These are definitely uncharted times. Social distancing, an international pandemic, a stay at home order state wide until mid-June, all of schools canceled. The list keeps going.
As a stay at home mom of a small child, it has been challenging. I’m grateful for my happy little girl, but also feel it is easy to run out of ideas and activities to keep her happy. She misses her routine and friends, frankly, I do too.
I’m currently…
rescheduling
doctor’s appointments. I need to go to a dermatologist to get my hair loss looked at and get it officially diagnosed (I’m so confused by it, it falls out in masses and now all of the sudden it is growing back in).
I also am setting up an appointment with a rheumatologist. For years, I have had really bad arthritis pain. When we moved here, my doctor’s asked me about my arthritis because of how I was moving around and put me on prescription medication for it. However, the medicine doesn’t even touch it.
I have a friend who is an occupational therapist, and she said after touching my back, that my arthritis is definitely inflammatory in nature (agreed). On past MRIs, I have degenerative arthritis from car wreck. However, I also have arthritis popping up in places where I have not had injuries (hands, feet, knees, SI joint).
I really hope medicine or treatment can help improve all of the above. It is really painful to be a mother of small child when you hurt all over.
sharing
recipes with friends. I’m cooking a lot more right now and I’ve baked now more than ever. I’ve made muffins, banana bread, tweaked old recipes while cooking, and updated a lot of recipe photos on my blog.
I also shared some things we’ve been doing at home here lately, with ideas of what to do at home if you’re bored as well.
RELATED // what to do at home when you’re bored
writing
in a gratitude journal. I used to write in a gratitude journal a lot, but the prompts weren’t really serving me anymore. I traditionally just did the format of one line a day of something I was grateful for, while sharing a lot of things from my blog. I’m getting more specific now and plan on sharing some of these prompts here too.
wishing
that COVID-19 will end all over the world soon so we can continue on with our lives. It is very humbling to feel so stuck at home. We are lucky because Devin is able to work from home, his job isn’t impacted, and Evie won’t even remember this, but it is very easy to get stir crazy.
We had an international trip in May canceled for Devin’s work. I was planning on going with him.
I go through a cycle of feeling frustrating about not being able to do much, but then feeling very guilty because we are lucky our families are well. I know with this, this too shall pass.
investigating
new counselors for me. I’ve really enjoyed my counselor of one year a lot, but she started getting really unreliable with our scheduled appointment time back in November. She began rescheduling my appointments, the day of, for weeks in a row. It left me scrambling for babysitters. She has also no showed for two of my appointments, with no communication on her part, after confirming our appointment times in writing.
I discussed in our appointments multiple times how this made me feel very anxious, but she never rectified the behavior. I’ve made so much progress in the past year and I’ve learned a lot, but it is time. Counseling should not be causing me more anxiety.
I have my first appointment with a new counselor within the week. I hope it feels like a good fit, but if it isn’t, I’ve gotten some good recommendations.
buying
toys. I’ve always been more minimal on toys at home because I have always focused on going out and doing a lot with Evie (play dates, library times, etc.).
I’ve bought some craft supplies for us to do more activities together and a lot of toy basics (a large air filled ball, balloons with confetti with basics, bubbles, pom poms, etc). This has been a great time for me to be more intentional with my home time with Evie, and it has been really amazing to see her speech really start to pick up here lately.
Life still feels a little surreal right now, but I am grateful. This will be something we talk about as a family far from now. In the mean time, we will be planning family road trips for when this is all over.