Chronicles of 2 years of Corona pandemic part 2: lockdowns, bubbles, masks

I was recently reflecting on the pandemic and it's funny how quickly we forget all the things that happened and in which order and how it affected our lives. So for my own chronicles and memory I've tried to list 2 years of Corona pandemic.  (I might have forgotten some details which I potentially add and modify later on).

Making this list now, does not mean whatsoever that I believe we are done and over with Corona.  Frankly, I anticipate new waves, especially in winter times, but let's hope that the impact gets smaller each time thanks to the vaccination level and scientific progress. 

2020 March 18

"Blijf in uw kot"...Stay at home was the new credo. One day after Jan managed to get home from the Maledives, Belgium went in lockdown. 

I got my first BEalert from the government : we have to stay home except for doing grocery shopping and catching some fresh air 30' per day.  

Now that our family is reunited, I try to take the advice of discipline and routines and start designing a planning for the children with timeblocks on which we can assign homework, puzzle time, game time, sport time, screen time,  snack time etc etc...  We create big posters for it on the wall. We have a lot of good resolutions to survive  these 5 weeks together at home in the best way we can.

I also sign up for my first ever webinar for yoga...because our mental health in this crisis is important. 

2020 March 20

The borders in Belgium get officially closed and while that doesn't impact me at all (hey, we are already restricted in making non essential trips), this news makes me feel more claustrofobic.   How strange to be "locked up" in my own country now. 
The many Waze volunteers I know spend an afternoon putting road closures on all border crossings except for some main crossings that are patrolled by customs and police. 

Jan helps the teachers organizing a first zoom call for the children's classes with his professional account, which results in a lot of chaotic yelling and waving at the screen.

2020 March end

We reorganized our office space and the room next to it, to try to combine work and tending the children better. Jan and I try to take breaks in between our many many video calls in which we try to stay in touch with our teams...in those breaks we take our children outside in the next door park to give them 30' of "gym class".  At first we played soccer until that was apparently forbidden too: only walking and jogging was allowed. We were told so by some young adults from the youth council that approached us by bike and warned us the police patrolled the parks now and then.  The benches in the park were taped off too and we heard that police was also checking the nearby abbey as it became too crowded with pedestrians walking there. 

If we walked the streets and there were other pedestrians on the sidewalk, it was common that we (or the others) crossed the street to keep enough distance or to at least step on the street...there was hardly any traffic anyhow.  It was all done with an understanding, supportive nod. 

Houses got decorated with white sheets and each day at 8 pm, people were clapping at their window or front door to support our heroes working in the medical sector, trying to save our lives with their own at risk due to a lack of protective material. 

Some children in other classes took the initiative to draw a walking itinerary for their friends with chalk through the neighbourhood. We walked it and drew another walk ourselves, with arrows on the sidewalk.  The parent's whatsapp groups were busy sending pictures and updates from their children to the other children.  In the meantime the teachers got organized to get some daily homeworking assignments (or for the toddlers collections of video's, book reading films, online games, ...).  All media as a matter of fact were filled with tips of what to do at home...as if we were bored.  While home teaching the children and trying to take them outside each day and working long days while catching up our breaks in the evening, there was no personal time left whatsoever. 

All in all the panic and overwhelming effect I first felt at the start of March disappeared.  Together with my men at home, I felt safe. If I stayed at home, we'd be safe.  My heart beat in rest sunk to the lowest levels in years, I slept a lot and well.  I did some grocery shopping in smaller neighbourhood stores downtown with a backpack, combining a walk with some usefulness, and learned quickly that those smaller stores without a parking lot never had visits from hoarders. Long live full racks with a choice of toilet paper, liquid soap, flour etc to buy.  Even queuing to enter a store and the view of plastic shields rising at every counter, wasn't so frightening anymore.  I did carefully only touch anything I was going to buy however, and frantically washed my hands upon my return home before touching anything at home. 

And I assume we still had the illusion that this situation would end in a few weeks.  A virus with an incubation time of 1-2 weeks should have disappeared if we all stayed at home for 5 weeks, no? 
Or what if we all organized contamination of healthy young population in small groups per 2 weeks so that those were immune and could no longer spread the virus:  Jan in one period while I tended the children and  me than at another month , all in well monitored organized groups supervised by physicians? 

2020 April 

Since our company experienced a 100% drop in sales in Italy and France and closures and lockdowns on a global scale, we were all asked to take 10 days of vacation in April. That was rather painful as in Belgium our customers reopened on appointment and activity picked up rather quickly...ha when everybody had to stay at home, everybody got inspired to renovate or change his home.  So our backlog in work rose quickly.

On the other hand, it enabled me to spend half of the month time with the children, in which we walked over every street of Leuven while it was gorgeous sunny weather. We often stopped at the sidewalk at the door of some class friends door to wave from some distance and have a front yard chat for some social contact.  We hunted teddy bears that appeared everywhere in front of windows.
Trips to our vacation house were still forbidden. On some of our walks, we came by a road block on an entry road of Leuven, where cars were checked on the number of passengers and the reason of their transport.  I had not been in a car yet for 5-6 weeks.  

