quarantine diaries

As I mentioned in the previous post, we are now living our third week of confinement here in Paris, day 19 of lockdown to be exact. We are not supposed to leave our house unless we really need to, the only things still allowed to be open are grocery stores and pharmacies, and if you go outside you need to fill a form every time. If you don’t have it and get stopped by the police or army, you will very likely get fined, after 4 tickets you might end up in prison. We are still allowed to go grocery shopping or get some air but have to stay within 1km of where we live and stay only for one hour. If you can’t telework, you can still go to your workplace but need a separate form for that too from your employer saying that it is absolutely necessary. The rules are quite strict and never have I wished as much to live somewhere with a garden but I do believe that these restrictions are here for a good reason and that it is really best to just stick to staying at home.

I know this same thing is the new normal in most parts of the world right now and most families have been living this same situation for weeks now. It’s just day 19 of the actual lockdown here, but we too have been doing this for much longer. Haven’t been to a playground since the epidemic started in Italy, started social distancing a few weeks before the lockdown only going to the most important things we had to do. B still went to daycare a few times a week until it got closed three weeks ago, we took him there a bit less than normally and only because his daycare is very small, they play outside most of the time and they quarantined the ones who had traveled. Thought it was better than going to the public playgrounds where anyone could go.

I’m not going to lie, it has been quite hard. Especially the first week of lockdown which went by so slowly, my husband started working from home and our son kept asking over and over to go outside. This third week has been much easier, we start getting used to it and have found some new routines. We have mostly stayed just inside, all the parks within that 1km range from our house are now closed so we don’t see much point going out with a three year old just to walk on a sidewalk on the dirty streets of Paris.

But what have we been doing then? Not getting to play outside does bring a little twist to this all and I must say it’s been quite difficult finding ways to get the energy out of an active three year old by just staying inside. For that we have built all kinds of bouncy castles on our furniture, our dining room table is basically the centre of a running course now and pretty much we have been just trying to make sure major hurricanes don’t happen, it’s been wild but also fun. Sometimes I wish I knew how to glue him to the sofa to watch TV for a few hours a day but that really doesn’t seem to work at our house. Don’t get me wrong, Peppa Pig, Morphle and Fireman Sam are coming out of my ears already, we do not have a thing called “screen time” anymore but somehow our kid isn’t interested in just sitting and watching tv for very long. He also doesn’t nap at all anymore, so we have to find activities for him for pretty much 12 hours a day, of course he does play by himself too but one does get bored after building legos day after day.

I find this situation being very difficult for young children, they do not understand it but might still remember it later on. It is stressful but I want to try and make it also fun for him so that he would remember it as a time we spent together at home. Everyone is different and I know it’s a major challenge for everyone with work, homeschooling and kids at home right now, but I thought I would list some of the things we have been doing to avoid getting bored. And by bored I mean stuffing the toilet with toilet paper rolls and flushing it, which also happened at our house by the way. Strong recommendation to keeping all kinds of unclogging devices on hand during this time, I have heard this is a thing happening right now with kids trowing all kinds of things from soap bars to toys down there. I laughed when I first heard that happening to someone, but wasn’t laughing when we were in the same situation without any Mr Muscle hidden in the cupboards 5 minutes before the grocery store was closing. Luckily we survived that challenge too without having to find a plumber at 8pm during lockdown, it was a close call though. But, here are a few of my tricks we have been using lately to make this time a bit more special.

The quarantine calendar

I might end up regretting this once the lockdown ends or if it continues longer than my stashed gifts, but I call it now the quarantine calendar and it follows one of the most important parenting methods known during lockdown, bribery. This started innocently one evening when my kid really wasn’t into eating his porridge before bed. He loves dinosaurs at the moment so I told him there was a very nice dinosaur hanging outside our window who likes to listen what we are doing, he is a bit like Santa’s elves and if you’re nice he might bring you something tomorrow. It worked like a charm and he finished his porridge faster than ever.

Basically this works just the same way as an advent calendar, because let’s face it we are waiting for this to be over way more than we have ever waited for Christmas to arrive. No dates needed though, as nobody wants to get reminded each morning how long we have been in this situation. The Dino leaves little surprises during the nights and also monitors naughty/nice levels, I really like this part especially as I don’t always want to be the authority stuck in the same house with an angry toddler who is not getting their way. Also he seems much more eager to please the Dino than me.

