Thank you Covid-19

Dear Covid-19

It has been well over 90 days since you swept through the world, and created this global pandemic that we are all currently living through. Much has changed. More than much actually. Life has changed. In an unprecedented way.

At present, Noah and Eliza are about to start Term 2 of school on Wednesday. For the first two weeks, we are looking at online learning from home, similar to the last 3 weeks of Term 1. On the week of the 11th May, they are expected to return to school, for one day a week. No one knows how this will work, and for how long but that is a clear indication of life right now. Wait and see.

So life through this pandemic has not been easy.  Covid-19 has taken so much. Many people have died. Many people have lost their jobs. Many shops are closed. Cafes and restaurants are only open for take-away.  Finding toilet paper and other staples is like winning the lottery. Holidays have been cancelled. Family gatherings are discouraged. Our country is in lock down. We are asked to socially isolate and when we do go out, socially distance. Say what?!

Oh Covid-19, how you have changed our lives.

While Covid-19 can be accused of having taken so much from all of us, for our family, Covid-19 has also given.

Last night, as a family we each took turns to share what positivity Covid-19 has brought to our lives. Covid-19, here are three things that we collectively are thankful for.

1. Thank you for the opportunity to explore new places, with our bikes and with our feet. These days, we take advantage of the opportunity to get out to exercise. While we continue to ride our bikes and go bush walking around our areas, there have been times when we have used this time to explore new places. Thank you too for the gift of coincidence when we bumped into my brother, sis-in law and kids who were out riding their bikes too.

 

2. Thank you Covid-19 for pushing us to harness our inner creativity.  Who would have thought that I would find myself giving Tim and Noah Covid-cuts and be organising a virtual birthday party for Eliza? Eliza and I also had a go at singing David Bowie's Heroes for Couch Choir, and of course Noah learned to play the Last Post on his trombone to commemorate Anzac Day 2020.

3. Thank you too for giving our family more time to cook. With extra curricular activities all cancelled, home cooking has become a forefront activity for all of us, giving us the opportunity to experiment and cook childhood favourites, with Noah and Eliza also making amazing pizza one night.

So there you go Covid-19.

In the midst of this global pandemic where much of the world today has been overwhelmed with fear and anxiety and in lock down, team Stentiford count ourselves lucky that this time is allowing us to create memories beyond that.

We still have much to be thankful for.

With love
Team Stentiford xox

A virtual party - Happy 8th Birthday Eliza!

Dear Eliza

Today you celebrate turning 8 years old.

As always, you have been looking forward to this date almost immediately after turning 7. I think it wasn't even Christmas when you started planning for your party. Will it be JoJo Siwa themed? Who will you invite? Do you keep it small or do you try and have as many friends as you possibly can. I kept telling you that you had plenty of time.

Then Covid-19 happened.

Shopping for your birthday presents has been very different this year. The bike shop was busting at the seams. I am guessing many families, like ourselves have started regularly riding as our form of family exercise. While I had to queue up to get into both Kmart and Target, something I have never done before, once you get inside it was actually quite pleasant to shop as they were not crowded at all.

I had been thinking about how to make your birthday as special as possible, given that you could no longer have the party you envisioned. While you did tell us that we can still have fun, even if it's just the four of us, as long as you can rule the day, I knew that we couldn't let the day pass without making it as special and memorable as possible.

Cue, let's host a Zoom birthday party for Eliza's Unisquad (your besties at school).

Once I got the buy in of the other Mum's, the creative juices started to flow. Each girl will receive a party bag and a cupcake so that they can all sing Happy Birthday together, blow a candle, and eat the cupcake. I asked Ninang (my sister-in-law) for some party game ideas and she suggested a Scavenger Hunt game, which we turned into a Treasure Show and Tell. While looking at the $2 dollar shop for party decorations and ideas, I thought it would be great each girl could write a message on a card for you which they can post back. I also scored some party props for added fun.

 

Thank you to the random looking delivery team for dropping the party bags to your friends early this morning so that they could prepare for the Treasure Show and Tell.

Needless to say, today's party will go down to be memorable. It was not quite the party that you were hoping for but who knew you can have a ton of fun with your friends despite being in lockdown? Oh Eliza, when you look back at these photos and this message, I hope you realise how much joy this virtual party has brought to your face. It was absolutely delightful to hear you guys laugh, sing Happy Birthday together and tell each other how much you miss each other. Even Noah made sure to join the party!

  

With your Zoom party, and lots of other video calls with family, my heart is bursting as I know that you still managed to have the best 8th birthday you can...and we still are yet to sing Happy Birthday to you as a family.

Cue Eliza's choice for dinner and cake, more cake!

Lots of love

Mum xox

A special song

Eliza has been homeschooling for two weeks now. While our school is still open to accommodate families that need to physically send their children to school, I think most of the children in Eliza's class have been learning from home for the last two weeks.

Late last week, classes started to video chat with each other via ZOOM. Eliza finally saw her class teacher and her classmates, which brought a massive smile to her face.

On Friday afternoon, her teacher sent across a video of her singing a song about her class, 3C. It was so heartwarming and lovely to watch as you could tell how much Miss C is missing her children. It also replicated a routine they had in class where the children took turns asking Miss C to sing them a song at the end of class.

I asked her teacher if I could share this video as it truly is so beautiful. We are so lucky to have such a great, talented, and caring teacher. 

