I live in a small garden apartment (54sqm/581sqft) with my husband and 3,5
year-old son.
We’re not a perfect family - we fight, our toddler throws loud tantrums, we’re anxious about the future and missing family and friends as much as anyone else. However, we’re finding ways to enjoy lockdown – as crazy as that seems.
Our lockdown process is unfolding, and we have off days, but if one thing we do helps you better navigate living in a small apartment with a
family during the COVID-19 pandemic, then that’s awesome. So here goes...
Every evening, we ask each other what our highlight of the
day was. We’ve been doing it since our son could talk. Now
that we actually have time to have breakfast together, my husband has started a
new ritual – asking us for one thing we are grateful for.
I’ve noticed that it
does help me start the day with a more positive mindset than usual. Give it a
try.
We can’t go anywhere, but we can change our view a bit.
After the announcement of the extended lockdown (and a bit
of a cry on my part), we decided to move our little home around. We moved
our sofas and created a mini home office with a small patio table (disguised
with a white sheet so it blends in a bit better). It was a
small, refreshing and functional change.
Then we rearrange my son’s room so that it can fit in a play
table, which was usually left outside, and a little kiddies’ tent, which I
recently fixed. It gives us more space for toddler-style home school, arts and
crafts and imaginative play inside his room.
Consider what you
could move around – even if it’s just a “lockdown” change.
We are so blessed to have a little garden, partly walled off from
our neighbours, which is rare for apartments. For me, it’s more than where I hang up washing – it’s a living landscape painting.
Our garden is our outdoor lounge and play area. We have benches, a sandpit,
a mini trampoline and my son has a tree that he climbs every day. Lately, it’s also become our private gym since
we can’t get out for walks and runs, but we can run my son’s chalk road track
and bounce on the mini-trampoline.
While you can’t go
out and buy new things for your garden, here are ideas to help you make your
garden a functional and fun place to hang out:
- Fill in empty garden beds and pots - Plant cuttings to propagate more plants and get the kids to help.
- Decorate - String up those fairy lights or bunting and make your garden cheerful.
- Play - Create obstacle courses with what you have, play ball games, use laundry baskets or buckets as ball hoops and chalk to draw roads for your kids to ride and run on. If you have a sandy patch, make it the ‘sandpit’ and use yoghurt tubs and cups as sandcastle moulds.
- Start a little farm - Inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the expected economic crash that we are in for, I’m trying my hand at growing vegetables. I tried years ago and failed miserably, but I’m giving it a go again and trying to involve my son so he can see how food grows. I'll blog about that soon.
- Take a seat - Create a seating area or simply throw down a picnic blanket and pillows for a little outdoor chill-out time.
If you don’t have an
outdoor space, try creating more play space inside.
In a recent video, Avital from the Parenting Junkie recommends taking all the
breakables out your living room and using extra mattress, pillows, soft toys
and blankets to create a soft play area for your kids.
If you don’t want to do this permanently, consider a soft
play day – and make it the day you change beds. Pull your mattress onto the
floor and let your kids bounce and roll across it. We’ve done it twice – with
our double bed mattress and again with my son’s three-quarter mattress and he
loved it.
5. Let the light in
If you can’t get
outside, maximise the natural light in your home by cleaning
your windows, opening the curtains wide and moving seating into an area where
you get the most sunshine so you can soak in some healthy vitamin D daily.
There are several studies
pointing to the benefit of morning light role in regulating the body clock, which
affects how well your metabolism works, your mood and how well you sleep at night,
so think about where you have breakfast or do a morning workout.
6. Create a daily and weekly routine
I probably wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t have a kid,
but I created a morning routine and weekly activity list.
Apparently, routines help kids and adults feel more
settled, and this is one heck of an unsettling time. Ours is a pretty flexible routine but it does
help my husband and I get work done between taking turns to make sure our son
is busy, safe and happy.
It's nothing fancy and I’m thinking of
making changes, but it’s what we have right
now:
I get my son dressed while my husband works, then we usually
do ‘morning movements’ together.
Morning movements is a series of fun exercises done with
songs and silly made-up games to help build muscle tone and improve my son’s
balance. Then my son has TV time (45 minutes to an hour) and my husband and I
work. After TV time, we all have a snack followed by playing outside, home school time and
lunch.
After lunch is rest time – when my son has to lie on his bed and
look at books while we work. Somedays this works but lately, he hasn't been cooperating and we have to keep putting him back on his bed, which makes it an unproductive and
frustrating time. He’s also supposed to have a ‘play alone time,’ but
this has also been difficult to implement lately. I think my kid has become
needier for attention and interaction because being cooped up has rocked his
world in all the wrong ways. It’s something that we are working on, but our
primary goal is to ensure our kid is happy.
Afternoons are reserved for activities like art, gardening,
baking and cleaning (my son loves cleaning the glass sliding doors and scrubbing the
shower). When we have more work to do or need to cook, and my son is asking
for TV, we turn to podcasts like Story Nory and Audible (which is giving us all
free access to their children’s audible books during the pandemic). We set up
his table with playdough or paper and crayons and he’ll happily play and listen to stories for about
30 minutes).
If you don’t have a
routine yet – create one and see if it helps your kids feel more settled and
you stay on top of things.
When we’re struggling to get our toddler dressed (because
he’d rather jump on his bed without pants on), we point out what’s next on his
morning routine chart before he gets his beloved TV time and it does seem to
help get things back on track. Confession: It also helps me remember to brush
his teeth in the morning, because I often used to forget.
So there you have it – the things that are working for us
and the things that need some work.
We’ll keep working at it because, when my son put his hands on either side of my husband’s face and said,
“I like it when you’re here daddy, I miss you when you go to work,” I realised
that even amid this scary pandemic, we’ve been given a gift of time
together - we owe it to ourselves to make the most of it.
What are you doing to survive lockdown? I'd love to hear what has been working for you...
Top photo by Phil Hearing
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