The gifts our friendly dinosaur brings are nothing fancy, usually just new supplies for crafts or similar activities like drawing paper, new pens, a new pot of play-doh etc, sometimes some treats like a smoothie or on really special occasions bath bombs or hatching dinosaur eggs. We were going to get new supplies anyway for this lockdown, so this way he is not getting everything at once and the excitement for new things lasts a little bit longer. I tried to get things that are educational in some way and for us especially the things for crafts have been very nice in the mornings, he is excited about them and let’s us catch a cup of coffee. We bought most of the surprises from Smallable, amazon and just the grocery store before the lockdown, amazon still delivers but unfortunately the French postal service doesn’t seem to work anymore so if you order anything online it’s best to use a courier service.

This quarantine calendar will be staying with us until the lockdown ends, it’s too late to stop it anymore. He has been really looking forward every morning going to see what the Dino has brought, reminding him about the listening dinosaur helps during the worst meltdowns but oh the sadness on the days I have forgotten to put out anything for him to find. Not sure yet how I’m going to “deconfine” myself out of this one or what I’m going to do once we run out of the maxi pack of play-doh pots. But for the time being I have been just planning to add some collaboration with the Easter bunny now that the holidays are approaching. Hopefully the kid will understand once the dinosaur goes back to dinoland when this is all over.

Facetime playdates

Now that we can’t see anyone anymore or play with other kids, keeping in touch virtually has become so important. Since we live in different countries than our families and B’s grandparents, he is already quite used to keeping in touch with them by phone, but he misses seeing other people so much. During this time we have been face timing a lot with them and his little cousin who is also staying at home without siblings to play with. He enjoys reading his dinosaur encyclopedia to them, draw or mold play-doh together and he loves storytime with his grandmother when she is reading stories to him. Let’s call someone has been my magic sentence to getting away from tricky situations during this time.

Cute printables

I’m not a very crafty person, but we have been doing a lot of crafts during this time. And with crafts I do like to jump over where the fence is the slowest. A perfect way for that is to explore all the wonderful printables internet is full of. My favourite ones so far have been the ones our favourite kids store, Tartine et Chocolat has been providing during the lockdown. We have built a village for our dinosaurs, colored all kinds of things and made animal masks for instance. You can find them on their website and they keep adding more all the time so I suggest following them on Instagram if you like that kind of stuff. Other wonderful French kids brands like Jacadi and Bonpoint also have all kinds of activities for kids on their sites during this time.

Organizing

It’s no news that I really like organizing, and I really really like the kind of organizing where your house looks for a few days like a hurricane hit it twice and then after a while, it’s perfect. As much as I really really feel like doing it right now that we spend all this time at home and I’m really bothered by the mess we currently have here, I’m not going to do that. For the sake of my husband because I’m such a good wife and I don’t want him divorcing me after this lockdown. So what I have been doing is that I’ve kept my organizing to one closet/drawer/shelf per day. Sometimes I feel like doing more, sometimes less, sometimes nada. This might still evolve to the hurricane stage but as long as we are not sure how long this lockdown is going to last, I figured at this pace I will have some drawers left to organize until about mid-December.

Kids can also take part to this activity by helping, taking things to the trash one by one for example (counts as exercise too and best if the things really belong to trash) or by doing a mess to the drawers before you get to clean them, your choice. Also I’ve found that adding any kind of machines to this task will make it even more interesting to a three year old boy, so bring in the Kärcher window cleaners and vacuums if you want to make your house shine once the lockdown is over.

The quarantine kitchen

This one is pretty obvious and I know, everybody does that already. Our kitchen has been quite busy too during this time as we have been baking and cooking a lot. I love baking with my kid and he really loves it too, he is also really really into all our kitchen appliances like the blender or mixer, so what we have been doing in the kitchen, is using them. Luckily we bought last year a slow juicer that I had been drooling over for years (we have one from Hurom), which has now become our best friend during this confinement period. We started a mother & son smoothie/ juice bar and have been doing either juices or smoothies almost every day. My son is a very picky eater so I find it easier sneaking some vitamins into his system by making him drink them. This has also been a great opportunity to support our favorite little fruit shop that is still open.

But you really don’t need a juicer for this and could do this your own way with pretty much anything in the kitchen, baking cookies, peeling fruit, making sandwiches, waffles, pizza, smoothies, yogurt bar, planting flowers if you have a garden or balcony etc. This could also be a perfect opportunity to teach your kids how to make your favorite cup of coffee if you’re an addict like me, Baby Barista training starting here next week. To keep it simple, pick an easy thing you can do often. I myself can’t cope baking cakes every day, it is super messy with a three year old so this juicing thing is perfect for us for also that reason. Baking and cooking together has been one of the fun activities we always do together, it doesn’t take very long but it’s a fun activity my kid has been really looking forward to each day.