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Corona, cars and a cuddly baby... |
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It's been a while since I last updated. I could use the same old tired excuse of being too busy, and it wouldn't be a lie, but the truth is the biggest reason I haven't gotten around to updating is my laptop has been stuck underneath my armchair since Taina decided to tidy up the lounge a few months ago, and getting on the floor to pull it out felt like too much effort.
I'm getting old, guys.
Sabrina is ten and a half months old now.
She's still not a great sleeper, she no longer needs night feeds, but still often wakes in the middle of the night. Sometimes it's for a legitimate reason, like her room is too cold or too hot, or she's filled her nappy, or her gums are hurting from a tooth that's about to come through.
But sometimes it seems she just wants to hang out and play at like one in the morning.
Sabrina has four and a bit teeth. In other words, there are four teeth that have fully come in enough to see easily when she opens her mouth, but whenever I get a chance to look closely, I see there's a fifth tooth just barely poking through the gums.
Teething has been a bit hard on her, she definitely feels pain a lot, but bonjela has helped. The tricky bit is sometimes her teething pain makes her a bit fussy with feeding too, as she gets scared of taking her bottle, knowing the teat will rub on her gums as she puts it in her mouth.
She eats plenty of solids now though, in addition to drinking her formula. Breakfast we usually give her something fruity, often a fruit puree with yoghurt, or quinoa, usually from a baby food sachet. Lunch is something with pureed meat and small chunks of cooked vegetables, often with rice or pasta. Mid-afternoon she has a snack, often finger food like rusks or corn puffs, sometimes with peanut butter or hummus. Dinner is usually some type of vegetable puree from a sachet.
It's good that she eats all these things now, as it at least gives us options if she refuses to drink her bottle.
However, while things with Sabrina are progressing well, and more or less on schedule for her age, the world in general is a weird place right now.
COVID-19, or coronavirus as it's often referred to, is a new virus that has hit the world. It seemed to start in China late last year, and has spread pretty much around the whole world. Because it's a new virus, it's highly contagious and noone has much immunity to it, and there is no proven treatment or vaccine for it yet.
It's a little bit like a flu, in that it causes people to become very tired, develop a bad cough, and in many cases, struggle to breathe.
Because of the breathing issues, it can be very deadly, especially amongst the elderly, however a number of younger, seemingly healthy people have died from it around the world.
Due to the numbers and severity, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, and many countries, including New Zealand, have undertaken lockdown proceedings to minimise the spread.
Lockdown is a big deal. The last few weeks, here in New Zealand we have been in Level 4 lockdown, which means everything around the country had to close, bar the bare essentials. So obviously, hospitals are still running. Police are still working. Supermarkets are still open so people can get food. But all other shops, businesses, schools, playcentres etc are closed.
Taina's 2 Degrees store at Paraparaumu has been closed. The first week or two, that just meant he was being paid to stay at home and not work. But then 2 Degrees managed to "re-deploy" a number of their retail staff into other departments that were able to do work from home.
So Taina has been re-trained to do work from home on his laptop for another department of the company. Basically, business clients of 2 Degrees log tickets for things they need help with: troubleshooting internet connection problems, changing data plans, ordering new equipment like phones. Taina and the others on his team take these tickets and sort these things out online. So he's like an IT help desk, that also does some equipment sales and set-ups, but all from his laptop in our spare room.
It's great, because he gets full-time hours Monday to Friday (so a lot more money), but he's working from home so he can still sometimes help me out a bit with looking after Sabrina, plus he doesn't have to commute anywhere, so that makes his working days feel less long.
So while the COVID-19 pandemic is certainly not a good thing for the world as a whole, and many people are struggling with the restrictions from the lockdown, so far for us personally it's had a lot of benefits. Certainly, for me, I was already a full-time stay-at-home Mum before the lockdown, so the restrictions haven't changed my day-to-day schedule much.
The downsides are our Plunket appointment was cancelled, so we didn't get to measure Sabrina and see how much she's grown in these last few months.
Taina was doing driving lessons recently, with the hopes of getting his restricted license sorted this year, but the lockdown has put those on hold for now.
But, the good news is, I got a new car just two days before the start of lockdown.
The old blue Toyota Starlet was getting past it. I had been driving it since getting my license back in 2006, and it taken me to many places: many journeys around Upper Hutt, Lower Hutt and parts of Wellington. In and out of Porirua many times. Up to Napier a couple of times for Summer holidays, to Ohakune and back a few times.
But last year we had to spend money on new tyres. Now this year, several new expensive issues were popping up, like repairs on the clutch, plus little things like the seatbelt getting stuck, the window getting jammed and not able to close, the central locking not working, just so many annoying issues, some of which had cropped up before over the years.
Dad offered to pay for a new (second hand import) car for me, using some money left behind from Grandma after she passed away last year, so I now have a Nissan Tida Latio 2014. It's Silver, and a bit bigger than the Starlet, definitely more of a family car.
While it's a good car, much newer, runs well and has more space, it is going to take me a while to get used to it. So many years I've been a small car person, now I have a car that feels like it's more for 'car people', if you know what I mean.
Plus, with everything closed and the government encouraging us to limit unnecessary travel, I have had little opportunity to practise with the car, aside from short trips to the supermarket once a week,
But in other news, it was Taina's 34th birthday yesterday. He took the day off work, so the three of us hung out together: me, Taina and Sabrina.
I made him a banana cake with chocolate icing yesterday. That ended up being our lunch, as I ran out of time and energy to make anything else.
During the lockdown, an app called Zoom has become popular. It's a video messaging program, similar to existing apps like Skype, Facebook Messenger etc, but it works well for larger groups of people wanting to chat all at once, so it has become popular amongst businesses wanting to hold meetings and conferences with their employees while they are all working at home.
Anyway, we've been having family catch-ups with Zoom recently, and we had one yesterday. I was on my phone, Taina was on the chat from his phone too, while holding Sabrina, and Dad and Jill chatted to us from their place, as well as Nick from his place in London. Usually Jill's daughter Brierlee joins in the chats from her place too, but yesterday she was at work (she's a nurse, so she's an essential worker and can't work from home) so wasn't in the chat.
Sabbi had a good nap in the late afternoon and then went to sleep for the night after dinner at around 7/7.30 ish, so me and Taina played some board games last night. First we played Ticket to Ride, which I won, then The Game of Life, which he won. Then finally we played a game of Dragonology, which Taina won. It's surprising really, we managed to get through three board games in one day, that's rare these days.
So, crazy times that these are with the virus and the lockdown, I consider myself lucky that things are going well with us.
Well, I guess it's time to pay some bills and hang out with Sabrina, so this is it for now. See you next time.
weezieishness · Thu Apr 23, 2020 @ 12:05am · 0 Comments |
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