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Train station adventure

By • On • In Kids, Pandemic • 1 min read

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!

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Belongings pick-up

By • On • In Kids, Pandemic • 1 min read

Had to go back to Jackson’s daycare today to pick up all of his things. It’s so crazy to think about how abruptly this all exploded back in March. I picked Jackson up one Friday, to never return again. On that final day there, I left all of his stuff (a bin full of clothes, wipes and whatnot) as usual without thinking twice about it. At the time, I think we were expecting it to be only two weeks or so… oy!

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Deja Vu

By • On • In Pandemic • 1 min read

Watching the Cubs-Sox game, and it wasn’t until the 6th inning when I realized it was a replay of the game I saw yesterday…

Baby brain strikes again!!

P.S. — Baseball just started up again, and it’s soooooo eerie with the stands completely empty!!!

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Remember when we could go places?

By • On • In Kids, Pandemic • 1 min read

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.

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Comedy of errors

By • On • In Kids, Pandemic • 1 min read

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.)

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COVID risks during pregnancy

By • On • In Pandemic, Pregnancy • 1 min read

The CDC just now released a report showing pregnant women are, indeed, at a higher risk for COVID complications.

To say we got confusing and conflicting information in the first few months of the pandemic is an understatement. Sometimes they said pregnant women were fine, sometimes they said otherwise.

It seemed logical that it could be worse for us — our immune systems are suppressed and, especially in the third trimester, our lung capacity has decreased. So I just operated under the assumption that this was bad. And who knows what could be passed on to the baby?

Some of the initial advice was based on a startling low number of cases. Don’t quote me on this, but I want to say the first study was based on 9 births in China, and the second one only around 40 births. And that was the best we had to go off of!

It was encouraging to hear babies born from infected mothers seemed to be OK, but there was still not enough data.

By the end of May, researchers in Chicago discovered the virus was causing damage to the placenta. So scary!!!

It’s crazy to me that some people can be so comfortable and confident about COVID when things have already changed so much in only the first few months it has spread. And the new report only goes to show how little information we still really have.

The latest story from ProPublica:

“After months of asserting pregnant women were not at high risk for the coronavirus, the CDC recently released a study with sobering findings for expectant mothers. Experts say the data gaps are almost as worrisome as the results.”

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Quarantine 4th

By • On • In Kids, Pandemic • 1 min read

I told Jackson it was was the Fourth of July today, and then he asked what we were going to do. Uhhhh… nothing.

Earlier, when I was pregnant, I was so focused on the delivery and getting through it safely, that it’s really just starting to hit me now how sad this summer is going to be without being able to do any of the fun things we are used to. Of course, I’m happy that we are all healthy, but it still sucks being stuck at home and not seeing friends and family.

For July 4th, there’s normally a parade — with bagpipes, marching bands and donuts, Jackson’s favorites — and then we watch fireworks in Evanston at my in-laws’ high-rise, where you can see firework displays from all the suburbs all along the horizon.

This year all the parades and fireworks have been canceled.

I saw on Facebook that the Glen Ellyn fire department was going to drive through the town in the afternoon, so we were trying to carefully listen for sirens from our backyard.

Sure enough, at one point we did hear sirens going off, so we all sprinted to the front yard as fast as we could. I could see a fire truck coming down May Avenue towards our house. But as it hit the intersection, it turned down another street before reaching our house.

We all started running again down the sidewalk, chasing after the truck. A bunch of kids, on the other side of the street, were also running to their front yard trying to get a look.

Once Jackson got to the corner, we could only see the very back of the truck going up and over the hill. You could see the flashing lights for about two or three seconds.

Later, Justin was out in the front yard with Jackson when apparently they saw one firework go off. Jackson ran to get me to show me the spot where he saw it.

To me, it was the saddest thing: one firework and barely a glimpse at a firetruck. But Jackson has been talking non-stop about those two things! He was SO excited!

And he keeps wanting to just sit in the front yard to wait for more firetrucks, lol.

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