My youngest... you are two

Last week you turned two, Charley. You experienced a birthday in the peak of COVID-19 isolation mode. I'm so thankful it was you and not either of your sisters' birthdays last week. I'm going to hold out hope that by the time Emma's birthday roles around near the end of June that she can have a semi-normal birthday. It was actually quite great timing as we like to joke that "we don't celebrate second birthdays in our house" anyways. After all, we sent Emma to her first full day of daycare when she turned two, and well we moved house on Morgan's second birthday. Anti-climatic second birthdays is what we do.

But your sisters wouldn't let it not be special, they spoiled you, doted on you, walked you down the hallway when you woke up so you would see all of your special decorations. They wanted to play "fancy restaurant" for your birthday dinner, we didn't quite do that, but they did help cook some very special chocolate chip pancakes for dinner and made sure your cake was perfect. Emma learned how to play "Happy Birthday to You" on the keyboard. They both laughed at you in the best way when you decided to wear your new undies on your head for dinner and for the next few days. They put up with you when you played that Wiggles microphone on repeat. ALL. DAY. LONG. While you couldn't grasp 100% what was going on, you knew it was a special day about you no doubt and you let your personality shine in the moment. You wore that Elsa dress with all the confidence of a real queen. And you held onto that cake stand when it came close to you, no one was going to separate you from YOUR cake.

You are a "classic" third child. You are loud, really LOUD. You talk, a lot. While I vividly remember Emma and Morgan both turning corners with their speech when they turned two, you are already well and truly having full conversations with me and have been for the last couple months. You are a "pocket rocket" as Australians like to say, but let's be careful saying that as it means a few different things depending on what part of the world you're from. Here it means you are petite, but athletic and energetic. That definitely matches your Evil Knievel dare devil personality. You will be my child that either gives me a heart attack or finally sends us to emergency with our first serious injury.

But along with your big, outgoing, strong willed personality that orders your sisters around, you love BIG. I am thankful that I am often the recipient of so much of your love. You love to play the game where you say "my mummy!" and I say back "my Charley!" on repeat while I hold you and you squeeze my head against your cheek. You tell me you love me and have perfected your air kiss (hopefully you'll figure out the timing of your lip smack on my cheek soon).

I have moments of guilt when you don't always share this love equally with other family members but you have a special bond with each of us as the youngest one of the house everyone loves their baby Charley. No doubt the bond between Morgan and yourself is truly special. You already beat her up, I'm fearful of what is to come, but you two always make up and Morgan with her gentle heart always forgives you right away without question, and pulls you in for a big hug and says "that's ok Charley, just don't do it again."

This isolation thing has arguably been most difficult on you. You've missed our last 6 weeks at playgrounds, but we tried to make it up a little to you with the tiny inflatable slide and ball pit we got you for your birthday. I look forward to when I no longer have to tell you that a playground is broken when you spot one or when I don't have to go to all ends to avoid you seeing one. You in general just want to disturb the peace when you're inside at home and it hasn't made for the best combination with your sisters that are actually able to sit still and want to learn and do quiet activities. You have worn me out, but I love not having to rush and drag you from place to place during the day and our normal activities as well.

I don't know what the future holds for you, my youngest. I don't know what the future holds for our world either. I am thankful you won't really remember this time and I pray that the "new normal" that results over the rest of this year and next year won't impact the way you interact with others forever. I want you to be able to run and bear hug your friends, tickle their toes, and give ALL of your love to those around you. I don't want you to be worried about how I might react if you get too close to another child or fearful that if you sneeze in public that I'll have to keep you cooped up at home for the next few weeks without even a thought of stepping outside.

Charley, you are TWO now. A baby no more, but thankfully still my baby. You might look so much like your older sisters, but you are your OWN person. You will pave a road for yourself no doubt very different than what Emma and Morgan do for themselves. I will wait and watch and pray that I might be able to do my best to raise you for whatever the world might throw at you or where you might land.

A year ago I ran with people, this year I run away from them.

Just when this "new normal" is starting to feel a little more like "normal" I am bombarded by reminders that it is anything except that. This week the Aldi cashier told me that (I'm pretty sure) not me, but my groceries were too close to the person's groceries in front of me, our downstairs neighbours are starting to loose some patience with increased noise from my children, and I was reminded that a year ago I ran a marathon WITH other people opposed to my current swerve at all expenses running strategy.

