Hi friends,

I hope you are all well and are keeping safe.

In Ireland, we are starting our second week of lockdown. I do not know how you all are coping, but I am finding it quite hard.

Both my hubby and I are essential workers and so have to continue working full-time during this lockdown. I am lucky that I am able to work from home and we were following the self isolating routine for couple of weeks prior to lockdown.

The only other people that we were in contact with, was our immediate family, who were also self-isolating for most part apart from us. When I was working, my sister-in-law was able to mind my kids and then after finishing my work I would pick them up and go straight home.

Only my hubby goes for our essential shop and we let kids out in our background garden for some fresh air.

The lockdown, even though I understand the absolute necessity of it, brought a lot of headache.

We are only allowed to leave to house to go for our essential shop or for a small walk within 2 km of our house. My sister-in-law lives around 10 km away from us.

So now, because I have to work full-time, I have to do that at the same time as taking care of my 2 – and 6- year old. Thankfully, last week it was not for the whole working week, just for 3 days, but still it was very very hard.

My 2-year old is a very cheeky monkey, who loves to play with markers, and make a lot of mess… Even though I was mostly with them (I set up my working space downstairs where they are, just going upstairs for my meetings, which normally only take 10-15 minutes max) we had a couple of incidents..

One of the incidents was a very colourful addition to our freshly painted wall :

The other was him pouring a drink all over the speakers for our tv.. Then there were constant mama mama mama. Let me just say by the end of those 3 days I felt like I aged 3 years..

A thing that is making it even more difficult is the fact that I was moved to a new group in our Project a week prior to lockdown, which was going great until my team lead went on parental leave and I started getting pressure from senior management to help out with a lot of things. The role involves working on a lot of new things, which I never had experience with and so it is tough combining this with minding boys.

People say ‘enjoy your time at home’, and don’t get me wrong, I am … when I do not have to work, or when my hubby is home to mind them.. But it is very difficult doing a full-time job and mind your children. I have a newly found respect for mums that do it all the time.

I did not even manage to get my son to do his homework on two of those days.. Do I fell guilty about it? No. I kept them alive, I fed them, I took care of their needs and they were happy. As for school work, there is always a weekend when I can dedicate all of my time to them and catch up on things such as homework. The rest of the time I will continue doing the best I can.

Have a great day everyone and keep safe.