There can only be a finite number of times that a grown woman can be subjected to Baby Shark and come out with her sanity still intact.
As week four of lockdown begins, I feel that I have reached that limit. Ditto for that woman singing Dance Monkey in a weird baby voice and, increasingly, The Wonky Donkey (of whom I was formerly a fan).
As the the school holidays began, the kids took it in turns trying to win the ‘who is the most dejected’ competition. Daughter number one is today’s front runner, refusing to change out of her pyjamas or engage in any of the ideas for activities that I brightly suggest.
We do have a break, at least for a couple of weeks, from trying to do all the things. It was stressful getting everyone to engage in their school work, especially while trying to write or proofread pages, but the lack of structure of no home study to do, plus nowhere to go presents its own problems.
Thankfully, Easter weekend came as a welcome distraction to the general malaise and sense of a crisis slowly creeping up the country towards us for both parents and children.
News is starting to reach us of a friend in London who has come through Covid-19, friends of my brother ill in France, two recovered and one still extremely unwell in intensive care.
It’s a sobering reminder of just why we are keeping our kids safe at home. In fact, Easter Sunday doesn’t feel too different, treats are hidden in the garden and hunted with as much excitement as usual and while we don’t head off to find a hill to roll our eggs down, we have fun decorating them and then building a stunt course to roll them down involving the slide, a seesaw, some planks and cardboard.
We should have been heading off to spend a week with the granny and the grandad in Ireland but make do with chats via videocall and gatherings in front of screens to take part in pub quizzes.
The grandparents have been great at embracing these opportunities to stay in touch, with gifts arriving in the post and even a complete egg hunt with clues and prizes sent from gran and grandpa, who get to join in with the fun remotely.
As we watch news reports of people getting into trouble for congregating in city parks, we thank our lucky stars that we have a house with outside space. I have lost count of the times when the noise indoors has got too much and the children have all been hunted into the garden.
I have a new-found respect for anyone who is living through this crisis with small people and no garden – they just need space to run, jump and generally burn off energy, worries and cares.
With the benefits of exercise in mind, we decided to take advantage of a lovely evening last week to head out for a family walk. Now, under any other circumstances this would seem like a perfectly reasonable plan for a spring evening.
Did it turn out to be a wonderful bonding experience where we all communed in breathing the fresh sea air and marvelled at the joys of spring? Of course it didn’t. It was a total nightmare and himself and myself came home stressed, frazzled and with a few new grey hairs.
The two older kids were pretty good to be fair, they find it much easier to understand that they need to stay close to us and away from other people who might have the misfortune to meet us if we leave the house.
The younger ones smile and nod as we explain the situation and then promptly fling themselves onto the beach to dig, loiter when they should be moving and move when they should be waiting.
The icing on the cake comes when daughter number two takes off as fast as her legs can carry her and leaps into a swing in the playpark that we thought we were giving a wide berth. She wails the whole way home partly due to the telling off she gets and partly because the two middle children now refuse to touch her in case she has coronavirus.
We are never going on a family walk again.