I read the articles and some of the online chatter that say people should stop running during this time, they should become more considerate like cyclists, and they need to stop pushing walkers aside while muttering profanities and flinging sweat on others around (I can guarantee you I'm not doing this nor have I witnessed this happen). Can't we all just show a little kindness and consideration for one another and do our best while we work together? I need to keep running for my sanity, I'm just hoping I don't need to resort to 4 am to avoid death stares while I seek out the least utilized routes.

Because after all, this was the year I was hoping to run my 20th marathon with, get this, other people. Silly me, 2020 sounded like a good year to do just that. So as likely options keep getting wiped from the calendar, I'll in the meantime relive what a great weekend away in Canberra we had last year when I ran #19.


We decided Canberra would be a good place to run a marathon and for a weekend away since we had done little more than use the city as a rest stop for other trips since we first moved here. It was also touted as a flat and fast race course, and while the flat part was pretty accurate, only the first half of the course was pretty fast for me. But I'm getting old, marathons seem like a lot more effort than they used to be, and well the end time isn't quite as important as it used to be. I actually don't even remember my exact time now a year later, which says that it's really not that important to me anymore, or it was really that bad that I just wiped it from my memory.

Aside from my 42.2 km run on Sunday, Emma got to run a 1 km kids dash during my run. There was gorgeous crisp autumn air the entire weekend, actual colour changing leaves, massive wide roads with plenty of parking and orderly streets. None of these things really exist in Sydney, but do in midwest America, which is why I realized I felt so at home in Canberra. After the couple hour drive Friday evening and late arrival we enjoyed a leisurely brunch Saturday morning outside of the National Library of Australia followed by an entire afternoon of fun for the kids at Questacon.

Emma was so excited to be at the National Library!

Brunch bliss

Her choice of face paint at the marathon expo gave me a fright!

So much fun for everyone at Questacon, reminded us so much of the Magic House back in St. Louis

Charley really had no hair a year ago!

Post marathon on Sunday we gorged ourselves at the incredible Patissez (while I was sadly reminded of my inability to consume much food after a run and let my kids enjoy the bulk of the sugar-loaded milkshakes). We also tried to Aussie-educate ourselves by visiting the Parliament House (aka The Capitol of Australia). Since they were not in session we could easily meander our way around most of the inside and outside of the building and even literally "roll down" the grassy lawns. It is known both for its interesting architecture and openness to the public. No required guided tour, booked appointment time, entry fee, and relatively minimal security.

I always love my "good-looking" running shots.

Yum!

Outside of Parliament House

The marble foyer

I don't think they were impressed in the House of Representatives Chamber

On the roof reminded me of the Louvre

Beautiful views all around of Canberra from the gardens

I think my husband needed a nap after his exhausting morning of solo parenting these three

I'm not sure if rolling down the lawn is a thing to do at the US Capitol... only in Australia. 

There were so many more things we could have done with the kids in Canberra, its full of museums and history and could certainly warrant another trip in the future. However, it did feel like the most non-Australian city there could possibly be, no beach, no red dirt.

Looking back on our primary motivation for the trip to Canberra, I ran a great first half of the marathon, but would have loved to just have stopped and given up for the second half of the race. I'll give myself the excuse that I still had a baby not sleeping through the night, I had just walked a 60 km race with friends almost exactly a month earlier, so let's just say my training and prep was a little atypical. I swore off running another marathon a number of times while I was running, but now I'm sitting here anxiously wishing I could put another one on the calendar to train for. Hopefully one day, sooner rather than later, when this "new normal" becomes the "old normal," my body will still feel up for the challenge and I'll have my cheerleaders both to motivate me on race day and to keep me seeking this form of early morning me time training. And for now I'm going to keep holding out on finding some normal in 2020 and finding a way to run #20. 

There are now 16 reasons to go outside (I think)

I don't have a dog, but I'll be walking my kids everyday.

We are down to 16 government allowed reasons to leave our home in the state of New South Wales. Evidently this is part of the Stage 3 restrictions and let's be honest, this is all starting to get pretty confusing (because as I'm writing I'm wondering was there a new announcement maybe today that I missed?). One thing I know for sure is I'm about to find every possible opportunity to exercise outside in the coming months (and if my kids are good I'll bring them too).

