Keeping busy in lockdown 3.0

Well, here we are in Lockdown 3.0, dreaming of the wild days we were allowed to invite people in for a coffee and dash out for family meals. In all honesty, my husband and I aren’t sure we’ve ever been for a January walk before this year. Muddy, wet, cold… can’t think why we chose otherwise. Now of course it’s the latest trend - puddle suit at the ready! It seems like both yesterday and a lifetime ago when the first lockdown was introduced. Back then we had a newly turned two-year-old. Now we’re fast approaching the ‘three-nager’ years! Already asking for a party, it broke my heart to have to gently let Isabelle know her birthday wouldn’t be happening in quite the way she imagined. Instead I’ve been hitting up the online shopping (sorry bank account) and have various mad things lined up - think piñata, Frozen balloon stack, face paints and peel off nail polish - hopefully Ross won’t mind having a makeover!

As we all know, the weather has made this lockdown quite different to last year. No paddling pool days or picnics. It sometimes takes a fair bit of persuasion to get Isabelle out and about. We’ve been trying to make the walks more interesting - taking puzzle pieces to hide along the way or more recently ice hunting (and smashing) through frozen puddles. At home I’ve been taking advantage of my experience as a teaching assistant and introducing a little phonics through sand, puppets, washing lines. I know I’m getting something right when she asks to play again the next day. This kind of makes up for the copious amount of lockdown chocolate I seem to be getting through! We were also very grateful for the one and only snow day we were granted. Especially after a year of Isabelle singing on repeat, “Do you wanna build a snowman…?!”  

I’m hugely aware how limited Isabelle’s social life is right now, especially as she doesn’t go to nursery yet. Previously we saw other children daily, went to classes, soft play and she was used to being in a noisy environment and socialising with others. I wonder if this will be a shock to her system when life eventually (hopefully) gets back to normal.

As a deaf adult myself I know how challenging it can be to navigate speech through background noise, it’s a skill to be honed and Isabelle hasn’t experienced this since the summer. On the flip side, the abundance of quiet time at home has given us more time to work on her listening skills. The difference in her language acquisition in a year has been fascinating to witness and all I could hope for. Hearing, “Mummy do you want to come with me to the (living) room and play with my toys?” is something I’ll never take for granted after the difficult decisions we undertook to have her implanted. Not forgetting the support we’ve had since to help her listening and communication develop.

Her latest personal challenge is getting our Amazon Echo to play her song requests, which will always be Disney related, so I was intrigued as to what she said when Katy Perry came on this morning! So lockdown, tiers, restrictions - whatever we have coming our way, we will continue to crack on in the hope that brighter days are coming.