Adventurer Blog

Coming out of sheilding.

Shielding has been a very difficult time for all of us, not just us three, our entire family it’s been such a strain. I’m sure the other 1 million plus who has to shield would agree too.

The little adventurer has been a little gem during our 5 months of shielding, he’s adapted to a different way of play. he’s learned an incredible amount during the last 5 months.

What has he missed? He’s missed the freedom to just go outdoors and explore, feed the duck ducks and play at the park. Not that he can express that he’s missed any of that, it’s just how we used to fill our days together.

I am extremely proud of what he’s accomplished over the last 5 months, he’s grown so much and learned more than I would’ve ever thought he would, for just being at home that is!

Two weeks ago Daddy was able to return to work, which of course meant that little could get back some sort of normality. I must admit I was very apprehensive about what society was going to be like, do we need masks? Have we got hand sanitiser? Are we ready to burst our protective bubble that we’ve thought was our prison the last 5 months?

We took a slow approach! Daddy went to work and we stayed home, we didn’t jump straight to going out and about. I decided to get little used to not having his Daddy around 24/7. we took a week to just get back into routine, settle and understand that Daddy is at work now.

That is until we got an email that swimming was back on (we got less than 24 hours notice) The panic set in. Here we go, real new brave world, what do we need? What’s the protocol?

We had some masks made (matching so he wasn’t afraid) thank you to @ljghandmade for making our reusable face masks, you should definitely check out their page. We played with a soft toy dinosaur putting the mask onto it so little wasn't afraid of it. We made sure hand sanitiser was in all our bags, wipes and our masks.

We then braved the outside, not just the outside, we'd already visited the woods, but, that was like a normal adventure, no social protocol to follow, not much risk of other being around us. This was our first public outing into society, a pool to attend our first swimming lesson in 5 months. I have to say hats off to our swimming company, and the leisure centre for both having strict but needed guidelines and rules to adhere too. I was in a panic about the timings, how on earth do I on my own (only one parent allowed at the moment) get myself and a toddler ready for swimming in 10 minutes?? I bloody did it though and it was a lot easier than anticipated, got worked up for nothing.

Little really enjoyed it too, he was splashing, laughing, squealing with excitement, he had a fantastic first lesson back, it was like he'd not been away from swimming. You forget how resilient children really are, he's a little pro at swimming, made me very proud.

So that's a big check, swimming back into our routine, carry on with our usual week/daily song and dance.

After Daddy had been at work for a week, myself and little back into routine I then reintroduced going out for one of typical walks. He was so excited to see his pushchair, he ran to get his "WayWays" (welly boots) Yes I had to choose the day after the heatwave to go out and its booming raining, well, the rain never stops us. The pushchair was packed, rain cover on, backpack packed with new portable potty safely tucked inside (yes, potty training is something we are nailing too) I made a packed lunch, took his nature collecting bag and some seeds for the duck ducks. Littles eye were gleaming his heart racing and he was doing a little dance of joy (maybe that's a wee wee dance, do you need wee wee before we go?)

We had such a great time, 3 whole hours, no accidents, lunch eaten, ducks fed, swings swung on, welly boots nice and wet from puddle splashing, Mummy full of warm coffee and a bag full of nature treasures. All panics and worries of making our way into a strange new covid-19 world were all gone, we got this and we had a great time.

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