Thankfully we've been in this stage for around a week now and (I don't think) it has changed so I've had some time to get my head wrapped around what I'm probably allowed to do and what I might get fined for. And we should probably get used to it because it's looking like these restrictions are here to stay for around three months. Although every country seems to have a different model, a different approach, a slightly different experience playing out, only the test of time will tell us which way to contain and eliminate or slowly spread this virus was best. Maybe these restrictions will become more severe, maybe they will ease, we will wait and see.

So what are the 16 reasons we can leave home right now? Here you go...

Slowly the world is closing

1. Work (if you can't work remotely)
2. School
3. Shop for food or essentials
4. Seek medical care
5. Exercise
6. To avoid injury, illness or escape risk of harm
7. To deal with emergencies
8. Access childcare
9. Provide care or assistance to another
10. Attend a wedding (max 5 people) or funeral (max 10 people)
11. Move to a new residence
12. Donate blood
13. Undertake legal obligations
14. Access social services
15. Continue care arrangements for children who live between households
16. For ministers to provide pastoral care in a place of worship

And if we do leave home we are told, at most, we can meet with one other person from outside our family (socially distanced of course). So far, I don't think we've really broken the rules, at least not blatantly, but let's be honest I'm not entirely sure either, especially as the rules are slightly different from state to state, country to country.

So this past weekend, well knowing that such an outing might be restricted by next weekend, we went for a day outside to a beautiful spot 45 minutes north of Sydney called Bobbin Head in the Kui-ring-gai Chase National Park. We walked on some gorgeous trails, rode bikes in empty parking lots, threw a frisbee, and went fishing. We also set out the picnic rug for a few minutes to eat lunch, I don't think that was technically allowed, but aren't we allowed food outside while we exercise? Also, we were fishing for leisure, we weren't fishing to feed ourselves, so that too might have got us in trouble. And if we were in Queensland from the sounds of it we likely could have earned ourselves a fine by driving that far to exercise as it might have been deemed unnecessary. Evidently we can still golf here in New South Wales, but not in other states. See what I mean? 

Over dinner recently we had a chat about how, just like the fires that Australia endured as we rang in the new decade, this pandemic is nothing new to the world. While still rare, frightening and overwhelming, the world has witnessed such things before. I started to say how every human has moments like this that they experience and remember forever either on a personal or greater shared community level. Emma you asked me about other big moments I remembered and my first thought was of course 9/11, then the Great Recession in the late 2000's, the Syrian refugee crisis, Gulf war, Oklahoma City Bombing, and the Challenger Explosion (but I was too young to actually remember).

But then it struck me that for the most part (aside from the recession really) these were moments in time events, and ones that I was largely removed from or relatively not impacted by. They still changed the world in ways that eventually trickled down to facets of my life, but I did not directly experience the actual events. So this pandemic is actually quite different. We are all impacted. We all either know someone who is sick, someone on the front lines, or we are trying to do our part by staying home. But in saying that, I also feel it important to acknowledge, that as for now, our family is not directly impacted. Our lives are changing and we are forced to abide by ever-evolving rules but currently we are just sitting in the wings as casual observers. We are waiting for the moment when we might get called in to play something more than the understudy (in whatever form that might take), and hoping we don't, but at the same time feeling completely useless if we don't. Our staying home still just doesn't compare to stories like Anne Frank.

Just a few months ago we started a brand new decade. That's big, not just a new year, but a new decade. Just like the start of every year for the past 7 or 8 I realized that many of my routines would be new and it would take time to adjust and make them my normal. We had just hit our stride in March. We made it through the record-breaking fire season and increased time indoors from the high levels of smoke pollution that lingered throughout Sydney for several months. Emma you started year 2, Morgan you started preschool, Charley you even started a day a week in childcare. I was looking forward to what this year would bring for me personally, hopeful I could strike a balance either with a new part time job, maybe starting my own business, or who knows what, but I was going to have time to actually think about it.

And now this, its only the beginning of April and I already don't know, will 2020 be cancelled? Is this socially isolated life all we will know? Will our vision decline from all this screen time, will zoom become the newest verb in our vocabulary, will all forms of travel be more or less banned for the rest of the year? We don't know how this will end or when it will end and that is no doubt the scariest part for most all of us. I'm not a sprinter, I'm a long distance girl, but even this is taking me a lot to wrap my head around. Run 42km, walk 100km, fine. Stay at home, don't travel, don't see your friends, don't go to work, school, anything if you can avoid it, for an indefinite period of time, I just don't know.

