The Single Parenting Quarantine Marathon

4 words that you probably never would have foreseen going together"

Single parenting quarantine marathon

Our day began at 6:30

"Mama, I want chocolate milk"

"Pablo, you went to bed at 9. Go back to sleep"

"Mama, wake up."

"I will get you milk but you are going back to sleep."

I get the milk. P drinks it, rolls over to face me.

His eyes are rolling to the back of his head, 

Please.  I think.  Go the fuck to sleep.

A little while later, he starts to roll around.  

I pick up my phone. It's 7:57.  I sigh.

"Okay, we can get up." 

We go for our daily walk.  We don't need anything really.

But we need to look like we need something and actually buy something.

So we go to the bakery and get croissants. 

Then we go to the store and buy avocados, peaches, corn and blueberries. 

When we get home, I declare it's exercise time. 

So we take the purple mat and the orange roller and our water up to the roof. 

We stretch and then do some running races together. 

I follow up with a 6 rounds of different jumps

5 rounds of legs and 300 abs, with a run back and forth across the roof in between each set. 

Pablo plays in his Dad's office (currently uninhabited) and pokes his head out the window

pretending he runs a food delivery place and asks me what I want.  

I learn sooner than not that it's hard to count reps and not be redundant with your food orders while playing restaurant / doing leg lifts. 

It's about 10:45 am at this point.  Time for a change of pace. 

We decide to clean.  We clean the kitchen: all the cupboard doors, sweep, the windows 

and then mop the floor.  Then, we clean the devices, because it's been 2 days, rubbing them down with cotton and alcohol.  Then we do some rounds of doctor with Pablo's doctor kit and now, it's about 11:30 am.  Then, something happens (my day has been so eventful and it was also so meaningless) Pablo has a meltdown and gets mad at me.  He also gets his typical wave of boredom/ tiredness and says he wants to sleep.  I tell him to go lie down on the bed and go into join him.  He's sad.  Missing his Dad.  Confused by everything.  Why isn't Vero (his nanny) around?  Why can't we go to the park? Where is papa? Questions that have been repeated at least 5 times a day for the last 48 hours.  

Finally, we become a little more relaxed.  And, we start talking about lunch and I say, "Do you want this or that?" and P replies "I don't want anything." So I get on my storytelling, special voice and say.  "Oh I have an idea" and concoct a long tangent about the best sandwich ever.  We go to make grilled cheese and finish off the meal with a homemade ice cream sandwich.  

My next idea stems from an early childhood group.  We make paint out of flower, salt, water and food coloring.  We do this together and Pablo enjoys the chemistry of putting it all together.  Then, we go out and paint awhile.  Then, I get distracted, as I do often throughout the day with these tasks, and I start to pull the ivy off our walled in yard, which is quite intense.  After an hour later and getting Pablo involved in the process, I am pretty satisfied that I have cleaned 80% of the wall, bagged it up and feel a lot less stressed out.  We also call Abu (Pablo's Spanish grandmother) and get to talk to cousins and aunties too.  As most of you know, Spain is on lockdown too, so 6 of them are cooped up in Andres' sister's house.  

Following this liberating time in the garden, I decide on top of our: exercise, make something, quiet time, grocery/ scooter outings, call someone we love, I must add "gardening" projects to our list of things we do daily to kill time. 

Once that is done, it's about 4:50 pm.  Time for another walk to buy something when the stores open at 5 pm: trash bags, a new dustpan, salt for making play dough tomorrow and ice trays for another painting popsicle project. 

We walk there and walk back, taking our slow time.  It's clear Pablo is trying to procrastinate going back to the house as much as possible with his turtle pace, random stop and observe think alouds and more.  

Upon arrival, it's time for some train play.  We construct houses, a hospital, have bbqs all with legos next to the lego train which delivers fruit and bread to people because they can't leave their houses right now.  Sound familiar?  

Suddenly, there is a "Mama, chorizo" whine which means it's time for dinner.  Pablo gets the fresh dinner of pasta, chorizo and melon.  While mama eats all the leftovers of other meals.  

Bath time, then, 20 minutes of Cars the movie while hair dries,  and then 2 books down, when Pablo says "I want to sleep, mama" even before the book ends.  Within minutes he's down, and now here I am doing my slice of life, looking forward to the guilty pleasure of Netflix series and passing out early because the reality is, I got to run another marathon each day for the next 7 days. 

#SOL20 #day21 #thenewnormal