual way although I am a little concerned they might be turning feral. Don’t forget to ignore all those social media posts about the perfect families and perfect parenting apparently going on. It isn’t real!!!
Off we go into this week’s top 5:
1. It’s amazing how some of the mundane aspects of life in previous years have now become highlights of the week (or month, or even year!) Standard car maintenance is a prime example – having to go and fill up at the petrol station is now a joy as it’s a reason to be out of the house. Now a trip to a car garage is off the chart! This week one of the cars was in for an MOT so we all piled into the other car to go to pick it up and pick M up from nursery on the way. I jumped out the car to get M and the doors auto locked. My car has the habit of doing this and I always forget!
Steph: E don’t move, we will set the alarm off
E: can I move my arms?
Steph: No
E: can I move my legs?
Steph: No
E: Can I blink?
Steph: Yes, of course you can
E: Mammy can I breathe?
Steph: yes E you can breathe, please keep breathing
<Two minutes later>
E: Mammy, I can’t stay still for too long, I have an itch!
Steph: Just don’t move, he’ll be here soon
E then inevitably moved… and nothing happened! It turns out the alarm wasn’t set but I still received an earful when we got back to the car! 
2. My wife has once again taken the brunt of the home schooling and I genuinely don’t know how she manages it. There is definitely a reason why she didn’t choose teaching as a career path, as she does not have the patience of a saint, but one to one tutoring is pretty intense no matter who you are. Despite having some highs and lows during the week, I caught her earlier today downloading all of next week’s work tasks and planning the timetable. It is actually a full time second job! E’s favourite task this week was colouring in her Feelings Monster. Her class had to colour in the monster and choose colours based on how they were feeling: red for angry, blue for sad, grey for fear, yellow for happy, pink for loved and green for calm. I’ll let you guess which 3 colours she picked and you can check below if you were right!! 
3. We received E’s report card from last term on Wednesday and it made us realise we’re doing to have to up our game. I don’t mean it was a bad report, by any stretch, but this term is undoubtedly going to be more of an assessment on our abilities to motivate her to work hard even without a qualified teacher, or any friends around. The pressure is definitely on! As a follow up to the written report, we received a telephone call from her teacher on Friday in place of a parents evening. It was a pleasant enough chat which finished with a request that we put E on the phone. I suspect Miss H regretted that pretty quickly! Off she set on an extremely lengthy monologue whilst walking in circles around our living room, regaling her teacher with stories of what she got for Christmas, what games she plays with her brother, how many days until her birthday and how “tilted” her snowman was as he was melting already. Certainly she’s in line for an A+ in any oral assessments at school – we just need to crack that maths now! 
4. In addition to my chores around the house (and on that point I was put in charge of cleaning all bathrooms this morning which I feel was quite a big promotion and testament to my househusband progress over the last 10 months) I occasionally now also get school topics to cover with E. A bit like a substitute teacher or, as I prefer to look at it, a specialist teacher parachuted in to educate future leaders. I was given science this week, which was all about the 5 senses. We had challenges to test out at home, and then had to go on a senses walk so we could then write down all the things we saw, heard, smelt, touched and (somewhat concerningly) tasted. All that I saw and heard was my daughter wittering on, and I smelt and tasted fear as she kept going off the icy path and peering down the steep banks into the river. As for touch, that was just her hand as she held me up every time I slipped on the ice. Who knew her wellies would have better grip than my hiking boots?! I’ll confess I was thinking I preferred feeding her different foods whilst she was wearing a blindfold in our kitchen but only until she turned to me on the way back and said “Daddy, I really love walking with you and spending time with you and I always want to be able to do it. It’s devine.” 
5. The weekend had an unnecessarily early start with E’s PQA Zoom session having been brought forward from 1pm to 9am. I actually read the rules of participation this week, and so stayed in the room throughout to help with the muting and unmuting. It was really enjoyable watching someone else running a Zoom meeting and trying to coordinate a dozen 5 year olds into a singing and dance performance. They all did really well and clearly had fun. A bit of semi normality in these weird times. I don’t think I could handle hearing “Get Back Up Again” from Trolls on repeat one more time, but it clearly paid off as she was awarded Poppet of the Week. One would think that would be the highlight of the class, but instead that accolade goes to E interrupting the teacher to show her a new dance move – whipping her hair around in a circle. The next thing we knew, the entire class was trying it out much to their amusement! Oh, the innocence and unbridled joy of 5 year olds!! 
LawyerLow Diaries 