Hello and happy Monday evening! How were your weekends? We’re back in the city right now, despite Hayden and I both still working from home. Schools reopened here last week, so we’re back so Amelie can attend school. She’s been back since last Wednesday and wow, what a revelation. A day where all I have to focus on is work is as good as a holiday these days. Amelie is loving it as well – being back with her friends is just so delightful for her! She wasn’t keen on the idea before she went back, insisting that she liked being at home with us. I was surprised to hear that (we have been trying to work full-time, we haven’t exactly been super Mummy or Daddy the last couple of months!) but at the same time I got it. The idea of heading back into the office fills me with nerves right now, despite the amazing success New Zealand has had in nearly eliminating Covid-19 (yay for our team of five million! My gratitude for this can’t be overestimated).
Despite her protestations, Amelie has been quite happy to go to school each day and had a fantastic week last week. We took it fairly easy over the weekend, for a couple of reasons – three days of school, after eight weeks of no school, were likely to be pretty exhausting for Amelie, and also, I am really loath to lose the feeling of simple, deep pleasure and joy in spending a weekend just being. That was easily one of the greatest gifts lockdown gave me. I’ve never been much of a homebody but apparently I love it, and it’s really good for me. I don’t want to go back to always running around.
To that end, Amelie and I spent Saturday morning just chilling at home while Hayden went out cycling, then in the afternoon we went round to our friends’ place for a drink. Can you believe I just wrote that?! We saw friends! We spent time with people who weren’t in our bubble! All we did was chat over a couple of beers, while the preschoolers ran around making all the noise and the baby was passed around for cuddles (in between showing off her awesome standing skills – a new trick she picked up in lockdown) but it was just so good. During lockdown, the importance of my friends really hit home for me – I’m so glad to have such amazing people in my life, and for the strong, enduring nature of my friendships, despite the fact that at any given moment, we’re scattered all over the globe.
Sunday it rained! All day. Thank goodness – Auckland needs it, it has been a seriously dry summer. We stayed in, enjoying a breakfast of croissants, coffee and juice, then we all did our own thing for a while before reconvening in the afternoon to snuggle on the sofa, eat popcorn and watch Wall-E. This was the second movie Amelie’s ever watched and it was just such a joy to see how much she enjoyed it. She’s not really ever been a television kind of kid (she’s never had the opportunity, to be honest, but also, she takes after me in preferring books and art) but she’s just started to like sitting down with us and watching something together, as a special rainy day treat. And she loved Wall-E. She laughed so hard at bits of it that all we could do was crack up as well, in a way you don’t often do when you’re an adult watching a kid’s movie.
All in all, it was a spectacular weekend, made all the more special for being so markedly different from what a weekend in the city used to look like for us. I am full to the brim with thankfulness and happiness about how we got to spend it, and very much hope that no matter your current lockdown situation, you also got to find some joy in yours. And if you watched any good movies, let me know – particularly if a noisy, excitable, hilarious three year old would enjoy them!
The Judd Crew 