Hopefully it won't be too long until Miss C is singing live to the children again.

Enjoy!  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ROQnW0akqzYvzgEjs1YKoDez3GLDX7O-/view?usp=sharing

Our family quarantine - the week that was.

Dear Noah and Eliza

Almost a week ago today,  I found out that my beautiful friend tested positive for Covid-19. While we figured out that she could have been exposed to the virus after the last time we caught up, I couldn't help but wonder and worry if I too was carrying the virus. I immediately thought about the times when I woke up with a sore throat, coughed here and there, as well as nurse a mild temperature. Call it psychosomatic, but these symptoms immediately started to flare up.

I asked your Dad that night to ring the Covid-19 hotline. For someone who is quite strong and brave, these are the days when I am extra grateful for your Dad, his high sense of concern and his scientific mind. Following that phone call, because I still had a mild temperature, and I couldn't NOT know if I was indeed carrying this virus, Daddy and I agreed that we would go to our local hospital's Covid clinic the following morning.

It was quite confronting to tell you guys in the morning that you could no longer go to school for the rest of the term, as we had intended for you to still attend that day to finish up, and that we needed to go to the hospital for potentially all of us to be tested for the Coronavirus. How can we prevent you from worrying?

Upon arrival, we were met with a number of people already waiting to be tested. It was busy and just got busier. The doctors/nurses were pretty adamant with meeting the testing criteria. Have you arrived from overseas in the last 14 days or have you had direct contact with someone that has tested positive? If you answer no to either of these, you were denied testing and sent to see your GP instead.

They allowed all four of us to queue up for the testing but because I was the only who caught up with my friend, they denied testing for you and Daddy. They would test you if I returned a positive result.

I am not sure if you saw, but the test itself was quite uncomfortable, a swab down the throat and another swirl up the nostril. We were sent home with further information to read, and told that our family had to isolate together until I receive the results which would take 5-7 days.

Thank goodness that we did a full grocery shop on the weekend as we had to go straight home from the hospital. Our family quarantine had started.

Thank goodness for my work and Daddy's work organising for us to work from home the week before so we were able to continue to work. Online learning had began for the both of you. We are so grateful to your beautiful teachers for their hard work in ensuring that you continue your learning. We received a weekly timetable of the activities you needed to do. Your individual music lessons, now online continued, and you both found ways to stay connected with your friends, classmates and teachers. Noah, I loved hearing your 3.15pm daily zoom with your mates, and I loved reading the online conversations that went on in each of your google classrooms. Thank you too for inviting me to do Smiling Minds with you.

I am grateful for your resilience. Each of you just got on with our week, and our family isolation. 

While you guys were coping well, it was probably around Thursday when I started to feel the reality of the isolation. I was hoping that I would be lucky enough to get my results earlier than the prescribed 5-7 days as I had heard from others that their results were turned around in less than 3 days. While I was hoping that we would be able to do our grocery shop on the weekend, when Ninong, my brother, offered to do our weekly shop on the Friday, I had to accept as we were starting to run low on staples. We were grateful for the shopping he delivered as well as the first face to face contact  that all four of us had since the Monday morning.

Saturday was day 5. The day came and went without a word about my results. I rang a number of places including the hospital to follow up, only to be told to be patient. Both of you would know that patience is not one of Mummy's strong traits. I tried to convince myself that not hearing from them was a good thing as they were probably prioritising the positive cases. Instead I tidied and cleaned.

I managed to sort out your clothes, my clothes, your books and the drawers full of letters/bills while, you built an indoor cubby house, started a 1000pc jigsaw puzzle and played outside as much as the weather would let you.

When the wave of isolation sadness would come, I would remind myself that our family is still very lucky as the both of you were coping so well, and that Daddy and I still have our jobs.

This morning, Daddy  decided to follow up with the hospital again, only to be told that the same thing. The hospital did give him the idea to ring our GP tomorrow morning as they may have received the results. Following that, we got the idea to to ring the hospital's medical centre as the GP there might be able to help us. God must have heard our family prayers last night as Daddy was able to speak with someone from the Covid clinic.  As we thought, the clinic was prioritising informing those with positive results, and that they had a backlog of people with negative results to ring. Mummy's results are negative!

It is important for me to write this to you so that one day, you will learn of how proud I am of each of you during this time. Noah, Eliza, as we keep hearing, these are unprecedented days. We are all experiencing history in the making. In my life, never have schools closed globally for unknown periods, Extra curricular activities are being cancelled.  Holidays are being cancelled, Shops are closing. We are all being asked to stay home to protect each other.

I know that this isn't easy for Mummy and Daddy so I can only imagine how much harder this is for you. I know how disappointed both of you are that Nanny and Grandad are no longer visiting us, that we have cancelled our Japan holiday, all your weekend sports have been cancelled, and we haven't seen Lola and your cousins in ages. Eliza, you are worried how we are going to celebrate your birthday in a couple of weeks!

Daddy and I are grateful that you allow us to share in your disappointments, as well as share your understanding of the situation, and your optimism, that one day, we will all do the things we love to do again.

Your resilience, patience, and positive outlook allows Mummy and Daddy to manage the severity of today's situation so much better than expected. 

Thank you guys!

In the meantime, we can go back to half our normality for now!

With all my love
Mum x