A friend passed along this beautiful song the other day called You Already Know and it gave me some peace. God knows and he has a plan, he sees us and he hears us, we can still call out to him and he will answer. While I see others going to incredible precautionary levels, I see the fear. No, I don't want to be sick, I want to be careful, I want to be smart, and I don't want to spread this disease like wildfire, but I don't want to live my life controlled by a virus that appears uncontrollable. Besides, I have three beautiful girls to spend all day every day with, and my life is pretty close to capacity just trying to break into this new normal routine that none of us saw coming when we started this year.

Simultaneous crafting, online exercising, video calling in one space minus one kid. This is our new normal.

Raising you (my children) in a global pandemic

Love you three but not those future wrinkles
you will give me during this pandemic.

I started this blog for all of you (my little people that is). I wanted you to have a place to get a glimpse of the adventures of your childhood. Let's be honest, I'm pretty terrible at keeping up with it anymore these days. 

But now. This. A global pandemic. They say you will ask me questions about this when you're older. They say I should blog about something like this. They say you will want to know what it was REALLY like to live through a pandemic that brought the world to its knees, isolating us all while simultaneously bringing us together in a way that only a wartime experience might be able to do. They say you will want to know how did we possibly survive, a family of five, in a two bedroom unit with limited opportunities to get outside. The jury is still out on the answer to that question...

You most likely will remember very little of it, I'm just praying what memories you have are fond memories. Memories of silly games, creative learning, time as a family, exploring nature (for as long as we are allowed). But let's be honest we're still in the early days now as we sit in Australia watching this virus make its way across the world like The Wave does in a baseball stadium. Waiting for it to really hit hard here. School and most of our regularly scheduled activities have really only been closed (and moved to online programming) for around a week. It was challenging last week as we learned our new normal, an influx of communications, and no doubt will continue to be challenging this second week. Maybe by week three we will hit our stride of this new normal.

You each are aware of these changes at different levels. Emma you understand it pretty well, but thankfully you also have perhaps the most "routine" still at your fingertips with an amazing online curriculum (thank you teachers at Neutral Bay Public), ability to write and facetime your friends, and curl up with a book when you want to forget about your troubles. Morgan, my heart hurts a little more for you as you understand your normal routine, that you've worked so hard to learn this year, is gone, but you don't fully understand why, other than this hard to say "coronavirus" word. And Charley, well even the littlest person can feel the change too, but let's be honest you still run around with the same reckless abandon most days, just with fewer of your friends and perhaps a mildly safer terrain at home. Yet, however small, your level of awareness, I still see you expressing the pain of this change.

I could start my positive outlook list now, all the great things that we should be happy for in this pandemic season... extra time together, daddy being home more (all the time), the safe place that is our home, daddy being home so he can help me cook dinner (and lunch), the extra cleaning and organizing we can get done at home, the goggle wearing and swimming lessons that will now take place in the bathtub, the craft extravaganza already taking place on my kitchen table (which will now become collateral damage), less concern about who you will get lice from next, this list can go on and on.

But we're also going to spend some time grieving now. The trip to the US to see family and friends for the first time in 15 months gone (I'm still not going to tell you about the planned trip to Disney), all of our "normal" activities gone, no playdates, a new, different, online church, no longer being able to buy more than two tubes of toothpaste at a time (really? I don't know if I should feel glad or sad that these is also an unknown toothpaste buying frenzy, or is there something I'm missing? we're a family of five with different toothpaste needs how do I prove this to the cashier?), this list can also go on and on.

None of us know how or when this will end. None of us know what it is going to look on the other side. None of us know if we will lose loved ones, lose incomes, lose our mental health, or lose our own life. So for now, I'm going to pray for all of us, but especially for the three of you. Unfortunately aside from staying home there strangely isn't much else we can do right now. So I'm going to pray that you won't fear, pray that you will be adaptable, pray that you will show me a whole lot of grace, and of course pray that we and our loved ones stay well. 

I heard a great quote today during our online sermon from our senior minister, unfortunately I missed who said it, "What will you become as you wait?" I wonder what each of you will become as we wait. I wonder how this will forever change you. I never imagined this is how we would start a new decade. I never imagined I would have three kids living in a small apartment under likely soon to be quarantined rules. I never imagined the weight of being a parent and making the "right" decisions for you would become even more difficult than they already were. So let's be strong and courageous in this wait together.