I can’t believe we’ve been quarantined for a month and a half! Staying home to limit the further spread of COVID-19 has had its ups and downs. I get to spend more quality time with my daughter, which is a blessing, but juggling work from my full-time job whilst being a caretaker has not been easy. I find myself working over-time and on the weekends to get things done because there is no way you can work with a toddler running around the house, and literally clinging onto my leg at times 😂. Boy I love her.
At the same time, we’ve been trying to keep our LO entertained and continue to stimulate brain development. We limit screen time as much we can, but try to utilize it in educational ways and incorporate all the resources and toys we have readily available. Things aren’t always smooth sailing, especially when Steve and I are both bombarded with huge workloads or my LO decides to give us a hard time with temper tantrums 🙉. However, we try our best to tag team and work around each others’ schedules. Here are some things we’ve been doing to keep her busy.
Getting Her Involved:
| My daughter LOVES getting involved with everything we do. She’s a professional at using our Nespresso machine now, asking to brew our coffee first thing in the morning and demanding to froth our milk. Future barista? ☕️ |
| Monkey see monkey do. She asks to use our hand-held vacuum to clean up her (and our) mess and we occasionally find her with the Swiffer mop. Does she refuse to clean up at times? Of course, don’t we all have our days? |
| She sees me in the kitchen a lot, so she offers to help with cooking rice and making smoothies. We also baked cookies that she helped shape and banana bread & muffins that she helped mix the batter for. |
| We spent quite some time cleaning out our yard and raking leaves left behind from the fall and winter months. Our daughter insists on using the broom and dust pan. We were out there for hours! |
Mommy’s little sous chef 
Activities:
| She loves her Play-Doh. I’m so glad I purchased a pack of 50 from Costco for her birthday! |
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| We try to limit screen time, but have had her perform exercises with us through kid-friendly YouTube workout videos or sing and dance to sing-alongs of her all-time favorite jams. This girl LOVES to sing! |
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| We do a lot of drawing, coloring and painting, even getting daddy involved and showcasing his artistic skills (which I never knew about!). I just ordered her some finger paint so she can stop applying watercolor on my fingers 🤦♀️. She also uses sidewalk chalk for drawing outdoors when the weather permits. |
Speaking of the weather, spring weather can be pretty inconsistent. One day it’s rain and another day it’s shine. When it’s beautiful out, we encourage playing in our (small) yard.
| We don’t want her forgetting her family & friends at school, so she Zooms with her class and FaceTimes with her classmates and cousins. |
| Being festive! We played Egg Hunt for a few days straight leading up to Easter and she absolutely loved searching for hidden eggs (while we take a break). |
| Simple: her toys! Our LO loves to play, just like any other kid, but what she loves more is when we join her. We build towers with her blocks, houses with her magnet tiles and cook in her kitchen. I added a new bowling set to her toy collection, but truly have to thank hand-me-downs and gifts from family & friends! |
What we’re probably most proud of is my baby girl is potty trained! There were plenty of dirty laundry for us prior to the quarantine. However, I am happy to say we are no longer going to pay for more expensive diapers!
This lock down may be challenging for working parents, but we should be grateful for the time we can share with our little ones. Spend extra time playing with them. Have 3 meals together, as a family. Ask them how their day went, what they learned and if they’re having a good time. Get their minds going. Give them some room for creativity and imagination. Forgive yourself for extra screen time and a messy house. We don’t know when this whole ordeal is going to come to an end, but I am sure we will miss the additional time we have with our little munchkins. I know I will.
Love you, my baby girl.
