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

The institution of the Catholic Church

This week, George Pell went to jail.
George Pell, Australia's most prominent Catholic who once had the third highest power in the Catholic Church was convicted of sexually abusing two choirboys when he was Archbishop of Melbourne in the 90s. He was also the Archbishop of Sydney.
While we all knew that he had been convicted last December, it was only this week that this conviction was made public after the suppression order was lifted.

This week, I also learned that Theodore McCarrick has been defrocked following being found guilty of crimes including sexual abuse of minors.
Theodore McCarrick, the retired Archbishop of Washington DC, once my home for 5.5years.

I have attended masses that have been celebrated by both men.
During those times, I found myself so lucky and blessed to be in their presence.

Most of you would know that I still attend church quite regularly.
I will even admit to loving going to mass.
Probably not as often as I should be attending (sorry Mum) but nonetheless church for me is a time for being quiet, reflection and telling my God that He is still in control.

While the church has been a regular part of my life, given that I am filipino, I have first hand experience of God's kindness, mercy and will. Hence I continue to value my religion.

However, over the past years, I have started to question the institution that I supposedly belong to.  I remember during one mass when we prayed for those who are afflicted and displaced but at the same time the newsletter was encouraging the congregation to vote NO to same sex marriage. Seriously?

I have started to question the authenticity of the church leaders preaching about the sanctity of marriage when they do not have first hand experience to speak from.

I have started to question the authenticity of the homily focussing on lives that we should be leading. Does this mean that if we aren't on the same path, our lives are not good enough?

Now, this.
Two of the Catholic Church's supposedly most blessed leaders both convicted of awful awful crimes.

I am not sure how to move forward.
I want to continue to instill faith, love, hope and acceptance in my children.
I want them to believe that there is a higher being than them.
That is important to me.

It is so hard when the institution that is supposed to be supporting my faith and religion is letting me down.

Christmas Eve Traditions

Today Team Stentiford started a new Christmas eve tradition.

When the children were born, we were living in Fairlight which was a few hundred metres from the Manly Sea Life Aquarium. Since Noah's very second Christmas (his very first was spent in the UK), Tim has taken Noah, then subsequently both children to the Aquarium every single Christmas eve. It has been a Stentiford Christmas eve tradition.

The Aquarium closed its doors in January of this year. When Noah found out about the Aquarium closing, he actually wondered we would do on Christmas eve. His sadness was actually quoted in the Manly Daily's story regarding the Aquarium's closure (without us knowing we were quoted) as we shared his sentiments in the local paper's facebook page.


https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/manly-daily/manly-sea-life-sanctuary-to-close-january-28-after-55-years-as-an-aquarium/news-story/9a77e417170288be56bbdede35e3fc85


For at least since Eliza was born, if not since Noah, Tim has spoken about getting a kayak. Due to other priorities, his desire for a kayak has always taken a back seat.

Until this year!

A few weeks ago, Tim finally bought us (supposedly) a family present which we finally picked up on the weekend and today Tim and the kids took it out for a spin.

In true Stentiford fashion, there was much argument as who was going to sit where and who was going to paddle. I wonder if the paddle was exactly the way Tim imagined it to be.

It was mine as I got a bit of peace and quiet giving me time to write this blog.

Needless to say, today we start a new Christmas eve tradition.

Join us next time?

Merry Christmas everyone.

Here is wishing that Santa finds each of us and warms our hearts with all of our desires.

xox

When Dad speaks....

My Dad passed away a year ago tomorrow.
How fast does time fly?
This time last year, we were all saying our goodbyes to him.
I still count myself lucky to have had the opportunity to have said a proper goodbye.
One last hug. One last I love you.
For him.
For me.
 
No one warned me before my Dad passed how much life really changes.
I don't mean the every day stuff where he is no longer around for me to speak with to get some advice or how we now book for 10 people for family outings instead of 11.
There are no more updates from doctors appointments or which horse he would tip to win the Melbourne Cup.

No one warned me how family dynamics change when one parent dies.

Mum, Dad, my brother Chad and myself.

For those that know my family, they would know that one of my Mum's favourite pastime is to chat. She thrives on telling stories. She thrives on connecting with people.
She thrives on talking about her family, holidays and her bargains.
She can sit next to a complete stranger and can easily find common ground with them.
She is a talker.

As the perfect Yin to my Mum's Yang, my Dad said very little.
He was a man of very few words, often frustrating.
However when he spoke, one listened.

My Dad kept my Mum grounded.
While he encouraged and loved Mum for being herself, there were many times when he imparted that silence is golden.
For the most part, when Dad spoke, Mum listened.

When Dad passed, it became Mum, my brother Chad and myself.

A triangle instead of the even square.

Three pointy ends.

Over the course of the year, each of us have learned to manage our new shape.
As Mum learned to find her new norm which now include driving, managing her house and garden and managing technology, each of us have been bent out of shape.

While we aim for equilateral, more often than not, our family dynamics would be described more as isosceles or scalene.

This is okay as these days, this is how independent Mum has become:

• She is now hooning around Hornsby, proudly telling us that it now only takes her one go to reverse out of her driveway!
• She has quickly become Mrs Fixit, embarking on a few project upgrades around her house with the help of paid handymen.
• She has a weekly routine down pat, between seeing her friends,  staying with her sister and staying with either myself or at my brothers.
• She has been to Manila twice with another trip booked for early next year.

Mum is living her life to the fullest, exactly what my Dad said to her during his final days.

To this date, when Dad speaks, Mum listens.

Happy 1st year in heaven Pa.
Be confident that while you are physically no longer here with us, your soul and spirit lives in us.

We love and miss you.
Rest in peace.

Eliza bringing Lolo ice cream and a snowflake!