Pandemic

I finally decided to venture out with the boys this morning. Justin had an important presentation to make at a (virtual) meeting, the power was out and I was out of coffee — OK, mostly because I needed coffee!

Jackson was beside himself with excitement just with getting into the car. We have not driven him anywhere since early March before things first shut down.

“Look! My mirror!” he said, climbing into his car seat. “My cupholder!!!!!”

I couldn’t help but think of all the struggles we used to have getting him to sit down in his seat, and now here he was so happy to do it.

Then it must have jogged his memory again about the “old times” when we would do fun things outside the house.

“Remember we listen to music from music class? And we go to gymnastics?” he said.

Once we hit the road, we had only gone about half a block and then I heard him say:

“It’s so beautiful!”

What is??? The outside???

Followed by:

“This is so much fun, Mommy!” 

Still not even a block away from home.

Followed by:

“Is this fun, Mommy?” 

I’m not sure, haha.

The plan was to drive to the Metra station (after picking up coffee and munchkins!) and watch the trains go by. We never even got out of the car.

At one point a long freight train passed us, and it was carrying a bunch of huge, bright green tractors. Oh perfect! I thought. This actually is pretty cool!

I kept asking Jackson if he could see it. I couldn’t quite tell if he could from the vantage point in the back. I had asked him earlier if he wanted to sit up front with me to watch, but he said he wanted to stay in his car seat. Because car seats are so exciting now!

Finally, just as the very end of the train was passing by, Jackson tells me:

“Well, I can’t see it. But I can hear it.”

I couldn’t believe it. After all that, he didn’t even actually see anything!

And yet he still had a fabulous time. He kept talking all about his exciting trip to the train station!

I took Jackson for a walk today for the first time in a REALLY long time. Possibly since the Shamrock Hunt back in March.

I know I took Luc out for a walk by myself on his birthday in April (his bday present!), and I don’t think I’ve been out since then either. First I was pregnant and paranoid. (Our sidewalk gets busy — too many people out there!) And then just too tired with a newborn.

Either way, we’ve been quite literally sheltering in place for awhile now.

So once we started heading down the street today, it’s almost like it unlocked all these memories for Jackson of times when we, errrrr, left the house…

“Remember when we saw bagpipes at the parade? And we ate delicious donuts?” he said from his stroller. (This was referring to our last outing before the shutdown.)

“Remember when I did gymnastics?” (Open gym at the park district.)

“Remember when we went to the children’s museum?”  

One after another! This poor kid.

I was one of the lucky ones to score a blow-up pool in the pandemic, as most of them were already out of stock by the end of spring. But it took us forever to finally get it up and running.

I finally declared that we were getting the pool set-up this afternoon. Hooray!

There was rain in the forecast, but I calculated that we had enough time for a nice little dip before the storm was set to hit.

But then…

We cleared a spot and spread the pool out in the grass only to discover that the pump I borrowed from my parents wasn’t the right size.

I checked the instructions for insight. (You’d think one wouldn’t need instructions for an inflatable pool, but here we were…)

“Oh, it says to be careful dragging the pool around because it could tear,” I said to Justin.

About a half a second later, the pool tore on our makeshift fencing on the deck. Probably in multiple spots.

So then we were trying to patch up all the holes — hoping duct tape would be good enough — and fill the thing with air. After lots of scrambling, we ended up finding a pump for an air mattress that did fit into the plugs.

Finally, Justin began filling our sad, half-deflated pool with cold water from the hose.

“OK, Jackson!” I said. “Let’s go get your bathing suit on!”

And then we heard the thunder.

Jackson quickly climbed in with his clothes on — and slippers, too! — before we had to drag him inside.

So much for our pool day. Hopefully we’ll have better luck tomorrow! (Also, time to order some pool patches on Amazon.)