Doldrums
noun
- a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or depression.
Well, here we are. Crawling across the finish line of January. I don’t mean to be all Debbie Downer, but….that was a TOUGH month. Yeesh.
I think I missed all four fun events that were on our calendar. We missed almost two weeks of school. We haven’t left the house in days. I am not even going to be close to meeting my steps or running goals and it has seriously put me into a funk.
Sometimes one of the most frustrating parts of life for me is when we are TRYING so hard. We are putting forth the work/effort. And then sometime completely out of our control just derails us. That was the story of this month. We went into the year with so much hope and energy, and for the first two weeks we were doing such a great job with our family habits, our personal habits and our lifestyle. I was really feeling confident as a teacher and we were so excited to carry the energy forward through the year.
Enter a 10 day sickness where every single person in our household was down and out and needing around the clock care. And here we are.
I also took very little pictures.
But, here is our January recap….
We started January 1st with a big day in our household: Ezra said goodbye to his paci! He turned 3 back in November so this was way past due. We told him a few days before that he would be saying goodbye on New Years Day, so he woke up in the morning and put them away. He hasn’t asked or complained once about it, although he has now officially started to drop his naps. We knew that would happen which is the main reason we delayed this so long. The first two bedtimes were rough, but now he’s great!
I started the month out SO STRONG with running and working out. Actually, I have truthfully been running and working out consistently since the beginning of November. It felt so good to start the year out with a good 5k! I actually ran indoors, but it was warm enough on January 1st to step outside to cool down a bit.
We also spent some good time talking about goals and things that we would like to be working on for the year. One of our family goals is to get some piano or swim lessons going! We found a free app to start some piano lessons. That has already petered off and looking back at this picture makes me laugh because we were so full of hope for the month, with no idea of what was about to hit us.
We go the library once a week and my Mom usually comes along with us. This week we had a lion in attendance! Haha. We love our local library and it’s always hard to drag the kids out after over an hour in there.
The highlight of my month was this trip to One Dollar Book Swap in downtown Dayton. I went with my Mom and the two big kids and we browsed for HOURS. Every single book is one dollar and I went armed with my TBR list and found as many books as I could that are on the list. Once I read them, I will put them in a Little Free Library.
We discovered a hidden trail near our house and went for an exploring hike one Sunday afternoon. It was a muddy mess and it felt like a magical adventure through the woods! We had no idea where the trail would lead or how we would be getting home, but we did it!
It’s been fun getting back into the routine of school and teaching. I love second semester in 1st grade. They GET it now- they know all the routines and procedures and what my expectations of them are. I know their personalities and strengths and weaknesses and can teach to those. We had a super fun afternoon of game schooling. I asked all the students to bring their favorite games from home and we played games all afternoon. It doesn’t seem like school, but kids can learn SO much valuable information from playing games together!
One weekend we embarked on a huge project to redo our front room into a homeschool/office/creative space. I have a before/after blog post coming on Wednesday, so stay tuned for the details on that!
We finally got some snow. It wasn’t much, but it was so glittery and pretty. This picture was taken at 6 am in the morning, about 1.5 hours before sunrise. It was so bright out!
We had a snowy day that day, but it was kind of a bummer because we had that day off school anyways. But we got to hang out with my Mom and Miss Corinne, which is always a highlight of the week! My Dad is in Africa, hence why he is in no photos this month!
School has been a challenge since coming back from Christmas break. I am finally into a groove of teaching and the students are so eager and ready to take off. But this Omricon stuff has made it so hard to keep up. I’ve had seven kids out on quarantine since coming back from Christmas. This means that I am teaching about 70% of my students in class, but still need to make sure that the other 30% are getting good instruction while they are stuck at home with parents who probably aren’t feeling the best. Then they all come back at various times and are at various levels of caught up. So it takes a good week or so to reacclimatize them to the classroom and figure out what work is missing or what tests might not have been taken. PHEW, it’s EXHAUSTING! And that is before my family got sick and had to be out for a week+. I am so thankful to have caring parents who brought me a tea after school one day “just because”.
This cracks me up because….real life. This room might photograph really well when it all comes together, but it also looks like this most of the time. And I’m 100% fine with that!
And here is a fun picture that Tera took of Patience! We love Patience. She is so, so, so very patient. And she’s beautiful and fluffy. Seriously so glad that we have a cat!
We then spent 10 days sick as dogs in which I took exactly zero pictures. Honestly, that illness affected me more mentally and spiritually than it did physically. It was ROUGH. I was in a state of despair and some of my very lowest mental health days for the duration of the 10 days. Not to mention sleep deprived and very worried about each member of my family who went down with it. Of course Theo also went down with it so I solo parented for about 5 days while he was out of commission. Did I say it was ROUGH? It was ROUGH.
I did get so much reading done in this time. I’ve read some GREAT book thus far this year!
I also got sucked into the Wordle craze….and convinced Theo to do the same. Ha! Sometimes it makes me feel SO smart and some days it’s the most frustrating thing in the world!
This is one of the happy spots in my house with the way this plant is growing! It’s also the room that gets the most foot traffic and I love this picture of Ezra flying into the frame of the picture. Calm and chaos.
We’ve had some COLD days, but I have been attempting to still take the kids out on walks whenever the weather is even slightly tolerable. We discovered the magic of snowpants and the kids can now last quite awhile outside! It’s me that gets cold and needs to get back indoors.
I found this piece of paper in my coat pocket in the midst of that horrible sick week that we had. It was exactly the reminder that I needed.
Staff kids end up growing up within the walls of the school and my kids are no exception. One day they spent some time in the library after school and the librarian Mrs. Meester let Kiah use this 3D printer pen! He was SO excited and could have continued using it for hours, but of course the resources are limited.
We have been working hard to spend more intentional time together in the evenings. We have started something we like to call “evening activity”. We take turns choosing the activity and the rules are that everyone has to participate and there are no screens allowed (with certain exceptions- like watching a youtube video to learn how to fold paper airplanes. The point is that we can’t pick “watch a movie” and Dad and Mom can’t have their phones). Theo picked making paper airplanes and having a paper airplane flying competition.
Friday is my Dad’s birthday, so we all hopped on a Zoom call to wish him Happy Birthday! We were all on two different continents and 3 different states right now, but we will make sure to celebrate when he gets back from his travels.
And that is a wrap on January! It really was a downer of a month for me. I sure hope February is able to be a bit gentler with my spirit and that I can honestly get through the rest of winter with my mental health intact. And I continue to pray that each day I will be able to say, “Come what may, God is good.” Cause right now, that is sometimes a battle to declare over my life!