We celebrated Easter with a home delivered meal to support the local businesses and some hidden eggs in our tiny garden without visits to our family.  

The first two weeks of the months were officially Easter vacation and the children didn't get any assignments or links with school.   However, when the initial 5 weeks of lockdown obviously had to get extended, the school really picked up in regular calls and meetings now. The study material was as of now new, and I could witness some instruction video's from the teachers in which Kabouter learned to read or write a new letter and I felt quite privileged to witness this.  I was also relieved that their agenda was at least filled by one or 2 hours of work for school if we were working (although it was hard to supervise their progress while working).   The schedule which we introduced mid March had been quickly abandoned: you can't time the children's play time  in eg "puzzle from 9-10, then start drawing"  if yourself are stuck in a long video meeting.   So the planning mainly only indicated anymore when Jan or myself were without meetings and would plan to go outside with them or when they had to call in for school and when was fruit or snack time.  It gave them at least some high level structure but gave them also a lot of freedom. oh and their screentime increased dramatically but it was what it was...you must be pragmatic while stuck at home in a pandemic lockdown. 

In the beginning of the month, Jan bought us some buffs before they were sold-out as he anticipated that at one point we'd be requested to cover our mouths. They arrived at the end of the month and we made some funky ninja pictures.  Face masks were still rare and if we spotted someone on the street,  I felt angry as those were destined for the people working in the medical sector. 
At the end of the month, we requested a friend that loves to sew, to make us a couple of cloth face masks for each of us.  I felt fortunate to have them at the end of the month.  I drove my car again for the first time in 6 weeks to do grocery shopping and I wore that mask for the first time.  (it was not mandatory yet). 

2020 May

We continued as we were used but now I was back to work fulltime and without noticing I started working a lot of overtime hours. In order to entertain the children more, we were so crazy as to buy a bouncing castle for the garden. 

The entire lockdown felt quite routine now, and I felt really uneasy when everybody started talking about loosening restrictions. Too early. 
As of Mother's Day I think we were allowed a bubble of 1 per adult or something but it was a complicated puzzle and my mother, my sister and I discussed what was allowed or not.  It was a difficult discussion balancing rules, expectations and hope and security.  In the end my sister and I decided to visit my mom alternating with each time 2 weeks time in between so that we'd never be able to cross-contaminate each other's families. 

At May 18, the school reopened part-time for Kabouter while Beertje still had to stay at home.  The teachers made extensive video's to present themselves with face masks while the seats were distanced at school. Each got a little nominative pencil / toolbox so there wouldn't be any sharing allowed.  The classes weren't full-time and we had to drop off and pick up the children at the exact starting /end hour give and take 15 minutes but not more...because then other classes would come in and they could not cross.  

For Beertje it was a hard time since the little boy had never been used to play alone in his life and we were busy working and now his brother was gone part of the week....Screentime to the rescue. We crossed our fingers that schools would reopen quickly for the little ones too. 
Fortunately the playgrounds were reopened and he could go and have fun there now and then. 

In the 2nd half of May we were also finally allowed to return back to the Ardennes after 3 months of absence.  It felt great but also weird to return there. I was relieved to notice that I had cleaned up our fridge quite well the last visit in February.  We were riding as a family our bike since Beertje had learned to ride a bike during the lockdown. 

We kept on viewing the daily statistics of number of contaminations in the country, number of hospitalized people and how many ICU beds taken. All were decreasing consistently.

2020 June: 

June 8:  also Beertje was allowed to return to school after 3 months absence.  I felt lost at home. It was so quiet without my 2 little boys.  I missed them.  I kept on taking small breaks to work on our big puzzles as we had done the previous months. 

We also profited from the more freedom and reserved a visiting time slot at the zoo.  Despite the crowd control measures I found it relatively busy nearby the entrance. I guess I wasn't used anymore to spend time among other people. 

In the mean time it became common to wear face masks. 

June 15: It was allowed to spend very occasionally some time in the office again with a lot of safety measures but there weren't many people interested. Since most of my team would stay home, I could continue working from home mainly.  I wasn't too eager to return to the office. 
But at the end of the month I participated for 3 days in system testing for a huge project , which we organised in our huge training center hall where 15 desks were far spaced out while we all wore masks. It was fun to be back together for a couple of days. 

By the end of the month there was great optimism and by now we were allowed to have a bubble of 10 people that could change each week.  I calculated in my mind how quickly the virus would be able to jump from one person to another by such a model and decided not to fully profit from the freedom. Nevertheless we enjoyed a visit in the garden from some friends. 

Thanks to the bubbles, child activities for the summer could be planned on reservation in restricted groups per week.  As a result we managed to confirm and book the planned camps or playground or scouting as all were organised per week anyhow. So it looked like the summer would be quite "normal" for the children, if we ignored that each bubble had to have a seperate location with own entrance, own sanitary block , fences around it and strict washing hands routines etc. Oh well, in the mean time that seemed normal enough. 

People started going on vacation again to countries that now all received a color code : green countries, orange countries and red countries.  We all studied the European map which got updated each week with great detail.